Reflections from Haïti

Nava Laguerre
Sep 8, 2018 · 3 min read

For about two years I realistically considered starting a business. When I had enough of toying with the idea, last year I got my feet wet by opening an online retail store, Aany & Co(pronounced Aww-ney).

I love every second of being a solo-preneur: learning about Dropshipping, choosing an E-commerce platform among SO MANY great options, taking SEO, Facebook and Google ads courses, tracking ads performance, budgeting, Marketing, building the site, developing content — the list goes!

It was important for me that the shop has a flair of Haïti; through its look and feel as well as products selection. Moreover, I truly believed adding Made in Haïti items was my small way of creating jobs there. The design part was easy — but offering Made in Haïti merchandise using the dropshipping model proved to be a lot more complicated than I’d imagined.

While I am sure there were many contributing factors, but this fact proved to be one hell of a hurdle than anticipated; along the way I lost my zest and closed up shop four months after operations.

Yes, my first attempt at being an entrepreneur was a short-lived, money losing experiment. I had parked that idea…and then, I visited Haïti this May.

Since returning back from my trip in June, I’ve been revisiting the idea of starting another venture; except with different objectives and standards. My new standard is for it to drastically improve lives in Haïti — I want this new venture to have life altering impact, not only in Haïti, but globally. (Nothing like failing at a basic challenge, and then pursuing an even harder one…Or, perhaps I failed the first time because I was thinking too small!)

If I got your attention, now you must be wondering — What is this life altering idea which is going to drastically improve lives in Haïti and beyond?

Haïti as a problem-rich country offers immense opportunities to test potential solutions to the world’s most pressing issues. I recall riding through the streets of Port-au-Prince and asking myself: what can be done with all this trash? To be clearn, there’s nothing atypical about the trash there; it’s your typical single-use plastics, styrofoams, common household junk and just about everything!

What was atypical for me coming from Canada was seeing so much of it piled up in the streets and being burned there with such ease. I’m told the capital only has two landfills and they’re both ill-equipped, which might explain why people often burn all that stuff in the streets.

With several weeks gone; I was still asking myself what can be done with all the trash?

One day, I recalled a friend informing me that Haïti faces an early climate departure date. In other words, Haïti will face the impact of climate departure a lot sooner than other nations. Actually, it’s predicted that the world will hit its climate departure date in 2047; however for Haïti it’s between 2025–2030. It is understood that a place hits “climate departure” when the average temperature of its coolest year from then on is projected to be warmer than the average temperature of its hottest year between 1960 and 2005.”

Still unable to stop asking what can be done with all this trash? and thinking back to that conversation, I wondered “ what if Haïti became a testing ground for climate change adaptation solutions”?

For me this time, my new venture or initiative is about positioning Haïti as a go-to attraction to test, develop and export solutions which would help bring development in the country and are of great benefit to our plane and all of us!

It is evident the injection of large scale investments for this kind of R&D in Haïti would lead to a trickling effect; including infrastructure building.

If you agree, will you join me?

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade