Meet Delegate Kalinda Magloire
Name of Organization: HaitiSwitch
Twitter Handle: @haitiswitch
Country: Haiti
https://twitter.com/HaitiSwitch
Description of Organization: SWITCH’s goal is to establish a durable mechanism that allows Haitian households to substitute charcoal for propane as a cooking solution, therefore improving livelihoods, people’s health, and the environment. Switch promotes several innovative commercialization programs to ease the first acquisition of a propane kit (stove and cylinder), which is prohibitive for most Haitian families. These programs include the financing by the diaspora of the kit for its family living in Haiti, employer’s credit program, partnerships to convert schools to LPG, and credit to food street vendors. The business also focuses on empowering women by setting up micro-cylinder exchanges.
Our Inspiration to Start this Enterprise: Haiti has only 2% remaining forest coverage left and loses 30 million trees and hectares of good land annually. This disastrous environmental situation causes extreme human vulnerability, and destruction of properties and infrastructure. Additionally, inhalation of toxic charcoal smoke kills around 4000 Haitians every year, mostly women and children. A majority of households still use wood charcoal. Families want to convert to propane, but with 78% of the population living on less than 2$ per day, it is impossible to make the single disbursement of 125$ for a propane kit. Finding ways to overcome this barrier was the reason we created Switch.
The Next Big Step: We are an early stage market with 2 millions homes still cooking with wood charcoal. To date we have converted more than 2400 homes, 900 street vendors and 120 school kitchens. However, really tapping into the household market (goal: 24,000/year) necessitates additional funds to build an important stock of cook stoves and cylinders, seed money to open cylinder exchange centers, as well as marketing funds to incentivize the Diaspora based in the US to finance a kit for their family. Another immediate goal is to convert another 300 identified school kitchens by mid-2017.
Biggest Obstacles We face as entrepreneurs: When you’re doing business in Haiti, it is hard to identify ONE obstacle as there are so many. Our country has one of the lowest ranks on the Doing Business index. Everything is difficult from registration, lack of infrastructure, to inefficiencies at customs and ports. However the biggest impediment remains the lack of access to credit. This has been the most difficult since the beginning, luckily we won a business plan competition funded by USAID, which gave us the seed money to start, but as we are looking to expand, and the lack of credit issue remains a big obstacle.
Advice to Other Entrepreneurs: The business environment in Haiti comes with so many challenges, that often entrepreneurs and international investors are discouraged to give it a try. However, for those that persevere, Haiti market offers real opportunities for financial gain as well as social impact. In this type of environment the key is networking, especially among new entrepreneurs who can benefit from each other’s experience and are more open to constructive synergies.
