A colossal amount of work will need to be done for the people in Haiti to reach some level of stability. Port-au-Prince, as we all know it, is under siege, the gangs have full power; and obviously, they don’t miss any opportunities to show it as they terrorize people every day. In Port-au-Prince, gunshots are as a lullaby as they are alarm clocks.
A temporary solution people are forced to consider is to leave Port-au-Prince, the capital city of Haiti's war zone.
I had to move to Mirebalais not only because of my job but also because gangs in Port-au-Prince have destroyed the work of a lifetime of my family; even worse, in the mix, my older brother was fatally shot in the head not too long ago.
Amid such chaos, the question to ask ourselves would be: “Can one still have a positive social and economic impact on the livelihoods of the abandoned people of Haiti?”. Whereas the country is on fire, there’s the next generation of (social) entrepreneurs hungry for a change that they are sure they can initiate. Those entrepreneurs need guidance, they need to be educated as to why social entrepreneurship should be the next step in Haiti where people don’t have access to the bare minimum.
Since Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, certain actions need to be taken to mitigate poverty's social and economic impact on the livelihoods of millions of Haitians.
Those actions can be taken here in Haiti by Haitians, more precisely by students in the post-secondary school who are, intelligibly, the next generation of entrepreneurs who need the guidance aforementioned.
The End Poverty Innovation Challenge (EPIC) is one of those solutions. We plan the engage the next generation of entrepreneurs in finding solutions to poverty reduction here in Haiti. The first seeds are being planted in the Central Plateau right now. Social entrepreneurship has a bright future, as does the country.
-Emmanuel Juste,
EPIC Haiti Manager
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