30870: Hermantin" (reply) Labrom and Haitians not educatd to save money (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


However Haitians are not educated to save money - obviously becausethey do not 
have very little money, the idea of putting even a smallamount away is 
incomprehensible to them.


I am still in shock… Haitians are not educated to save money???? Where does 
that pearl of wisdom come from???  I am not sure that we are talking about the 
same Haitian people I know, who not only save, but have adopted strategies for 
saving money such as solde, sabotay, elevay, mutuel, kes popule etc.  I 
recently attended a women’s empowerment workshop facilitated by the Lambi Fund, 
and was in the company of about 30 women from peasant organizations, extremely 
knowledgeable about money matters. Their knowledge of indigenous saving 
strategies made my head spin…. Very confusing indeed for this Diaspora who can 
barely balance a checkbook.

In Miami-Dade County, the same folks who are “not educated to save money”, the 
same folks who are not literate and speak little  English have distinguished 
the financial institutions serving their neighborhoods as having the highest 
rates of saving accounts in the County.  These are not folks who participated 
in any special session on financial literacy; these are strategies that I 
suppose, they have brought with them from home.

A few years ago a financial scandal rocked the South Florida community, when a 
group of unscrupulous individuals stole several millions of dollars from men 
and women of very modest means. In a survey conducted at the Haitian 
Neighborhood Center in Miami, we interviewed over 50 victims, none of them 
professionals (service workers, landscapers, hotel employees), who had invested 
from $10,000 to $120,000 of their savings into this scam.  When they were asked 
how they had managed to save so much on such small salaries, they all talked 
about strategies from home and the fiscal discipline required to achieve such 
feat.

I don’t know that Haitians in Haiti need to be educated about saving money in a 
country where credit as we know it here is almost non-existent and 
accomplishing anything means that they must “ fe tet yo mache".

_________________________________________________________________
Recharge--play some free games. Win cool prizes too!
http://club.live.com/home.aspx?icid=CLUB_wlmailtextlink