By Sara Eisemann | Eneji Pwop Director of Operations
At a small technical college in Port-au-Prince, five new Enèji Pwòp Retailers gathered in late September for our sixth training session. One woman, Jonas, had first heard about Enèji Pwòp after a presentation at her daughter's art school. After the presentation, her daughter brought one of our solar lamps home, and their family was able to see its benefits firsthand. After using the lamp for a few weeks, Jonas decided to join the Enèji Pwòp team and signed up for the next Retailer Training — bringing with her Diana, another mother from her daughter's program. Now, both of them are prepared to improve the lives of many others with the benefits of Enèji Pwòp products. (Read more about the presentation on our blog at the link below.)
Jonas is a perfect example of the ways in which Enèji Pwòp can come full circle to benefit not just one individual, but also her family, friends, and entire community. With the help of our market development staff, Sandra and Hugo, we’ve been steadily adding new Retailers like Jonas to our network: 24 of the Retailers we’ve trained since our last report were new to Enèji Pwòp! Our training is key for these new Retailers, even those who already have other small businesses. As Terry, from Port-au-Prince, said, the training “allowed me to improve my marketing strategies, see the key attributes of the products I sell, and meet the staff who work with Enèji Pwòp.” This face time with Enèji Pwòp staff is one of the things that makes our training program particularly motivational, giving each entrepreneur many opportunities for questions and input.
Over the next three months, we will continue to give our newly minted clean energy entrepreneurs the opportunity to build small social businesses and dramatically improve the lives of their families and customers. Did you know that replacing just one kerosene lamp with our Lanp Enèji Pwòp — the smallest product we offer — can save a family about $30 per year? That might not seem like a lot at first, but $30 can represent more than 10% of the annual income of an average Haitian family.
What could you do with an extra 10% in income every year?
We hope you’ll consider this question as GlobalGiving’s next Bonus Day approaches. On Wednesday, October 15, gifts of up to $1000 per donor will be matched at 30%. We encourage you to use the Bonus Day as an opportunity to donate $24 — which will stretch to $30 — to reflect the energy savings our products bring to each new family served by an Enèji Pwòp Retailer.
Each donation helps us support another Retailer like Biligram, who said that the training was “a path that will carry me for the rest of my life.” As always, thank you for your generosity in support of our training program — and all of our work helping people here in Haiti to create paths out of energy poverty.
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