Fighting Poverty by empowering leadership: As said in the acronym ECHOPPE , Exchange for the Organization and the Promotion of Small Entrepreneurs, ECHOPPE uses the economy to create social emancipation and empowerment. ECHOPPE, in French, also means small boutique or “shop” where individuals/artisans maintain their commerces. These are the people served by ECHOPPE.

The approach begins by encouraging individual initiatives. By providing individual growth, people who once feared collective actions, are then capable to become part of larger organizations such as cooperatives. As individual and then collective growth is encouraged in both urban and rural environments, ECHOPPE has worked to regenerate the connections between the towns and the countryside by emphasizing this economic dynamic of solidarity. This method emancipates the most vulnerable persons by creating situations that encourage participation in collective organizations for their own development. How??

Step 1 – Using the Economy as a means to Social Empowerment

In today’s context of strong urban growth, the modern sector of the economy fails to offer real possibilities of economic insertion for the majority of the population. The creation of activities in the informal sector remains the primary opportunity for a source of revenue for most of this population, most particulary for women. However, most of the very poor cannot access even this, the simplest access to the marketplace. It is here that ECHOPPE begins.

The second stage of this method consists of providing individuals social support and further training skills to further restore their autonomy. If other environmental and social factors of human lives are not considered, including  reinforcing dignity and human rights, then the potential for additional economic growth is limited or, worse, destroyed.

The economics behind the success of ECHOPPE programs is that they respond to the most pressing issues that destroy the social well-being of the individual; issues which threaten the emancipation process. The growth and well-being of a person plays a critical role in fostering economic success.

Step 2 – From being alone to becoming part of a group in society.

Start small with individual initiatives and then stimulate emerging collective organizations;

In the beginning, ECHOPPE focuses on the individual and the support of her/his economic activity. It underlines the difficult conditions of the most vulnerable and reflects upon the logic of a more global development of the popular economy and the ecosystem.

The creation of “social circles” is the heart of the ECHOPPE method that allows the emergence of beneficiairies out of poverty through the organization of the civil society that can generate partners in the effort to promote sustainability.

In Rural society, the system is complex. ECHOPPE innovates with small farmers to find the economic and social mechanisms to respond to what one could called “institutionalized” poverty. Being a farmer is not a vocation but a social stigma.

ECHOPPE tries to identify the problems that block small farmers from advancing economically and socially. For example, the arduous work of farming by hand with tools as have been used for centuries; backbreaking, painful…… and today, it is difficult to find manual labor ready to work those fields – even more creating a difficulty for farm life.

The idea of creating a Center for Mechanization provides small farmers access to methods of working lands that were not previously available for them. Tractors, corn shellers, trailers for marketing goods……these are first steps, but the difficulties in rural areas are multiple and the ECHOPPE approach maintains looking at the individual is his or her own environment. This means recognizing that in the past 30 years, populations have doubled even in rural areas. Making charcoal by cutting trees has become the cash crop for small farmers to survive. Irregular rainy seasons perturbe traditional farming practices. These, in addition to traditions that have often outcast women or created violence in family settings need to be addressed. ECHOPPE starts small, innovates, works toward the construction of possibilities for working together yet maintaining one’s independence; building bio-diversity in farming, and communities of learning among individuals.

Step 3 – Act Locally, think Globally: Operating in both urban and rural areas to regenerate the link between towns and countryside and favoring a dynamic of economic solidarity

ECHOPPE has worked to create commercial relationships that link the women market vendors with small farm producers, in order to reinforce the source of supply to the women in town and expand their level of commercial activities. As a result, towns and villages gain a bigger role in agricultural production that in return increases the revenue of its inhabitants.