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Olivier Hauville and Beverly Ott founded ECHOPPE en 1990 in Togo, West Africa.
Olivier Hauville is from the Normandy region in France. He has a doctorate level of studies in Political Science and Economics from the University of Aix en Provence in France. Olivier worked for two years in the early 1980’s in Mauritania with the French Cultural Center and a year and a half working with an enterprise in agro-industry before returning to work in 1986 as the Director of a French non-governmental international organization, International Action against Hunger (AICF), in Chad where he met Beverly.
Olivier was key in the founding of ECHOPPE after having undertaken a study for the Street Kids in Lomé, Togo and in the initiation of a program “Jeunesse Batissons la Cité” to fight against poverty for the poorest after an important devaluation of the local money, the fCFA, in Togo and Bénin in 1991. He also created the network of fair trade boutiques in Togo, Benin and France called “Artisans du Soleil” in order to help former street kids out of poverty. Olivier has been a trainer, planner, programmer and economist in the work of ECHOPPE in the past 35 years.
In addition to this he has initiated groups in France to consider the importance of how the economy can serve to help small farmers locally. He was key in the creation of the Community Supported Agriculture movement in the Loire Region of France; He also initiated with local farmers, farmer/consumer fair trade programs such as Terre et Terroirs and d’Anjou et Ailleurs – two stores in France that helped farmers sell locally and improve their margins as well as integrating fair trade products from elsewhere.
Olivier is today known in France as a conference speaker and writer in social économics and how today’s economic systems ( stock markets, large megastores at low low prices, etc) influence the creation of poverty rather than its reduction.
Beverly Ott was born and raised in the United States (Indiana). She has a Masters Degree in International Social Work Planning and Management from Indiana University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Manchester University in Indiana. As a student she interned as a lobbyist in the State Legislature, on as a congressional assistant on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, and in project management in Egypt. She spent 2 years working as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Jamaica and completed various social work actions in employment while in the US. In 1986, she began working with the US non-governmental organization, World Neighbors, in Chad where she also met Olivier Hauville. In 1988, her work was transferred to Togo to follow up development activities in primary health care and agriculture in a five country West African region.
It is in Togo that ECHOPPE was born in 1990. Today Beverly continues, in addition to supporting the reinforcement of social actions in ECHOPPE’s practices, as a consultant in Africa on the strengths of entrepreneurship among women and their leadership.
Meeting with Professor Mohammed Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Founder of the Grameen Bank small loans to the poor program and Lamaya Morshed in Paris May 2023. Yunus is today Chief Advisor in the interim government of Bangladesh.