The Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF) in the Caribbean, in collaboration with a network of partners, is launching a call for applications to facilitate the creation of businesses with a high social impact, by Haitian students enrolled in a member university of the AUF in Haiti. The network of partners is made up of the Embassy of Switzerland in Haiti, the Bank of the Republic of Haiti, (BRH), the Knowledge and Freedom Foundation (FOKAL) and the SOGEBANK Foundation.

This call for projects will make it possible to recruit the 2nd cohort of beneficiaries of the "Solidarity Network for Business Creation Support" (RéSACE) program and targets the entire territory of Haiti while prioritizing business projects that will be established in the far south of the country.

RéSACE aims to contribute to the economic integration of students and young graduates, through a program of advice, facilitation and financing of projects for the creation of small and medium-sized enterprises with high social impact led by Haitian students graduating or fresh graduates.

The program will take place in three stages :

• Between January and March 2022, around a hundred participants selected at the end of this call will follow an incubation workshop in hybrid format (face-to-face and remote), lasting 180 hours, in order to develop their projects. A certificate will be issued to all those who have completed the entire incubation workshop.

• From March 2022, the best projects will benefit from co-financing of 10,000 US dollars and technical support for one semester, to enable them to launch their first operations.

• All candidates who have taken the second step will contribute, between March and December 2022, to work in solidarity with a view to strengthening the Network, a commitment to be respected in parallel with the development of their own business.

Eligibility criteria :

• A project can be carried out by one person or by a group of up to four people.

• The project leader must be registered in the last of a course (license, master or doctorate) in a member university of the AUF Caribbean (list available here), or having obtained their diploma after January 2020, in one of these universities.

• No candidate will be allowed to participate in more than one project.

  Businesses and business owners previously funded by this program are not eligible.

• All sectors of the Haitian economy are eligible for this program.

• Applications from women and business projects with a strong social impact will be strongly encouraged.

Application submission :

You have until Tuesday, November 30, 2021, at 11:59 p.m. (Haiti time) to submit your project by completing the online form at this address : https://enquetes.auf.org/385754?newtest=Y&lang=fr

IH/ iciHaiti