The Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF) in the Caribbean, in partnership with the Embassy of Switzerland in Haiti, the Bank of the Republic of Haiti, FOKAL and the SOGEBANK Foundation, is launching a call for applications to facilitate the creation of companies with a strong social impact by Haitian students enrolled in an AUF member university in Haiti.

This call for projects will make it possible to recruit the third Promotion of beneficiaries of the Solidarity Network for Business Creation (RéSACE) program and targets the entire territory of Haiti while giving priority to business projects that will be established in the Great South of the country.

The RéSACE aims to contribute to the economic integration of students and young graduates, mainly in the Great South, through a program of advice, facilitation and financing of projects for the creation of small and medium-sized enterprises with a strong social impact piloted by Haitian students graduating or freshly graduated.

Three-step program sequence :

• 1 - Between January and March 2023, approximately 150 members of the companies 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.

• 2 - From May 2023, the best projects will benefit from co-financing of USD 10,000 and technical support for a semester, to enable them to launch their first operations.

• 3 - All candidates who have passed the second stage will contribute, between May and December 2023, to working 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 led by one person or by a group of up to four people;

• The project leader must be enrolled in the last year of training (bachelor, master or doctorate) in a member university of the AUF Caraïbe (list available here), or who have obtained their diploma after January 2021, in a of these universities;

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

• Companies and business owners previously financed by this program are not eligible;

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

• Female applications and business projects with a strong social impact will be strongly encouraged.

Application deadline: Tuesday, October 30, 2022, at 11:59 p.m. (Haiti time)

To submit your project online : https://enquetes.auf.org/965849?lang=fr

HL/ HaitiLibre