Conor,
You know my story. In the mid-1990s I was a kid from Cite Soleil with nothing, and HELP gave me everything. A master's in Peacebuilding. A language. A network. A belief that I could go back and build something. All that I do right now is because of the support of HELP.
I went home and built SAKALA into 25 sites, 310 youth, and a CNN Hero award. Jupille went home and launched Bambou Facile. Isemonde... you found her when she was asking for $30 for secretarial school, and you told her to pursue medicine instead. She got her MD. Alex went from Notre Dame d'Haiti economics to managing M&E for HANWASH. The pattern is obvious: HELP produces people who go home and build. But we did it by accident. Every one of us had to figure out the enterprise piece on our own.
Wesley Bertil has built a cooperative franchise system that eliminates the "figuring it out" part. Pre-built playbook, pre-built subscriber base, pre-built data systems. What he needs is exactly what you produce: trained, trusted, community-rooted leaders from every department. What you need is exactly what he has built: an enterprise waiting at graduation.
This proposal is not a pitch. It is the thing I wish existed when I graduated. I would love to introduce you to Wesley for a 30-minute call to walk through it.
Since 1996, when Conor Bohan paid Isemonde Joseph's first year of medical school from his $200-a-month stipend, HELP has produced a dataset that no other organization in Haiti can match. We are not approaching HELP because it is a good organization. We are approaching HELP because the numbers make our partnership the only structurally sound option.
HELP fellows earn an average of $10,000 per year... 15 times the national average of $653. They achieve a 90% employment rate in a country where the average is 50%. And 80% of them work inside Haiti, compared to a national retention rate of just 16% for university graduates. Seven have won Fulbright scholarships. Forty-eight staff operate across nine departments. All of this at a cost of $42 per day per student... roughly $15,330 per year.
"For the cost of one Brown diploma, HELP can offer 35 kids a full ride."
Those numbers are remarkable. But they also reveal a gap. HELP produces world-class professionals who stay in Haiti. The question is: stay in Haiti and do what? The 90% employment rate measures placement into existing jobs. SAKALA proposes something different: turning every graduate into a job creator.
Four alumni demonstrate what happens when HELP graduates meet enterprise opportunity:
Each of these alumni built something. None had a franchise playbook waiting at graduation. None had a subscriber base or data system or processing standards ready to deploy. They succeeded despite the absence of enterprise infrastructure, not because of it. This proposal provides what was missing.
HELP gives them the education. SAKALA gives them the enterprise.
No program anywhere in the world does both.
The Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program is the closest global analog to HELP... a merit-based, full-ride scholarship system for high-potential students from underserved communities. It operates at $500M+ scale across 40+ countries. It has transformed access to education for 50,000+ scholars. And it has exactly the same gap HELP does: no graduation-to-enterprise pipeline.
Scholars graduate. They get placed in jobs. The program counts placement rates. But nobody is turning scholars into enterprise owners who create jobs for others in their home communities. Nobody has built the cooperative franchise architecture that converts a scholarship investment into a multiplier. That is what this partnership creates.
HELP's agriculture track makes this alignment structural, not aspirational. HELP's own materials state it plainly: "By educating a new generation of farmers, agronomists, and supply chain leaders, Haiti can grow its own solutions... from the ground up." HELP maintains an especially strong relationship with the Agricultural College at Universite Quisqueya. But today, an agriculture graduate finishes their degree and enters a job market where there are no agro-processing enterprises waiting for them. SAKALA's Harvest Box franchise system is exactly that enterprise.
The Les Cayes expansion reinforces this. HELP opened a new campus at the American University of the Caribbean in 2024-25, with 50 freshmen. HELP is decentralizing from Port-au-Prince into the regions... which is precisely where SAKALA franchise atoms need to be deployed. The geographic strategy is already aligned.
KOREM is Haiti's first alumni contribution program... a 10% income-share commitment for 8 years after graduation. It has generated over $400,000 and funds 6-7 scholarships annually. This is not charity. It is a cooperative reinvestment mechanism that HELP alumni have already internalized. SAKALA's cooperative profit-sharing model is structurally identical to what KOREM teaches. For a HELP graduate, joining a SAKALA franchise is not a new commitment... it is a continuation of the principle they have already lived for the duration of their education.
This is not HELP's first co-branded partnership. Rhum Barbancourt signed a 5-year deal (2021-2026) providing 3 full scholarships plus a named admissions office. That partnership established the structural template for what we are proposing: a named, co-branded program where a partner organization funds specific components of the HELP pipeline. The SAKALA partnership follows the same architecture... but instead of funding admissions, it funds graduation.
| Scenario | HELP Fellows | Franchise Atoms | Youth Employed | Annual Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pilot (Year 1) | 3–5 | 3–5 | 30–50 | $75K–$125K |
| Current alumni (350+) | 350 | 350 | 3,500 | $8.75M |
| SAKALA full network | 344 (matched) | 344 | 4,472 | $8.6M |
| 2030 target | 750+ | 750 | 7,500 | $18.75M |
HELP's geographic recruitment strategy already covers all 10 departments. SAKALA's 344-atom franchise map needs managers in every department. The overlap is structural: HELP recruits from the countryside, trains them in Port-au-Prince (and now Les Cayes), and sends them home. SAKALA needs franchise managers in their hometowns. There is no recruitment to do. The pipeline already exists. It just needs the enterprise at the end of it.
Ashoka Fellow 2023 (Haiti). Runs RADIKAL: 2,500+ women micro-entrepreneurs with a food security focus. Her network of women producers maps directly onto SAKALA's Harvest Box supply chain. HELP graduates manage the franchise; RADIKAL's women produce the goods. The production pipeline and the management pipeline meet at the franchise atom.
Director of Studies & Commercial Development at Groupe Sogebank, already a "big supporter" of HELP. Our active research collaborator on Haitian economic policy. He bridges HELP's existing Sogebank Foundation relationship directly into SAKALA's financial infrastructure needs. Former Economic Adviser to the Prime Minister (2018-2022). His word: "On fonce."
Co-Founded HELP with Conor in 1994. 20+ years in Haitian education. Has testified before the Haitian Parliament and represented HELP at the White House. Any partnership conversation will flow through Garry for on-the-ground implementation. He knows what works in Haiti and what does not.
SAKALA recruits franchise managers locally. Capable people, community-rooted, willing to learn. The cooperative is operational and self-sustaining without HELP involvement.
| Metric | SAKALA Standalone |
|---|---|
| Franchise Manager Source | Local recruitment, community leaders |
| Manager Education Level | Variable (secondary to some university) |
| Youth per Franchise | 10 |
| Revenue per Franchise | $25,000/yr |
| Growth Speed | Slower (training + trust-building required) |
| Status | Operational, self-sustaining |
This works. SAKALA does not need HELP to exist. But local recruitment is slower, less networked, and produces managers who need more training. The franchise system works... it just scales at a fraction of the speed it could.
350+ alumni. 90% employed. 80% in-country. HEC-level education. English fluency. Financial literacy. Community roots in all 10 departments. And KOREM already taught them cooperative reinvestment. HELP fellows do not need to be trained to be franchise managers. They already are.
| Metric | Without HELP | With HELP |
|---|---|---|
| Manager Quality | Capable, variable education | University-educated, English-fluent, leadership-trained |
| Recruitment Pipeline | Manual, commune-by-commune | 350+ alumni pre-vetted by 30 years of HELP selection |
| Geographic Coverage | 7 departments | All 10 departments (HELP recruits nationally) |
| Fellows as Managers | N/A | 350 fellows x 10 youth = 3,500 youth employed |
| Funding Bridge | $0 | Sogebank Foundation + HELP donors fund franchise atoms at $3,600/site |
| KOREM Alignment | N/A | 10% income-share model parallels cooperative reinvestment |
Each HELP fellow manages 10 youth in their home commune. 350 fellows x 10 youth = 3,500 youth employed with the most educated management layer any cooperative system has ever had. The franchise startup cost ($3,600) is 86 days of HELP investment. The cost per job created is $360. No program anywhere produces that ratio.
HELP is growing. 750 fellows by 2030, with the Les Cayes campus accelerating recruitment. Every fellow is a franchise manager. Every franchise employs 10 youth. The math is simple and the outcome is unprecedented.
| Metric | SAKALA Alone | With HELP (Current 350) | HELP 2030 (750 Fellows) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Franchise Managers | Local recruits | 350 | 750 |
| Youth Employed | 160 | 3,500 | 7,500 |
| Annual Revenue | $59K - $90K | $8.75M | $18.75M |
| Revenue per Franchise | $25K | $25K | $25K |
| Departments Covered | 7 | 10 | All 10 (national coverage) |
| Donor Pitch | "Youth cooperative" | "Each scholarship creates 10 jobs" | "$25M creates 7,500 permanent jobs" |
750 fellows by 2030. 10 youth each. 7,500 youth employed. National coverage across all 10 departments. Each franchise generates $25,000/year. The most educated young professionals in Haiti running the most documented cooperative franchise system ever built. And for HELP's $25M fundraising goal, the pitch transforms from "90% employment rate" to "every dollar creates permanent jobs in the fellow's hometown." That is a different category of impact story.
"Imagine every single fellow from HELP becoming not necessarily a manager but like a partner or associate to start something in their hometown, because a lot of them are from the countryside."
| Metric | Per Franchise Atom | Pilot (5 Sites) | Full HELP Network (350) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Startup cost | $3,600 | $18,000 | $1.26M |
| Monthly revenue at maturity | $2,097 | $10,485 | $734K |
| Youth employed | 10 | 50 | 3,500 |
| Annual revenue | ~$25,000 | ~$125,000 | ~$8.75M |
| Fellow annual income | ~$10,000+ | — | — |
| Cost per job created | $360 | $360 | $360 |
For context: HELP's current cost per student is $42/day ($15,330/year). A $3,600 graduation package represents 86 days of HELP investment... less than one semester... and it creates 10 jobs and generates $25,000 in annual community revenue. That is a cost per job created of $360. It is among the highest impact-per-dollar ratios in development anywhere.
The fellow's projected annual income from franchise management ($10,000+) matches the current average HELP alumni income... meaning the franchise does not represent a step down from traditional employment. It represents the same income with 10x the community impact.
The HELP-SAKALA Fellows program gives donors a story that no other scholarship program on earth can tell: "Your $18,930 funds one student's education AND creates 10 permanent jobs in their hometown." That is $15,330 (education) + $3,600 (franchise graduation package). One donation, two outcomes, measurable via KoboToolbox dashboards showing real-time employment data per commune, per fellow, per dollar.
The Barbancourt deal proved HELP can co-brand. The Charity Navigator 95% Four-Star rating proves HELP can steward funds. SAKALA provides the enterprise infrastructure that turns a $25M fundraising target into a $25M community wealth creation engine.
HELP just expanded to the American University of the Caribbean with 50 freshmen. These students will graduate in 3-4 years. If the franchise pipeline is embedded now, the first Les Cayes cohort graduates with enterprises ready to deploy across the Sud department... the agricultural heartland. Timing: if we start the career services integration this academic year, the first HELP-SAKALA Fellows graduate in 2028-2029.
The 5-year Barbancourt partnership runs through 2026. HELP will be looking for the next co-branded program. SAKALA proposes a partnership that goes beyond admissions funding to graduation outcomes... a logical evolution of the co-branding model Barbancourt pioneered.
SAKALA has mapped 975,000 Haitian diaspora across 1,420 ZIP codes and identified 1,604 churches as community anchor points. The Harvest Box subscriber base does not need to be built from scratch. The demand side is mapped. What we need is the supply side: trained, trusted managers in every department. That is HELP's entire value proposition.
Daniel will make the introduction. Wesley is available for a 30-minute call at Conor's convenience. No decks. No slide shows. Just the model, the numbers, and the question: what would it have looked like if every HELP graduate had an enterprise waiting at commencement?
Wesley Bertil ... BARSS Research / SAKALA Strategy
Daniel Tillias ... Co-Founder & Board Member, SAKALA / CNN Hero 2019 / HELP Fellow
Conor Bohan: cbohan@haitianeducation.org
HELP: info@uhelp.net | (646) 485-8667 | 64 Fulton St, Suite 1102, New York, NY