Well, perhaps not quite. Yet the surge of “penny business initiatives” in Haiti’s camps is an astounding phenomenon. What little money displaced persons have has fueled a supply-response that shows incredible entrepreneurial energy: here someone brings in a small power generator and recharges cell phones; there a pedicure tends to ladies who cannot afford more expensive beauty services. It would be a great idea to bring a few of these entrepreneurs to a business school - they might teach faculty one or two things. The Bottom of the Pyramid is alive:
Listen to NPR's Morning Edition "A Tent-City Economy Grows In Haiti" by Adam Davidson:
"The biggest tent city in Port-au-Prince includes a full-service beauty salon.
"It don't matter which condition your life is in, you still have to keep yourself clean and look good," Yolene Samard, the proprietor, says while working on a customer's toenails.
Samard's big square tent is made out of tarps and bedsheets. She and her husband sleep in one half; the other half is the salon. It's clean and bright, with a shelf stacked with beauty supplies and a bench where customers wait.
She has tried to make it look like the salon she used to have, which was destroyed.
Most people in the camp have only whatever money they had in their pockets the day of the January earthquake, so few people can afford what used to be her most profitable service: hair treatments."
* "to the stars through difficulties" as seen on an Apollo 1 plaque at launch complex 34.
