To Fool The Rain: Haiti's Poor and their Pathway to a Better Life

To Fool the Rain thoughtfully chronicles Steven Werlin’s journey with Fonkoze, but it is also the story of Fonkoze itself.
Presented in vivid detail are the lived experiences of Mirlene, Micheline, Ti Rizib, Monique, Rose Marthe, Alta, and other Chemen Lavi Miyò participants, who have benefited in many ways from this remark­able program. As Werlin makes clear in To Fool the Rain, there is no single pathway to a better life. The stories of each of these women are the stories of Fonkoze: individual begin­nings, challenges, and successes bound together by the themes that pattern life in rural Haiti.

Lacking social safety nets, the poor in Haiti and elsewhere face ongoing and catastrophic cycles of poverty and disease. Fonkoze’s pioneering work in solidarity with Haiti’s poor has been a crucial step in disrupting such cycles. Fonkoze’s model, particularly its Chemen Lavi Miyò program, offers a path to security and hope for marginalized women. – From the Foreword by Dr. Paul Farmer

Steven Werlin has been a faculty member at Shimer College, in Chicago, since 1996. That same year, he also began traveling to Haiti. He started working with Fonkoze in early 2005 and continued to help with various projects for its communications, grant writing and education teams until March 2009, when he became the manager of its branch in the southeastern town of Marigot. Since 2010, he has been working for Chemen Lavi Miyò (CLM), Fonkoze's program for the extreme poor. He started as a regional director and is now the communications and learning officer.

Paul Farmer is UN's Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti and Chair of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard. He is also Professor of Anthropology at Harvard Medical School, chief of Social Medicine and Inequalities at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, and founding director of Partners In Health. Among his numerous awards and honors is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's "genius award."