A stove provided by the IRC and a cooking course and start-up funds provided by one of our partners helped Melissa, a young earthquake survivor, start a business selling sweet snacks called beignets in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince.
In Port-au-Prince, there’s a 23-year-old single mother named Melissa with three children, including a set of twins. Melissa lived with her mother, who operated a grocery stand where she sold staples like cooking oil and evaporated milk. Money was tight, and then her mother lost both her business and home in the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010.