Mariane graduated from the CLM program in December 2024. Her life had changed considerably during her time in the program.

She is a single mother. She and her daughter had been living with her family when she joined CLM. She had no way to earn income herself. They lived instead off support she got from her brother. “He would give me money, but it just passed through my hands. I didn’t know what to do with it. I never thought of starting a business.”

She listened carefully to what they told her about starting and managing a business at her first CLM training session. She bought goats with funds that the program provided, but she also invested in a business selling secondhand clothing. She did her buying and selling in downtown Gwomòn, so she was there, moving around the streets a lot. And the business took off. Her initial investment was just 10,000 gourds, and it really grew. She also took care of her goats, and eventually bought a pig as well.

But the commerce became the most interesting part of her story. Building it meant spending time walking around the town, and she eventually drew someone’s attention. That someone became her new life partner. She had been raising her daughter alone, but had found someone she wanted to invite into her life. She liked the way he recognized what she had become. “He told everyone, even his family, that he wasn’t the one who set me up in business, that I had built it by myself.”

But he wasn’t completely comfortable with the type of business she had chosen. “He didn’t like the way my clothing business forced me to spend all my time downtown.”

So they found a solution. He would build her a small boutique that she could set up as a kind of convenience store near her home instead of selling clothing downtown. She’d sell basic groceries and products for laundry and hygiene. She managed her investment well. Eventually her merchandise was worth more than 30,000 gourds.

It wasn’t easy. She needed to get permission from a landowner to set up the shed that housed her business. Her own home was too far off the main dirt road that runs through the area. So she and her daughter moved into a room she rented right on that road. Her landlord was happy to let a tenant set up a business.

Now her rental agreement is almost over, but she’s been able to convince the owner to let the business stay, even if she moves back to her own home. She won’t even pay rent. She just agreed to keep the small yard around it and in front of the landlord’s porch clean and swept.

The business briefly collapsed. She ran through the capital in it when her partner became sick. She spent almost everything nursing him back to health. But when he returned to health, she withdrew money that she had in a savings account and got herself started once again. Her partner is now healthy, and she’s hoping to build up savings once more.

In the meantime, she has been taking care of her livestock, too. She now has six goats, and her sow has eight piglets that are nearly ready for sale. It will be a windfall, and she has plans for the money. She is hoping to by a plot of land closer to downtown, where her boutique will see more traffic and her girl will have easy access to good schools.