 Hello and welcome. My name is O'Galley Odo and I thank you for joining us today in a discussion about Haiti. I am USA Haiti's Acting Mission Director and I reside in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. Now, the US Agency for International Development is the US government's entity that delivers taxpayer-funded aid to Haiti and other less developed countries around the world. And as a foreign diplomat, I walk out of the US Embassy in Haiti where our agency is one of many within the embassy. Now, you may know this already, but I just like repeating it. USA is the premier international development agency of the United States government. We had one of the legs in the three-legged stool that is the US foreign policy approach as the development leg. The other legs of this stool are diplomacy, headed by the US State Department and defense, headed by the military. Now, in over 60 years of our existence, our primary mission has been to reduce poverty across the globe. But more recently, like many others in the development community, we realized that the world could end extreme poverty and that we could see this happen in our lifetime. And so, we revised our mission to partner to end extreme poverty and to advance security and prosperity in the United States and across the world. And one of our most important takeaways from my experience in development in the past 50 years or so is that we cannot solve these problems in the developing countries alone. We've learned the limits of our influence. But what do I mean by that? In all the time that we've practiced development, we've learned that true positive and effective or lasting change only occurs when we stand shoulder to shoulder with the recipient country and with other stakeholders to propose and to implement solutions. It occurs when we work with those who understand the local context, the culture, the language and the history of the places where we work. And I must add that in places like Haiti, we have to work with those who are able to capture lessons learned from one context or one country and who are able and willing to put in the work to replicate those successes from those other contexts and those countries. People like you. Now my focus today will be on this Caribbean island that is a short two hour flight away from Miami. However, I encourage you to think about Haiti in the context of other less developed countries with equally challenging operating environments. Places like Haiti, which for whatever reason face daunting challenges. I will highlight the recent events that have occurred in Haiti that now pose additional challenges to this country's future development. But as you must know, there is great opportunity in every crisis. Our objective today is to reveal that there is a role for impact investors in Haiti and in less developed developed countries like this. I believe that your creative solutions over the long run could and indeed will help SMEs grow and help Haiti to chart a new crop in new costs. Let me talk about the early context for it for a minute. I'll begin by providing some basic context about this country to be certain. Haiti is a wonderful country with a vibrant culture, resilient people and as Caribbean islands go. It is one of the much larger countries. Now Haiti became the first country in the world to be led by former slaves after declaring its independence in 1804. Now over the last two centuries, Haiti met more than its share of challenges. Immediately following its independence, the country was churned internationally and heavily indebted. Now overall, this country has endured various periods of hardship and today its poverty is striking. As you may recall, in January 2010, a massive magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck this country. Its epicenter was only about 25 kilometers or 15 miles west of the capital for the Prince. That earthquake killed more than 300,000 people and left more than 1.5 million people homeless. That earthquake was assessed as one of the worst that had occurred in this region in the last 200 years. Now following that in October 2016, disaster struck this island again or this part of the island again. When Hurricane Matthew made landfall in the southern part of the country. Now this resulted in over 500 deaths and cost extensive damage to crops, houses, livestock and infrastructure. Now since 2018, the security in Haiti has been deteriorating. There's a gang violence crisis that dominates life for the Prince. It is taking a heavy toll on the Haitian people and greatly impacts business at almost every level. In addition, Haiti has long been unable to deliver adequate social infrastructure and public goods to its people. And just this summer, there's been a wave of calamities. In July, President Juvenile Moise was assassinated in his residence. On August 14, the magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the southern part of southwestern part of the country, killing more than 2,000 people. An injury more than $12,000. It destroyed a lot of houses, schools and basic infrastructure. And now on September 27, another crisis is brought which many of you may have noticed. On the US-Mexico border in Texas, there were thousands of Haitian migrants that arrived there in waves. Now despite this dire situation that I have painted, there is great opportunity in Haiti. I would venture to say that in Haiti, the social returns on investment are some of the highest in the world. The marginal benefit to investing $1 in Haiti is truly tremendous. And the impact investing community combined with philanthropy and entrepreneurship can do great things together with us in development. Like elsewhere in the world, small businesses in Haiti struggle to access capital from local financiers, particularly nowadays when commercial banks are rightfully as opposed in capital preservation mode. Now in places like Haiti, few non-bank financial institutions exist, which means the depth of capital solutions has been shallow. Now furthermore, there are small and medium-sized enterprises that are unable to obtain risk capital from local lenders and also not the typical recipient of foreign aid. Now rather than tell you about the missing middle though, which is a familiar story across the globe, I would like to simply highlight an alternative approach to investing in this country. The alternative of identifying a development problem and building financing structures around that solution as opposed to the more typical approach of identifying broad opportunities for wholesale lending via local financial institutions, which could accelerate the impact. What do I mean by that? Take for example, the infamous problem of deforestation in Haiti, which is largely due to a tremendous demand for charcoal, but also partly due to its geography. Now the charcoal is used for cooking. On one hand, the production of charcoal is a major economic livelihood for rural Asians. And on the other hand, charcoal is a driver of deforestation and environmental degradation. USAID and other donors have sought to address this problem through various means. But what I want to highlight today is our partnership with local businesses that sell gas stoves and solar stoves as an alternative. The value chain for selling non-wood stoves is complex and to create markets that help patients shift from charcoal to alternatives such as gas or solar stoves require developing creative financial schemes. In this case, working with local lending cooperative societies to create financing options that enable Haitians to purchase the stoves in installments. That has been critical for us. No doubt this approach takes more time and effort. And there maybe there's a role here for the more patient capital providers such as philanthropists to first develop the solution and impact investors to provide the financial capital. Now, starting small in Haiti could lead to other opportunities as well. Finding a solution to one problem will lead to the discovery of other opportunities. That's for sure. And maybe there is a limited supply of gas to operate the new stoves and finance is required to expand access to gas or to look at various opportunities to develop alternative sources of energy. Or maybe while analyzing the supply of gas, you identify a gap in social infrastructure such as transportation and roads. Another unique investment play in Haiti could be to work with local government to understand where and how the private sector provides public services. As I mentioned previously, Haitians are a resilient people where the government has failed to provide services or has been unable to provide services. You can bank on a Haitian somewhere developing a private sector led solution. No doubt solving these complex problems takes time and money. We believe, however, that there's a unique role for each of you and that making the effort will be worth it for you and for your stakeholders. We hope you will join us in the following panel discussion where we'll explore with our social and special guests how external capital can be deployed in Haiti, even in today's tough environment. Thank you.