In a time when images of gangsters with guns and tires burning in the streets dominate the global coverage of Haiti, many other things are happening in the country that you probably won’t read about in the news. One example is the recent launch of Madansara Shop by a young entrepreneur named Mykel Saint Preux.
Mykel, a 4th year computer engineering student at the University of the Renaissance in Jeremie, is a regular at our Thrive Ansanm resource center where he can often be found typing code on his laptop. Little did we know he was creating madansarashop.com, a fully functional E-commerce site where Haitians can buy and sell almost anything including electronics, books, apparel, and beauty products. Deriving its name from “Madan Sara” the traditional term for Haitian women who buy and sell as street merchants in Haiti’s informal economy, it boasts an elegant, clean interface with all the features we’ve come to expect such as a shopping cart, order history, and secure online payments.
You can think of Madansara Shop as a blend between Amazon and eBay for Haiti. Like Amazon, it features a straightforward checkout process, but it has no fulfillment centers. Instead, it relies on the vendors to deliver the products to the buyers. When an item is purchased, the payment is deposited into a Madansara holding account, and the funds are delivered to the seller only when the buyer confirms receipt of the purchase. If the buyer doesn’t receive the purchase, Madansara Shop will issue a refund, so buyers can purchase with confidence. Even though Madansara Shop just launched, Mykel’s already thinking big. “The vision is to recruit many vendors, thousands of vendors selling on the platform, and then to have millions of users.”
“The vision is to recruit many vendors, thousands of vendors selling on the platform, and then to have millions of users.”

The inspiration for Madansara Shop came to Mykel when he observed many Haitians asking friends/family members in the States to order items on Amazon and send them to Haiti. It’s an inefficient process only accessible to a small percentage of the population, so Mykel saw an opportunity. He said, “Since the role of a programmer is to solve a problem, what I did, I created a platform, Madansara Shop.”
Since most Haitians don’t have credit cards, Madansara Shop accepts payments through Moncash, a popular Haitian money transfer service. Moncash is operated by Digicel, Haiti’s leading phone company, and anyone with a Digicel phone number can make Moncash transfers via text or an app. Much like a prepaid debit card, clients can deposit cash at one of Haiti’s numerous Moncash locations, so it’s accessible to almost anyone. Thus, your average Haitian with no credit card can still order products at Madansara Shop. If, however, you want a friend in the US to buy it for you, that’s no problem because Madansara Shop also accepts payments via PayPal or credit card.
“Without Thrive Ansanm, we wouldn’t have Madansara Shop.”
Mykel built and designed the entire site himself, but he admitted he couldn’t have done it without access to electricity and internet through Thrive Ansanm. Yes, many Haitians have internet access on their smartphones, but it’s through often slow, unreliable pay-as-you-go service. Few people have reliable high-speed internet and electricity in their homes, and we’re standing in that gap. “I don’t have words, for the work that Thrive Ansanm is doing,” said Mykel. “Without Thrive Ansanm, we wouldn’t have Madansara Shop.”