Community Libraries
The Fondation Connaissance & Liberté (FOKAL) aims through its network of community libraries, to make books and reading more accessible to Haitian readers, in particular the young. Fifty (50) small community libraries currently receive financial support, books and technical assistance from FOKAL. These libraries, generally managed by youth groups supported by their communities, are located in the capital, small country towns and in rural areas. In a country where the majority of school-age children have no access to school or receive education without books, our goal is not to preserve documents, or to create an impressive collection of books, but rather to promote reading and research, provide access and thereby spread the use of the written word.

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The Debate Program
FOKAL’s debate program is based on formal oratory debates, conducted as a game played by teams of young people. The objective of the game is to convince a neutral third party, the judge, that your team’s arguments for or against a given statement, are better than the other team’s. The debate is a confrontation of ideas, planned, documented and organized, taking place live, as verbal intellectual sparring match following a precise format.

In Haiti, in the tradition of the French education system, the two terminal classes of the secondary cycle are called rhétorique and philosophie. This refers to the final steps in a child’s education dating back to Greco-Latin tradition. According to Aristotle, rhetoric is the art of persuasion and philosophy that of mastering the technique of speech making and acquiring knowledge. In other words, the art of debate is rooted in a long tradition dating back over 2,000 years.

The current format for debates, as practices practiced in school and universities, was developed in English-speaking countries (such as the United States, England, Jamaica, India, Australia, Zimbabwe , South Africa, etc.) This game of FOR and AGAINST certainly develops intellectual prowess but is also an initiation into the practices and values of democracy.

This aspect of debate led to a collaboration with the European Union in a new project which is now in the phase of introducing new debate clubs outside the schools. This project is part of the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (IEDDH). Since September 10, 2005, this new initiative financed by the European Union has for mission to create debate clubs in libraries, Centres de lecture et d'animation culturelle (CLAC) and Alliances Françaises in order to offer this program to a larger public and operate outside of the somewhat restrictive school frame.

Art and Culture

Since 1999, FOKAL has supported particularly talented artists in the visual arts, dance and music, and contributed to the promotion of Haitian literature through support to Haitian editing houses such as Editions Mémoire and Mémoire d’Encrier, to Editions du CIDIHCA and other Caliban productions. The foundation also offered subsidies for the production of Haitian documentaries. FOKAL has contributed, in collaboration with UNESCO, the French Institute, la Communauté Française de Belgique, La Charge du Rhinocéros and the Africamérica foundation, to Haitian-African literary debates, a European tour for the exhibit of famous Haitian sculptor, Patrick Vilaire, a musical tour in Haiti for Beethova Obas, international exchanges with the Forums d’Art Contemporain, and the Festival de théâtre des Quatre Chemins...

Water is Life
In Haiti, only 16 % of the rural population has access to supplies of running water compared to 33% in the capital and 24% in other towns, that is roughly 21% of the entire population who have access to running water. The rest of the population is condemned to spend a third of the day with the chore of finding water, which is often sold for a high price in urban areas through peddlers. In the rural communities, the chore of providing water for the household, and the extended family in the "lakou", is assigned to children, often small girls who have to make several trips a day often several kilometers-long to the nearest available water supply point and carry back the often polluted water to the household.

For two years, FOKAL has been looking into innovative approaches to the issue of supplying water, particularly approaches based on the following parameters:

- The organization and the responsibility of citizens
- Leadership
- The capacity to negotiate with the state and other entities
- Financial and technical management
- Resolving conflicts
- Collective decision making
- Use and allocation of resources
- Protection of springs and the environment

The Tipa Tipa (Step by Step) Program

The TiPa TiPa program is a Haitian adaptation of the Step by Step program developed for the Soros foundation network by Children's Resources International (CRI), an educational institution based in the United States. This program targets children from birth to age 12. It is used in kindergartens and primary schools.

TiPa TiPa aims to make the child the center of the educational process. The program tries to develop the children’s autonomy, their natural curiosity, creativity, their ability to make decisions and put forward hypotheses, and their sense of judgment. TiPa TiPa prepares children to become active and committed citizens through an education which permits to master their environment. The program centers around the parents’ support and commitment to the schools, and a fundamental change in the way things are done by teachers and school personnel participating in the program.

In this way, the TiPa TiPa philosophy proposes instead of memorizing material, to encourage children to make their own research and develop their own projects. Rather than demanding silence and submission, children are encouraged to ask questions.

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Economic Education

Based on the Jeunes Entreprises program (a version of Junior Achievement from Quebec), this program requires the participation of the business community, whose representatives commit to giving eight hours of courses to secondary school students on an introduction to the economy and private enterprise through hands-on training activities. These business men and women then act in an advisory capacity to the students during the implementation of a "mini-enterprise" project activity which is conducted in the schools, simulating the establishment, running and liquidation of a production business.

This program, which was launched in 1998, has touched several thousand students between 1999 and 2005. During this period fourteen schools and eight businesses (involving forty volunteer consultants/advisors) have participated in the program in schools in four Haitian cities: Port-au-Prince, Cap Haitian, Jacmel and Hinche.

Special Grants for Education

In 1999, the foundation launched a program supporting further studies for individuals showing academic excellence – targeting particularly students from deprived backgrounds and recommended by our partner institutions. This type of aid is given to a small number of students with exceptionally high track-records desiring to go on to further studies in local universities. Certain grants are also awarded to complete the necessary funding of grants for overseas studies awarded for academic excellence by other institutions.