Welcome to the Konbit Bibliyotèk Site Solèy page. We are a passionate collective dedicated to the transformation of Cité Soleil through education, culture and community development. Our goal is to create a space where every member of the community can flourish, learn and grow. By responding to the pressing needs of our community with innovative and sustainable solutions, we aspire to be a driver of positive change for Cité Soleil.
Our mission is to build a modern, community-supported library in Cite Soleil, Haiti. Our approach is to be completely community-led and transparent.
The vision of this project is not only to build a library in Cite Soleil, but to build a first-class, modern library and community service center. Some people have balked at the plans, saying it seems too nice and too expensive. The co-initiators of Konbit Bibliyotèk Site Solèy are trying to shake this conception and ask: why don’t the young people of Cite Soleil deserve first-class facilities? After decades of people in Cite Soleil being treated like second-class citizens, this project aims to raise the standards of what people in Cite Soleil can expect and what they feel they deserve. The project may take time to complete, but we will not compromise our view of what our young people deserve.
The library and community center, upon its completion, will have the following spaces and services:
A library that includes a children’s section, which will host book clubs, debates, and tutoring sessions
An informatics center with computers, which will teach computer classes and offer internet access and online learning opportunities
An auditorium, which can be used to host cultural events, conferences, and community meetings
A playground for young children
Other support facilities, such as restrooms, a cafeteria space, and an administrators’ office
The library was designed by Jennifer Andou Charles, who was born in Cite Soleil. The following are her designs for the library complex:
In early 2017, a group of young artists and intellectuals called FACHAITI in Cite Soleil decided that it was important to build a library in Cite Soleil. Over the past decade, there had been a lot of investment in youth spaces, but these spaces were mostly for sports, and they wanted to have a space for young scholars to get together, research, read, write, and discuss books. They identified a small concrete block house in Wharf Cite Soleil that could cost a few thousand dollars to buy, which they could transform into a very small community library.
FACHAITI brought the idea to Konbit Soley Leve, who advised them that instead of writing a proposal to a donor, they should first look for support in their own community. They should give ordinary people in Cite Soleil the opportunity to participate in making this dream a reality, that they should be the first donors. So Konbit Soley Leve and the youth group began to go door to door with a cardboard box, asking for contributions.
For the sake of transparency, each time someone contributes, the donor would take a selfie and post it on Facebook with the hashtag #KonbitBibliyotek. The funds were counted every Sunday at the local radio station, where everyone was welcome to observe. At the end of the weekly count, a progress statement would be circulated on social media.
The campaign went viral. People across Cite Soleil began to donate, then across Port au Prince, then Haiti, then the world. Schoolchildren gave up their lunch money, strangers who overheard about the project on public transport asked to contribute, people abroad wired through Western Union.
Since then, the idea has grown in scale. So many people from across Cite Soleil contributed that they were no longer happy with the small one-room concrete house in Wharf Soleil – they wanted a big, modern building that was accessible to everyone. And so the community and the local authorities chose the perfect place: Place Fierte, the large public park in the heart of Cite Soleil.
One of the most pressing priorities of the community is education. Cite Soleil is a young commune; there are tens of thousands of school-aged children who have to overcome enormous obstacles in order to get an education. Within Cite Soleil, their families struggle to afford school fees, and outbreaks of violence can keep them and their teachers from physically accessing the school. If a child can afford to go to school outside of Cite Soleil, they are followed by the enormous stigma that being from Cite Soleil entails.
If Cite Soleil is going to break its cycle of violence and social marginalization, it has to invest in creating safe spaces for young people to learn, not only from books but from older youth about what it means to be a responsible citizen. There are dozens of initiatives across Cite Soleil to aim to create those spaces and provide those services, but it is not enough. Without more investment in the education of Cite Soleil’s children, Cite Soleil’s future is bleak. But because the community puts such a priority on education, small investments can go a long way in building the foundation for a better, brighter tomorrow in Cite Soleil.
A library in Cite Soleil has both practical and symbolic value. It not only provides a physical space to encourage learning, research, and growth; it is also a statement that Haïti believes in the future of the youth of Cite Soleil, and is willing to invest in them
Cite Soleil is a municipality that lies on the northwestern edge of Port au Prince, Haiti’s capital city. It is known as Haiti’s largest ghetto. Cite Soleil has experienced a vicious cycle of political and gang violence, which leads to economic and social marginalization, which in turn creates the conditions for more violence. The stigma associated with Cite Soleil is significant, which not only reinforces the social isolation of the community, but has been internalized by many of its young people who see that society only expects them to grow up to be criminals.
However, the vast majority of people living in Cite Soleil are ordinary people trying to make an honest life for themselves and their families. Cite Soleil is full of young people with talent, potential, and dreams of a better future. Over the past six years, a social movement named Konbit Soley Leve has dedicated itself to identifying, strengthening, and highlighting all that is positive about Cite Soleil, and working to change the image that the world as of this community. In the past year and a half, there has actually been a truce between the major gangs of Cite Soleil, leading to an unprecedented period of peace that the community would like to build on
Transparency: all donations, whether financial, books, or in-kind, must be done publicly. This means that a photograph of the person or institution giving the donation should be taken and posted on social media so that everyone knows where the donations are coming up. No anonymous donations will be accepted. Funds are counted in public every week at the construction site, and a weekly summary of all donations is posted to Facebook. Now that Phase 1 of construction has begun, we are also posting a weekly summary of all expenditures with photos of receipts and contracts on this page. We are trying to set a new standard of transparency for development projects in Haiti.
Konbit: this initiative is carried out in the spirit of Konbit, with everyone contributing whatever they can, with participation being more important than the actual nature or size of the contribution. We value a child’s 5 gourde donation as much as a business’ 50,000 gourde donation; we value a student’s book as much as an organization’s contribution of 100 books, we value an artist contributing their voice to a song as much as a radio station contributing some of their airwaves to help spread the message. A volunteer once drove all the way from Port au Prince to Les Cayes (an eight-hour round trip) just to pick up a single gourde that a little boy wanted to contribute.
Invitations, not asks: the initiators of Konbit Bibliyotek will not formally ask anyone for money, nor write any official proposals requesting funds. What we can do is tell our story and invite people to participate. This is a subtle but important difference: we are not asking people to give because they take pity on Cite Soleil; we know that our project will succeed whether it takes one year of ten years, and we are giving people an opportunity to be a part of something incredible, innovative, and inspiring. Our donors have as much to gain from participating in this activity as our community does. We recognize that it is challenging for certain institutions to contribute without a formal application or proposal process, but this is an experiment in a new kind of community partnership and we hope that we can find ways of collaborating through creativity, communication, and transparency.
