About

Our Mission:

The Digicel Foundation is a non-profit organization that distributes and utilizes funds on a charitable basis for the sole purpose of building communities and community spirit in Haiti.

Our Vision:

The Digicel Foundation strives to ensure that communities are healthy, primarily through the support of community based and driven activities which should embrace social, cultural and particularly educational objectives.

“TODAY'S YOUTH ARE TOMORROW'S LEADERS”

What do we do?

Working with our Schools

The Digicel Haiti Foundation was established after ten months of Digicel’s launch in Haiti in May 2006

Over the first twelve months and with a budget of US$1 million, the Foundation focused on increasing access to education in twenty communities across the ten departments of Haiti by successfully supported the rebuilding of twenty primary schools. Each school comprises of six classrooms, one administration office and a (3) toilet block. These schools employ a total of 20 directors and 156 teachers who in turn support the education of 7400 children.

The Foundation’s challenge for 2008-2011 is to focus on supporting these schools to deliver quality education. Last year they started a three year programme including professional training for all staff members, increasing resources both for curricular and extra-curricular activities, maintaining and improving the school environment, increasing parental involvement, partnering with food and vaccination programmes as well as piloting an environmental project.

Working with Local Community Projects

Through our local grant programme the Foundation is afforded the opportunity to support local communities to rehabilitate and improve an element of their community. They have financed projects all across the country. Such projects include: re-building an orphanage for 50 children in Port-au-Prince, repairing three schools damaged by the hurricanes of 2008, resourcing a school library in the south department, re-building ten family homes in Gros Morne and many more. Please see the apply page for information on how you could apply for a grant.

Working with Partners in Health/ Zanmi La Santé

The Foundtion has joined forces with PIH/ ZLS to improve access to and the quality of education in the Central Plateau. With support from the Foundation, PIH/ ZLS have enrolled 8,573 students for the 2008/09 school year, bolstered salaries of the 152 teachers and provided 9,793 students with daily school lunches in 27 schools throughout the Central Plateau. Their partnership is now entering its second year.

In the midst of the poverty in which the majority of Haitian people live today, there is an urgent need to foster community development initiatives as well as to create and nurture centers of educational excellence so that children are given the opportunity to reach their true potential. This is the excellence to which the Foundation and the communities they work with are striving for with their interventions.

Please visit our project page for more information on our work.