Soley Leve is repairing a car to put it for community use!   Apre anpil deba ke tout gwoup kominote ki fe pati Konbit Soley Leve yo te genyen  sou fason pou itilize resous Lokal pou avansman kominote yo. genyen Kominote yo te rive sou zafe machin Konbit Soley Leve ki te ka sevi yon resous ekonomik pou tout kominote site soley la si yo rive ranje li e mete li nan fe trafik. Sa ki ap bay 4 jenn pa jou yon job, e mete anpil yon lin traspo nan pakou site soley santre vil la, e lajan ki ap antre ka sevi pou ede ak ti pwoje lokal yo, tankou rive mete yon janden kominote nan vodrey, mete anpis yon ti kannot ki ka bay plis jenn job, jwen ti lajan pou sipotan Metanoia kise yon gwoup ki sevi ak espo pou preche lape. Kisa Kominote yo fe: yo deja mete ansanm e bay ranje machin nan. Kisa yo manke : Yon Kawosi, pou kouvri tet machin nan, pou li vin tounen yon komyonet.

After a wide debate between the different communities in Soley Leve about the best way to use their local resources to make a positive change, Soley Leve came with the idea of using the Soley Leve car as a way to bring economic resources to the community.  They have been transforming the car in a tap (haitian public transport) which will run between Cite Cite Soleil and downtown, allowing 4 people to find a job and the profit created will go directly to support local projects such as creating a community garden in Vaudreuil. 

What the community has already done by themselves? They collected money between themselves to fix the car.

What is missing: a camper shell to cover the car and transform it in a local vibrant “taptap”

New Years has more significance in Haiti than perhaps anywhere else in the world – because January 1st is not just the new years, but also Haitian Independence Day. And one of the strongest traditions on New Year’s Eve is for families to stay up all night cooking soup joumou – pumpkin soup. It has a special significance that symbolizes independence, unity, and family.

On New Year’s Eve, 2010, a local leader and a Haitian organization worked together to help a dozen different neighborhoods in Cite Soleil host community pumpkin soups, where soup could be shared in unity among neighbors.

This idea inspired Soley Leve to repeat this exercise in 2011, and in 10 different neighborhoods of Cite Soleil, communities organized to put on community
pumpkin soup feast. Friends from Haiti Communitere, Future Generations, and even in other countries chipped in to make the feasts possible, and some even came down to spend the night and eat pumpkin soup in the wee hours of the morning.

This symbolic act was a way of starting out 2012 with people thinking about their neighborhoods as their families, their proud history, and the freedom that that ancestors fought for over 200 years ago.

December is a special time of year in Haiti – a time when people across the country pull together to have their communities look the best they do all year. And with the recent neighborhood rehabilitation efforts going on in Cite Soleil, this is a time for communities to put even a little extra time and energy into making their streets beautiful. There were dozens of trips to get kabi, a whitewash that is an inexpensive way to give the streets a fresh new look; there were organized community initiatives to paint streets and plant trees; there was a volunteer at Haiti Communitere which helped us set up a neighborhood matching fund where if a community bought 2 buckets of paint they could in fact get 4, and other similar initiatives to reinforce and motivate Soley Leve got a brief training about the importance of creating community workplans, and one community went above and beyond with one: Norway, a fishing community on the ocean, decided they wanted to have a Christmas boat race to validate that all of Cite Soleil shares the sea as a resource. They put together their own funds along with contributions of other friends (such as Dave of Disaster Wear), and on Christmas day, newly painted and decorated hand-crafted sailboats launched into the water. In the meantime, a local DJ hosted a party on the wharf, and called in progress on the competition. In first place was a team from Waf Soley, and in last place was a team of volunteers from Haiti Communitere. December was a month of transformation where the true capacity of many neighborhoods across Cite Soleil was able to be seen, and it is the goal of Soley Leve to see that this motivation stays strong during the whole year of 2012, not just in December.

Jean Jacques Dessalines, Haiti’s Founding Father and the person that led the successful slave revolt that gave Haiti independence, was assassinated on the 17th of October, 1805. Since than, the 17th of October has been a time for Haitians to reflect on independence, unity, and Dessaline’s legacy.

It was a lack of unity that killed Dessalines, and so it is a lack of unity that is the cause of many deaths in Cite Soleil from inter-neighborhood battles and fighting. And so the members of Soley Leve decided to take this day as one to demonstrate unity among Soleyas in Dessaline’s memory.

For the week before the anniversary, each block took a turn hosting a konbit to clean their streets and rehabilitate their communities: Ti Haiti had over a hundred people turn out to clean the canal from one end of the community to the other, Bwa Nef had the entire length of their main street cleaned, Norway transformed their public park into a beautiful new space, Kwa Ble tackled their toughest canal, and Brooklyn cleaned every canal and corridor from Soley 11 to Soley 17. Each of these events had music playing from a mobile sound truck assembled by the community and a local DJ Pouchymix, graffiti honoring Dessalines and other Haitian heroes by the local artist Snake, and members of different neighborhoods working side by side.

On the day of December 17th, members of Konbit Soley Leve and the voudou organization of Cite Soleil LIVOCS got up early to put a flower wreath at Dessalines’ memorial in Pon Wouj. Afterwards, the mobile sound truck circled around Cite Soleil, playing patriotic music and motivating all of Cite Soleil’s neighborhoods to come out for a peaceful march in the memory of Haiti’s Founding Father. Hundreds of people assembled in the streets, and walked to Dessaline’s memorial.

Upon arrival at the memorial, two political groups who had arrived beforehand had begun to fight, throwing rocks at each other, and the police were shooting trying to break up the disturbance. Instead of scattering in the panic, the members of Soley Leve stood calmly and peacefully behind their banner, and leaders from Cite Soleil used the microphone and loudspeaker on the truck to calm the crowd, appealing for peace and respect for the memorial site. This is an instance where Cite Soleil brought peace to a scene instead of violence.

After the crowd calmed down, the procession advanced to the memorial, where leaders entered to pay their respects and hang up the banner in the trees behind it. Upon leaving, a leader from the movement took the microphone again and urged everyone to gather for a moment of silence, and to kneel to ask Dessalines’ forgiveness for Haitians’ lack of unity and the fighting which had just taken place. Hundreds of people in the crowd kneeled in silence, and then at once, the marchers rose to their feet and began walking back to Cite Soleil.

The police were so grateful for Soley Leve’s role in calming the violence that they escorted the procession back to Cite Soleil. Just as they crossed over the border, the sound truck ran out of gas, and the crowd together pushed the pickup truck back to its home – this was the final expression of unity in a day whose goal was just that.

Soley Leve partnered with Pax Christi, an organization that works on peace and youth empowerment in Cite Soleil, to celebrate World Peace Day in Cite Soleil, showing that the formerly “most violent place in the Western hemisphere” now is actively working towards building peace.

Hundreds of children involved in Pax Christi’s program “Sakala” and dozens of members of Soley Leve joined together for a march for peace in the afternoon of the 21st, marching through every neighborhood of Cite Soleil with banners about peace. The procession painted rainbows everywhere they went to symbolize the different neighborhoods of Cite Soleil learning to live in peace together.

At the end of the march, everyone gathered in Sakala to watch educational films about World Peace Day and Haitian history. It was an incredible day in which people from every block of Cite Soleil and all parts of the age spectrum got together to reflect on how to build a lasting peace in Cite Soleil.

Nan yon kolabo Site Soley bay lanmen pou selebre anivese lanmo Anpere “Jean Jacques Legrand Dessalines” Papa libete kite tonbe anba 2 grenn je nou lakay nou. “Ochan pou ou anpere”