Konbit Media’s Video Overview of the EkoLakay Service
The Haitian Education & Leadership Program (HELP) is an educational empowerment initiative in Port-au-Prince that provides underprivileged and promising young Haitians scholarships to universities in Haiti. We, at SOIL, truly admire HELP’s program, and are proud beneficiaries of the quality candidates that graduate from it. SOIL and HELP have a long history of working together and four of our current staff members in Cap-Haitien are HELP graduates.
One of HELP’s goals is to empower their students to rise out of poverty and become leaders in their community by providing them with job readiness skills and management training in addition to tuition coverage. To that end, this past September HELP launched Konbit Media, a professional media production house founded by a group of their graduates. Konbit is a professional production house that serves as a hub for creative expression, skill development, and multimedia storytelling. In collaboration with documentarian Jonathan Stack, Konbit produces media for NGOs, artists and other organizations working in Haiti and aims to strengthen and rebuild Haiti by telling the stories of its heroic, everyday citizens; cultivating shared experiences and reinforcing bonds that sustain communities.
Recently, the Konbit Media Group toured the SOIL offices, met with staff members and created this short film highlighting EkoLakay operations and featuring several of our managers.
In the video, Konbit’s filmmakers present an overview of SOIL’s EkoLakay service and, through the voices and information sharing of SOIL staff members, explain how the service works, underlining the importance of improved sanitation access to the health, safety, and dignity of the people of Cap-Haitien.
We love that HELP’s media company got its name from the Haitian Creole word ‘konbit’ which originated as an agricultural term used when an individual farmer’s land becomes too extensive and difficult for one person to reap and sow alone, so they would join with other neighboring farms to create a “konbit” and farm the land together. This spirit of collaboration, creativity, and togetherness underpins the work of the Konbit Media collective, and we are proud to partner with them (and HELP) as we work to achieve our shared dream of a brighter, greener, and more prosperous Haiti in the decades to come.