N a Sonje, a Haitian phrase meaning, “we will remember”

is a foundation dedicated to the processes of remembrance

healing, and transformation.

Our Mission:

To contribute to the global healing of collective wounds left by the traumatic historical encounter between the African, Amerindian, and European peoples and their descendants, through a deep remembrance of that history and the ancestral times preceding it.

Our Strategy:

Mother Ayiti (Haiti written in Haitian, the language created by the African people enslaved on the island) offers her history and her present to those searching to learn more of the truth of that history as well as find certain healing along the way. In this way we believe that through personal and intimate experience by respectfully walking, breathing and touching Ayiti’s reality on this very wounded land the agony and aspirations of the people comes alive for those with eyes and hearts to see and feel.

N a Sonje collaborates in hosting groups with a team of local young people from the community of Gwo Jan. This work is centralized in the Foundation’s home community, a mountainous semi-rural area of the Petionville township called Gwo Jan to guide visitors who choose to participate in these immersion experiences together to live the reality of Ayiti so that potential new perspectives and healing may happen in a full circle.

N a Sonje team August 2018  in yellow T-shirts, standing left to right: Diline, Myriam, sitting, Mackencia, Sara. In green T-shirts, standing rt to left Manno, Routson, sitting, Yaya, Dieuny

Beyond the work of connecting Ayiti with visitors, we are committed to join small initiatives for local development in the home community of the Foundation called “Gwo Jan” (a mountainous rural are of the township of Petionville). Some of these local projects have included participating in a small reconstruction project after the earthquake, creating a small women’s micro-credit program, establishing a university scholarship fund for our staff and collaborating in the reconstruction of a community water reservoir.

N a Sonje Foundation also promotes a local youth organization that offers original cultural theater and dance for our groups as well named: GRANEA

Our local strategies involves accumulating a small percentage from the payments of our groups to us thus creating a fund designated specifically for collective needs of the community.