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Kolektif Arcadins, formerly the Sustainable Village and Learning Community, is an integrated community development initiative designed to promote systemic change in Arcahaie and the Arcadins Coast of Haiti.
Kolektif was born through a participatory community visioning process, with local residents and stakeholders sharing their views of local education, health, economic and environmental challenges, priorities and opportunities. With input from 600 local stakeholders, the Bridgespan Group worked with the 12 founding organizations to develop strategic and business plans, prioritizing economic and agricultural development, entrepreneurship (in collaboration with the Haiti Food System Alliance), community health care, education and civic engagement.
>200
Grantees, funding partners, and other stakeholders
ECEFES/EEHE
3 programmatic framework areas
MSN, HFSA,Kolektif DesArcadins
4 Systems Change Initiatives
10
Years
Convening & Network-Building
A master plan for 40 acres Kolektif acquired in Arcahaie calls for a three-phase process of development, capital construction and program implementation by 2029.
The first anchor program for Kolektif focuses on agricultural and economic development in collaboration with the Haiti Food System Alliance. Leveraging national HFSA networks, will create viable livelihood and entrepreneurial opportunities in agriculture and fishing for local residents, including men, women and youth.
Learn more about Kolektif Arcadins
The 15 partner organizations (including the Model School Network, members of Kolektif Arcadins, Health Equity International and Zanmi Lasante) in the Haiti Food Systems Alliance operate across Haiti in three areas:
Learn more about the Haiti Food Systems Alliance
The Model School Network (MSN) is building a powerful change movement for students in Haiti. Launched in 2016, the network enables sustained, cross-sector collaboration, drawing together a range of Haitian and international partners with a shared vision of change and complementary expertise and resources.
The MSN creates model approaches for quality teaching, learning and governance that can be replicated anywhere in Haiti and scales evidence-based solutions through mutual learning, technical assistance and focused advocacy. The result: program sustainability and a culture of shared responsibility for student success and well-being.
3
SchoolNetworks
200
Schools
50K
Students
360
CommittedPartners
Learn more about the Model School Network.
Leadership development and community engagement are embedded in all that we do. Listening to communities and working with local leaders – including youth leadership – are essential in our generational commitment to Haiti.
The Haitian Education and Leadership Program (HELP), based in Port-au-Prince, supports Haitian students, selected for need and merit, as they pursue college degrees and participate in professional development, foreign language classes, leadership training and skill development to make a difference in their communities and country.
Our goal in this campaign is to broaden support for locally led initiatives effectively working toward a strong and equitable future for Haitian children, families and communities.
Pockets of Hope showcases Haitian organizations carrying out transformative initiatives, while we share effective philanthropic practices and advise on ways to develop partnerships with the leaders and organizations that are doing the work.
Our commitment to central and southwest Haiti began with investing in community visioning processes. We brought together local stakeholders with firsthand knowledge to identify opportunities that would bring change and improve the lives of their children, families and communities.
Our grantees are developing leaders of a new Haiti, building local alliances and working with community members for long-term changes to improve access to:
Together, we are:
Welcome to Haiti, the world’s first independent Black republic and the first country in the Americas to end slavery. A land of relentless upheaval, both natural and manmade, and of grim headlines — and also of perseverance, innovation, and a fierce love of nation.
Haiti is where women travel hours to sell at market every day, in every kind of storm, to put their children through school.
It’s the land of exquisite kanaval – a beautiful, artistic explosion of cultural memory and ingenuity, of protests under the hot sun, with songs and declarations saying, “We deserve better!”
It’s the street bands, with grounding rhythms and soaring spirits.
It’s the land of cooperative labor and communal strength, where educators, health care workers, farmers, merchants, mothers, fathers and children refuse to give up, where the roots are so deep and strong that no matter what, the branches will grow. And with hard work and determination, Haiti will get there.
Our grants and community partners:
In Biloxi Public Schools, for example, we funded second-grade teacher assistants, a school nurse and technology upgrades in the elementary schools with the highest poverty rate and growing English language learners communities. These investments helped close the achievement gap between low and high socioeconomic communities – making the schools among the top-ranked in the state while also reducing discipline infractions and student absenteeism.
Teacher retention, a national education issue and statewide investment, is trending higher thanks to investments in a teacher residency program that includes learning supports and mentorship.
We support vocational training in new and green-sector careers, like technology, artificial intelligence (AI), the environment, advanced manufacturing and health care – high-paying industries with increasing demand for highly skilled workers. We also support career pathways that are essential to our community’s infrastructure and the health and well-being of our children and families. This includes water technicians, wastewater operators and environmental compliance specialist jobs.
Lack of dependable transportation and quality child care can present barriers to employment for many working families. So our partners provide wraparound services that go beyond just creating jobs, but also build families’ financial literacy, with an eye toward wealth creation.
We are working with our partners to prioritize equity in early childhood education by:
Because of the advocacy work of our partners, pre-K funding over the past decade increased from $3M to $44M, and now about 58% of the state’s 4-year-olds are in publicly funded pre-K programs.
$3M
$44M
Pre-K Funding
Public Pre-K Enrollment
Our investments also help child care and Head Start programs receive professional support and create quality environments that promote learning and developmental growth. This includes social and emotional programming that promotes a child’s holistic development, helps them build positive relationships and enhances their academic success.
Mississippi’s business community is uniquely invested in early learning, recognizing the impact quality child care has on their current and future workforce. Partners in government, communities, schools and providers complete the collaborative ecosystem for realizing this goal.
The health of babies starts with the health of mothers, which is why we also support families’ access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Mississippi’s agricultural history, marred by labor practices like slavery and sharecropping, still keeps people of color from buying and cultivating land. Yet farmers of color are working cooperatively to provide Mississippi-grown fruits and vegetables to families through farmers’ markets, grocery stores, hospitals and schools.
We support communities of farmers working together to share food-growing knowledge while pooling their resources. Their work ensures consumers can access the food they need to lead healthy lives.
Our partners successfully advocated for Medicaid postpartum extension in 2023, which extended Medicaid coverage from 60 days to one year after birth. They won presumptiveDIGITAL Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women in 2024, which allows women to access immediate care while their application for Medicaid is being considered. Both measures represent critical policy changes that can improve infant and maternal mortality rates.
More than half of the state’s counties are maternity-care deserts, with no OB/GYNs, certified midwives or hospitals providing obstetric care. We are working toward a Mississippi where all mothers can give birth safely.
Our partners successfully advocated for Medicaid postpartum extension in 2023, which extended Medicaid coverage from 60 days to one year after birth. They won presumptive Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women in 2024, which allows women to access immediate care while their application for Medicaid is being considered. Both measures represent critical policy changes that can improve infant and maternal mortality rates.
We make our first investments in Mississippi, supporting pre-med scholarships.
Our grants support curricula and other resources at colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities across the state.
We expand our investments from education to rural health care access, leadership development and job training.
Given the high number of children living in poverty but, more important, the experience and legacy of our local partners, we named Mississippi a priority place, committing investments for at least a generation.
We focus our grantmaking in Jackson, East Biloxi and Sunflower County, while also making state-level investments that can positively impact all Mississippi children. Each of our priority communities face unique challenges that are in need of long-term planning and partnerships:
Many health-promoting resources – like education, transportation and healthy food – are unevenly distributed. That’s why we support efforts that dismantle economic and social obstacles to health, such as poverty and discrimination, so everyone has an opportunity to be healthy.
We maintain a dual focus on reducing health disparities through programs or services, as well as fixing broken systems that don’t work for everyone.
Our funding supports:
Learn more about the social determinants of health.
We’re committed to building a vibrant Battle Creek, anchored by a strong dependable economy and an abundance of opportunities for the future. That means strengthening small businesses and attracting new ones, building a thriving downtown and inspiring more investments and improvements to our city’s infrastructure.
Our grantmaking is:
We invest in a collaborative Battle Creek workforce development ecosystem, ensuring all families, regardless of where they enter the system, have equitable access to stable, high-quality jobs, while removing the barriers that keep people from working.
Our partnerships include:
The future looks bright for Battle Creek kids. Collaborating with Battle Creek Public Schools (BCPS), Kellogg Community College (KCC) and Grand Valley State University (GVSU), we support scholarships to ensure entry into career pathway jobs and a diverse, talented workforce ready to fuel local businesses and our city’s economy.
Opportunities include:
Battle Creek Public Schools has successfully supported 91% of its 2024 high school graduates in pursuing postsecondary education via the Bearcat Advantage and Legacy Scholars programs. Seventy percent of Bearcat Advantage and Legacy Scholars recipients are students of color and 75% of them are first-generation college students.