Community
The Cite Soleil Art Center (CS Art Center) is located within the footprint of Cite Soleil Community School. The school, known affectionately in the community as "CSCS," is an elementary school for grades K-6 each weekday morning, and then in the afternoons the school serves grades 7-13 (there is an extra year of highschool in Haiti). You can learn more about CSCS and watch some videos that will take you inside the school facility by visiting the website of Haiti Allies www.haitiallies.org
CSCS is located in the "Boston" zone of Cite Soleil. Cite Soleil is a shanty town on the outskirts of Port au Prince, Haiti. It is known as one of the tougher and more volatile and severely impoverished areas of Haiti. Unemployment is staggeringly high and the challenges to live with dignity and hope are at times overwhelming, and yet the vast majority of the residents are resilient, dignified, joyful, faithful, hardworking, capable, gifted, and full of hope. Haiti Allies is privileged to be in partnership with this amazing community.
The CS Art Center is a beacon of light in the Boston community, providing employment for parents of the CSCS students, and income to help underwrite the school's operating expenses and the school meal program. Most importantly, one of the primary purposes of the factory is to establish sustainable social enterprises that will help break the school and the community's dependency upon foreign charity for survival.
Haiti Allies, the U.S. based partner of the CS Art Center and the Haiti Creates brand, leads 2 group trips to Haiti annually. Please be in touch with us through our website if you would like to learn more about these trips. Participants on these "Journeys of Mutual Exchange" are privileged to visit this beautiful community and to meet the CSCS students and to see the factory in action first hand.