Diaspora Engagement

Connecting Haitians around the world through events, membership programs, networking opportunities, and cultural initiatives.

About This Program Area

Why Diaspora Engagement Matters

There are more than four million Haitians living outside Haiti. They live in Miami apartments and Montreal snowstorms, in Paris banlieues and Brooklyn brownstones. They send money home, they watch the news with a sinking feeling, and they carry a cultural identity that no passport can erase — but that no institution has ever truly served.

Sons and Daughters of Haiti (SNDhaiti)’s Diaspora Engagement & Reconnection program exists to change that. We create pathways — cultural, financial, physical, and emotional — that connect Haitians in the diaspora with their homeland and with each other. We don’t treat the diaspora as a fundraising base. We treat it as a community with its own needs, its own stories, and its own irreplaceable role in Haiti’s future.

We believe that when the diaspora is deeply engaged — not just as donors but as creators, decision-makers, and cultural ambassadors — Haiti’s path forward becomes faster, more authentic, and more durable. Our projects create the conditions for that engagement to happen.

What We're Working Toward

Objectives

Strengthen diaspora connections

Connect Haitian communities across cities and countries into a coherent, active network that supports one another and acts together.

Build professional networks

Create structured, meaningful pathways for diaspora members — especially second and third generation — to experience Haiti firsthand.

Support collaborative projects

Convert diaspora goodwill, skills, and capital into meaningful support for Haiti's communities, businesses, and cultural institutions.

Amplify Diaspora Voices

Ensure that Haitian diaspora communities have genuine representation in conversations about Haiti's future — at home and internationally.

Preserve Identity Across Generations

Help second and third generation Haitians maintain a living connection to their culture, language, and heritage, not just as nostalgia, but as pride.

Cross-Diaspora Solidarity

Build alliances between the Haitian diaspora and other Caribbean and African diaspora communities around shared cultural and political goals.

Current Initiatives

Projects in This Area

This Unexpected Love: The Wedding

A Haitian musician and his Nigerian fiancée discover that love is the easy part when two proud families start planning one wedding.... Join the Coding...

La Rebelle: Welcome to Miami

After fleeing Haiti with his family, an 18-year-old Haitian immigrant in Miami is pulled into a criminal underworld while desperately trying to bring his girlfriend...

Measuring What Matters

Impact Goals

Increase community engagement

Through La Rebelle and other cultural gatherings, create meaningful, recurring touchpoints for diaspora community members in at least 4 cities per year.

Expand membership

Launch and complete 5 cohorts of the Roots Journey Programme, with at least 50% being second or third generation Haitians who have never visited.

Foster cross-border collaboration

A genuine community, not a mailing list, of Haitians across the diaspora who actively engage with Sons and Daughters of Haiti (SNDhaiti) programming, contribute skills, and participate in decision-making.

Channel $2M in diaspora investment toward Haiti-based projects

Beyond donations, structured investment, professional skills transfer, and business partnership between diaspora entrepreneurs and Haiti-based counterparts.

Produce 5 diaspora-focused documentary stories by 2026

Stories like This Unexpected Love that centre the diaspora experience in its full complexity, screened both in diaspora cities and in Haiti itself.