Lakou Lape is a community dedicated to building peace and reconciliation in Haiti. Its members come from a variety of sectors of society including grass roots communities, private sector, social organizations and others.

Programs

Lakou Lapè is working with groups in the neighborhoods of Nan Cocteau, Martissant and Saint Martin / Bel Air. In addition they are training new facilitators to help with our programs and are building a training program that focuses on youth groups.

Lakou Lapè’s strategy is to prepare and seek to empower local groups to take responsibility for conflict transformation in their neighborhoods. Lakou Lapè will multiply its outreach through these groups and serve as a hub for training, meetings and the dissemination of information while still delivering dialogues and mediation services as needed. To that effect it promotes the development of an independent facilitator group, the Institut pour la Recherche et l’Action pour la Paix (IRAP) which specializes in dialogue facilitation, mediation and negotiation. It also prepares and delivers dialogue processes.

Mission

Lakou Lapè builds peaceful communities through the transformation of violence and conflict throughout all levels of society in Haiti.

Vision

Lakou Lapè believes that a more equitable, peaceful and prosperous Haiti will be achieved through the improvement of mutual understanding and human relations built within and across social and economic divisions of the country resulting in an inclusive and just society.

Values

Lakou Lapè is both proactive and responsive in its work as it tackles existing violent conflicts as well as contributes to preventing the emergence or escalation of others.

Our programmatic interventions are based on values of:

-Inclusiveness,
-Practical Effectiveness,
-Knowledge,
-Leadership,
-Flexibility and Creativity,
-Openness,
-Tolerance,
-Impartiality,
-Communication.

Experience

Lakou Lapè is composed of multi-sector actors who have experienced and helped deliver the peace processes enacted in Haiti By Concern Worldwide and the Glencree Center for Peace and Reconciliation from 2006 to 2012.

These processes were successful in rebuilding relationships of trust and collaboration between previously antagonistic communities in Saint Martin and Martissant as well as across the social divide between grass roots communities and members of the Business Class, commonly called Private Sector. Lakou Lapè is now overseeing a similar effort in the neighborhood of Nan Cocteau, Carrefour.