Heritage Month Giving: 30 Haitian Nonprofits to Support This May

Every May, Haitian Heritage Month invites us to do more than remember. It invites us to act. Across the diaspora, from Brooklyn to Boston, Miami to Montréal, Paris to Port-au-Prince, May becomes a season of flag raisings, kompa on every corner, gatherings that smell like griyo and pikliz, and conversations about what it means to carry Haiti forward. But heritage is not only what we celebrate. It is also what we sustain.

At Centre NGO, we see heritage and philanthropy as inseparable. Supporting Haitian-led organizations means investing in the spirit of 1804: that our communities can build their own futures with the right resources. This Heritage Month, we urge donors to give intentionally and support Haitian-led, transparent, community-rooted organizations rather than crisis-focused headlines.

The list below highlights 30 nonprofits spanning education, healthcare, arts, advocacy, and community development. Some are major institutions; others are grassroots groups with outsized impact. All share a commitment to Haitian dignity and solutions. Use this as a starting point, a map for effective Heritage Month giving.

Education and Youth Development

1. P4H Global (Partners for Haiti Global). Founded and led by Dr. Bertrhude Albert, P4H Global is a Haitian-led nonprofit dedicated to transforming education across Haiti through locally driven teacher training. Rather than importing short-term solutions, P4H equips Haitian educators with the skills and knowledge to sustain change from inside the classroom. Tens of thousands of teachers have been trained through its programs.

2.LIDE Haiti. Serving more than a thousand adolescent girls each year across the Artibonite and South, LIDE uses creative writing, visual arts, dance, theatre, and artisanal crafts as tools for literacy, leadership, and healing. Its field team is entirely Haitian and overwhelmingly women-led, a model of cultural relevance that too few international programs achieve.

3. Hope for Haiti. For more than three decades, Hope for Haiti has worked across southern Haiti on education, healthcare, clean water, and infrastructure. The organization collaborates with dozens of schools and healthcare facilities, runs mobile clinics, and maintains the Infirmary St. Etienne in Les Cayes. Their discipline on long-term partnerships, not parachute aid, makes them a steady giving target.

4. Haiti On The Rise. A New York–based nonprofit guided by the Haitian proverb men anpil, chay pa lou (“many hands lighten the load”), Haiti On The Rise supports education, construction, and healthcare in communities including Vialet and La Grotte. Their scholarship program now spans primary school through college.

5.Haiti Development Institute (HDI). HDI was born out of post-earthquake recovery work and now invests in local Haitian leaders and organizations through grants, training, and support for civic engagement. Their focus on rural community development, including youth leadership, entrepreneurship, and solar lighting for public safety, models the holistic approach Haiti needs.

6.Haitian Youth and Community Center of Florida (HYCCF). Since 2002, HYCCF has offered early services, after-school programs, parenting classes, and adult literacy to Haitian families in South Florida. It is the steady neighborhood institution that changes communities over generations.

Healthcare

7. Centre Hospitalier de Fontaine Foundation (CHFF). For more than 30 years, CHFF has served Cité-Soleil, one of Haiti’s most under-resourced neighborhoods, through the Centre Hospitalier de Fontaine, the area’s only 24/7 medical facility. Founded by Jose Ulysse and now led by Kareen Ulysse, CHFF embodies the principle of serving where others will not.

8. Haitian Health Foundation (HHF). Based in Jérémie, HHF provides preventive and curative care, maternal health services, emergency transport, nutrition, and education. Ninety-eight percent of its staff are Haitian. The organization has consistently earned Charity Navigator’s highest rating for financial accountability and transparency.

9. Saint Rock Haiti Foundation. Committed to healthcare access and community development in rural Haiti, Saint Rock runs clinics, nutrition programs, and community infrastructure work. The foundation has quietly built one of the most integrated rural health systems in the country.

10. Partners In Health / Zanmi Lasante. The Haitian sister organization of Partners In Health, Zanmi Lasante, operates a network of hospitals and health centers across Haiti’s Central Plateau and beyond. Its model, pairing world-class medicine with community health workers from the neighborhoods they serve, has shaped global health policy far beyond Haiti’s borders.

Mental Health

11. Rebati Sante Mentale. Rebati works to establish a comprehensive, culturally grounded mental health system in Haiti, addressing a country where there is fewer than one psychiatrist or psychologist per 100,000 people. Its training and advocacy work is laying the foundation for a generation of Haitian mental health professionals.

12. CIPUH. A mental health intervention organization in Haiti, CIPUH, is quietly bridging the enormous gap between clinical need and available care. Its work reflects the kind of investment that saves lives long after the news cycle moves on.

13. Haitian American Psychiatric Association (HAPA). HAPA is a national network of Haitian mental health professionals working to spread awareness, reduce stigma, and develop mental health services across Haitian communities in the United States and Haiti. It is one of the most important professional infrastructure organizations in Haitian healthcare.

14. Haitian Mental Health Network. Based in the Boston area, HMH Network is a coalition of Haitian providers, social services, and allies building culturally responsive mental health care across the Haitian diaspora. Their partnership with William James College is training the next generation of culturally competent clinicians.

Women and Girls

15. Haitian Women’s Collective (HWC). Founded in 2017 and now the parent of the first feminist fund in the Caribbean, HWC directs resources, capacity support, and solidarity to women-led Haitian organizations. Their grantmaking has supported safe houses for survivors of gender-based violence, reproductive health clinics, and emergency response during political and natural crises.

16. Haitian Ladies Network (HLN). HLN is one of the largest platforms for Haitian women worldwide, organized around five pillars: wellness and healing, financial well-being, voice and influence, bridging Haiti and its diaspora, and culture and heritage. It is both a sisterhood and a strategy, a rare combination.

17. Fonkoze. Founded in 1994 by Father Joseph Philippe, Fonkoze is Haiti’s largest microfinance institution, with a particular focus on rural women. It combines microloans and savings accounts with financial literacy and health education, a full-stack approach to economic empowerment.

18. REFKAD. A women-led network advancing women’s rights, leadership, and economic empowerment in Haiti. REFKAD is featured in Centre NGO’s nonprofit directory and exemplifies the kind of grassroots, Haitian-led organization that deserves diaspora backing.

Arts, Culture, and Heritage Preservation

19. Sine Nouvèl. A Haitian-led cinema association based in Port-au-Prince, Sine Nouvèl produces Nouvelles Vues Haïti, an international film festival that platforms Haitian cinema alongside work from the Caribbean and beyond. Led by filmmaker Wendy Désert, the organization is also engaged in preserving Haiti’s audiovisual heritage, a form of cultural memory that is disappearing faster than almost any other. Investing in Haitian film is investing in who gets to tell our stories.

20.Haitian American Art & Health Network (HAAHN). HAAHN bridges Haitian American cultural expression with community health, using art as a vehicle for empowerment and well-being. It reflects a truth our elders have always known: culture is medicine.

21. Bohio Ayiti. Taking its name from the Taíno word bohio, meaning “home,” this Paris-based association is dedicated to protecting, studying, and elevating Haiti’s natural, historical, cultural, and artistic heritage. Its work spans architectural preservation, support for Haitian artists and artisans, safeguarding of oral traditions and ritual practices, and environmental initiatives, including reforestation and mangrove restoration. The guiding philosophy, “Ensemble, changeons l’image d’Haïti, en choisissant la beauté,” is itself a form of cultural resistance.

22. FOKAL (Fondasyon Konesans ak Libète). Founded in 1995, FOKAL is a leading Haitian foundation investing in education, civic engagement, smallholder farming, and cultural enrichment. It supports grassroots women’s organizations and ethical local enterprises, the first responders of Haitian resilience.

Advocacy, Immigration, and Diaspora Services

23. Haitian Bridge Alliance. A 501(c)(3) advocating for fair and humane immigration policies while connecting migrants with legal, humanitarian, and social services. Their focus on Black migrants, Haitian communities, women, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and survivors of torture makes them one of the most important advocacy organizations in the country.

24. Haitian-Americans United for Progress (HAUP). Founded in 1975 in Queens, HAUP provides immigration and resettlement services, ESL classes, maternal and infant health programs, and youth services. A multi-generational institution that has quietly shaped Haitian-American life in New York for half a century.

25. Diaspora Community Services. Based in Brooklyn and founded by Haitian Americans in the 1980s, Diaspora Community Services provides healthcare, youth development, HIV prevention, and support for asylum seekers, migrants, and undocumented community members. It also serves as a fiscal sponsor for mission-aligned Haitian initiatives.

26.Sant La Haitian Neighborhood Center. A cornerstone of South Florida’s Haitian community, Sant La offers capacity-building support for fellow nonprofits, runs a Creole-language TV show, and convenes community forums that connect residents to decision-making. Infrastructure for a diaspora that is too often discussed rather than engaged with.

27. Haitian-American Foundation for Democracy (HAFFD). HAFFD engages the Haitian-American diaspora in policy advocacy around democracy, human rights, economic development, and inclusion. Its board combines decades of leadership across public policy, media, health, and law, precisely the kind of cross-sector convening the diaspora needs in this moment.

Environment, Economic Development, and Strategic Philanthropy

28. SOIL Haiti. Since 2006, SOIL has been expanding access to safe, affordable, ecological sanitation in some of Haiti’s most underserved communities, turning human waste into compost that restores farmland. Over 90% of SOIL’s staff are local to the neighborhoods they serve. It is a blueprint for the circular economy Haiti deserves.

29. Ayiti Community Trust (ACT). Haiti’s first and only community foundation, ACT, uses an endowment model that pools resources from Haiti, the diaspora, and global allies to make long-term grants to grassroots organizations. Its focus areas, civic education, environmental sustainability, and entrepreneurship, are the pillars of self-determined development.

30. La Famille Foundation. Featured in Centre NGO’s directory, La Famille Foundation works to build sustainability in at-risk communities by investing in families as the foundational unit of change. Its vision of autonomous, self-reliant communities is precisely the kind of structural thinking Haiti’s future requires.

How to Make Your Heritage Month Giving Count

The question of where to give is inseparable from the question of how. A few principles worth carrying into May and beyond:

Give to Haitian-led organizations first. Research consistently shows that only a small percentage of international aid reaches local Haitian organizations directly. Your giving can correct that imbalance. Haitian-led organizations understand the communities they serve in ways international intermediaries rarely do.

Choose sustained over reactive. A monthly recurring gift of $25 is often more valuable to a grassroots organization than a one-time $300 gift during a crisis cycle. Sustained giving allows leaders to plan, hire, and build infrastructure rather than chase the news.

Think beyond the dollar. Many of the organizations above also need skills, grant writing, legal support, communications, design, and evaluation. If you are a diaspora professional, your pro bono hours may be more transformative than a donation.

Ask, then listen. The most respectful donors approach Haitian organizations not as rescuers but as partners. Ask what the organization actually needs. Read their reports. Honor their stated priorities, not your assumptions about what the work requires.

Closing the Loop

Haitian Heritage Month began as recognition of what our ancestors built against impossible odds. It continues as an invitation to build in their tradition, deliberately, collectively, and with clear eyes about both the challenges and the capacity of our people.

At Centre NGO, our nonprofit directory exists precisely to make this kind of intentional giving easier. The 30 organizations highlighted above are a starting point. Our directory contains more, and we invite every donor, partner, and advocate reading this to explore, connect, and contribute.

Heritage Month is 31 days. The work is 365. Let this May be the beginning of a giving practice that lives past the flag raisings and into the long, patient labor of building Haiti forward.

To explore more Haitian and diaspora-serving nonprofits, view our nonprofit directory.