Haïti

Location : Port au Prince and Boudette

 

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The program in detail:

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This program in Haiti took place in two stages.

 

First of all, through the “1000 rackets for Haiti” project.

A few weeks after the January 2010 earthquake that killed several hundred thousand people in Haiti, Peace and Sport launched a worldwide collection operation for sports equipment, in order to provide refugee children in camps, and often traumatized, with ways to occupy themselves and perhaps forget their daily lives for a while through fun activities.

 

So it was only natural that SOLIBAD wanted to be associated with this project, by working with the Iranian player Kaveh Mehrabi, ambassador of Peace and Sport.

 

October 2010, the project culminates: a delegation including Kaveh and representatives from Peace and Sport and SOLIBAD arrives in Haiti, their luggage loaded with hundreds of rackets, shuttlecocks, sportswear, badminton nets, etc. collected from all over the world. This visit of a few days also aims to train adults in the basic techniques of badminton so that they can in turn pass on their new knowledge to children in the refugee camps.

 

Since then, thanks to the joint action of Solibad and Peace and Sport, a Haitian Badminton Federation has been created, and has taken over some of the activities in the refugee camps, as we had hoped. The International Federation can thus help Haiti and its brand new federation. We have therefore naturally let the action take place within the framework of the development of badminton, via the "Shuttle Time" action of the International Federation...

 

But we weren't done with this endearing country...

 

One morning in 2018, by pure coincidence, a Haitian badminton coach, also a librarian, came across Solibad's headquarters while he was looking for some rackets at the Bry sur Marne flea market. So he explained his project to us, at home, which seemed obvious to Solibad: in the village of Boudettes, a few years ago, he started to have the children of his village play, who fell in love with the sport, to the point of making it a real badminton "village". Since then, the children have mobilized, trained, and won all the victories in the few competitions played on the island.

 

So we decided to give our new friend a hand with the equipment, which is sorely lacking there - few rackets, sports shoes cost a fortune and more and more young people want to join the "unbeatable" club - because Zaccharie, like any good librarian, teaches culture to all the children, in addition to teaching them smashes and drop shots.

 

Since 2018, we have been sending the equipment we collect during events to Haiti on a very regular basis for a second life. Thanks in particular to service providers who offer us the freight transport costs, this operation is a magnificent environmental and human success.

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