How a Chance Meeting Sparked a Movement for Change.
What happens when two people from different worlds meet—and decide to reimagine what learning can mean for a nation?
It’s the spring of 1995 at a crowded bus station near Site Solèy. The air hums with vendors’ voices and diesel smoke. Chris is stepping onto a bus just as Abner steps off. A mutual friend introduces them, and in that brief exchange, something begins—though neither can yet see how far the road ahead will take them.
They start working together soon after in an adult literacy program: Abner coordinating classes across Lagonav’s rugged mountains, Chris training teachers and walking mile after mile beside him. With every conversation—about children, language, dignity, and hope—a vision takes shape: What if there were a school where learning belonged to the people?
A year later, in 1996, they find a small plot of land in Matènwa and begin to build it—stone by stone, idea by idea. They name it Lekòl Kominotè Matènwa (LKM), the Matènwa Community Learning Center. It’s not like other schools. Children speak, sing, and write in Haitian Creole—their mother tongue. They learn through gardening, art, and play. They sit in circles, not rows. And slowly, other teachers begin to notice.
By 2010, Chris and Abner see that what’s growing in Matènwa can’t stay on one mountaintop. Chris founds Friends of Matènwa in the U.S. to connect supporters and resources; Abner forms a leadership committee and begins training teachers from ten nearby schools. Their shared dream—education rooted in dignity, language, and community—is spreading.
Then comes the data to prove what they’ve seen all along. MIT linguist Michel DeGraff documents that children at Matènwa are reading up to three times better than peers taught in French. The evidence is undeniable. So in 2015, they launch the Institute of Learning, a place where educators from across Haiti come to see, question, and transform their own classrooms.
Today, more than a hundred schools have embraced the Matènwa model. Thousands of teachers have come to learn its methods—child-centered, nonviolent, rooted in Creole and community. The movement continues to grow, led by those who believe that education should set children free, not hold them back.
And you—by standing with Matènwa—are part of that story. The same spark that began at a bus station now lights classrooms across Haiti. The journey continues, one child, one teacher, one community at a time.