Lakou Pulse
This Month at Lakou
EDITOR'S NOTE
Lakou began as a way to answer a simple question — who is here? This month it started answering a harder one: what is happening, and why does it matter? This is the first issue of Pulse, a monthly record of the Haitian community as we verify, steward, and celebrate it. It is short by design. Everything you read here, we checked. — The Lakou Team
REGISTRY IN NUMBERS
The month, counted
FEATURED STORY
Why Mémoire d'encrier is a Cornerstone
In 2003, in Montréal, the poet Rodney Saint-Éloi founded a publishing house and gave it a name that reads like a vow: Mémoire d'encrier — the memory of the inkwell. Born in Cavaillon, Haiti, and writing from the diaspora, Saint-Éloi built a house that publishes Haitian, Caribbean, African, and Indigenous voices under a single standard he calls the authenticity of voices. Lakou marks a listing as a Cornerstone when its Haitian identity is not incidental but foundational. Mémoire d'encrier qualifies on the strongest anchor there is: its founder is Haitian, and says so plainly. Two decades on, the house has become one of the most important homes for Haitian literature outside Haiti — a place where the community's stories are not just kept, but published, translated, and carried forward. That is exactly the kind of institution a registry of the Haitian world exists to recognize.
RESEARCH INSIGHT
Why some businesses look inactive even when they're thriving
Stewardship this month kept turning up the same surprise. A listing would look dormant — a social feed last touched months ago, no recent posts, no obvious signs of life — and by the ordinary test, you'd mark it closed. Then we'd open the business's actual website, click past the homepage, and find it fully alive: current hours, new work, this season's offerings.
The social feed had gone quiet. The business hadn't.
It happened often enough to become a rule of the house: a silent social account is not evidence a business has closed. Many Haitian businesses — especially owner-run ones — keep their website current because it's where customers actually reach them, and let social media lapse because posting is a second job. If we'd trusted the feed, we'd have quietly erased real, working businesses from the record. Verification is what keeps a directory honest; this month it's what kept people in it.
A question for the community → Have you noticed businesses that look inactive on social media even though their websites are perfectly up to date? What's the most alive small business you almost wrote off?
COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITY
IJDH is hiring a Development Manager
The Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) — the U.S. human-rights nonprofit that has worked since 1994 alongside its Haitian-led sister firm, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), to enforce the rights of Haitians in Haiti and the U.S. — is looking for a Development Manager to lead its fundraising and long-term sustainability. Remote or hybrid (Boston) · Full-time · $70,000–$80,000 · health insurance, four weeks PTO. Spoken Haitian Creole and knowledge of Haitian culture are a plus. Applications by August 17, 2026 get priority. Read the full posting & apply → · questions: hiring@ijdh.org
COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT
FECCANO — the cocoa 4,000 farmers grow
In the Plaine du Nord outside Cap-Haïtien, roughly 4,000 smallholder farmers — about 40% of them women — grow cocoa together as FECCANO, the Fédération des Coopératives Cacaoyères du Nord. Eight cooperatives, one federation, owned by the farmers themselves. Here's what most people don't know: their beans are good enough that Valrhona — the French chocolate house the world's finest pastry kitchens insist on — has sourced from them for a decade, and bottles their harvest as a single-origin bar, Cuvée Haïti. Haiti's contribution to the world isn't measured only by what it exports, but by the excellence others come looking for. This month, Lakou recognizes the four thousand.
ALSO ON LAKOU
Across the Haitian world
Two listings from opposite ends of the same world — one operating inside Haiti, one built in the diaspora — that show the range of what "Haitian-owned" can mean.
Haiti Green Solutions — solar kits and installation bringing dependable power to Haitian homes and businesses, from a Pétion-Ville company with branches in Cap-Haïtien, Jacmel, and Les Cayes; its diaspora program lets you buy from abroad and have it installed for family back home.
Kreyol Essence — Haitian black castor oil and vetiver haircare, co-founded by Yve-Car Momperousse; an agribusiness that has created work for 300+ Haitian farmers and women, and is stocked at ULTA and Whole Foods.
UPCOMING EVENTS
What's happening
One Night Stand: VAYB & Mebel Brun
Art Exhibition at La Cachette du Coin: Dimitri & Eitan Beaulieu
Haitian American Business Summit — 2nd Annual
KLASS XV — Konpa Direk Live & Loud
Plus more through November — see the full calendar →
LOOKING AHEAD
Next month at Lakou
- Welcoming more organizations to the registry, with the same verification standard
- Deepening the 20 thinnest listings that already have real websites
- Recognizing more of the people who've quietly served the community for years
- Opening subscriptions to Pulse — so this arrives for those who want it
Get the next issue.
Lakou Pulse arrives once a month.