About
Atlèt Peyi Dayiti — L’Athlétique d’Haïti — Athletics of Haiti
L’Athlétique d’Haïti is a youth development program that provides underprivileged youth with a safe, clean, supportive environment where they can learn firsthand how the discipline of sports and the structure of teamwork can enhance skills, enrich lives and change futures.
In 1994, Robert (Boby) Duval, a human rights activist and a star Haitian soccer and basketball player in the 1970s, began looking for a soccer club that could offer his son, Guy, a framework of self-discipline, goal-setting and teamwork. Boby also felt it was important that Guy have exposure to people other than the “elites” with whom he lives. After an exhaustive and unsuccessful search, Boby ran across a small residential field where kids where holding soccer practices. Using that field, Boby began training his son and about a dozen kids aged five to 12 on the fundamentals of soccer.
After a year of regular training and practice sessions, Boby started looking for a larger field that could accommodate the growing number of kids begging to join the group. He found a larger space not far away and began expanding his training sessions. It was during this timeframe that he also hired his first full-time coach, who was able to expand the program even more by sharing the coaching responsibilities with Boby. After another year in this location, it became clear to Boby that the need and desire for sports training far outweighed his resources at that location. Again, he went in search of larger space and found near the airport a large field he felt could be viable. Although the field had been a dumping ground for a bottling company and was littered with glass and other trash, Boby was positive the grounds could be cleaned and made useful. After securing permission from the owners, Boby and a team of 15 spent many backbreaking hours picking glass out of the dirt and trying to get some grass to grow. After almost a year, during which practice/training continued at the second field and started at the usable portions of this new location, the program was ready to move in its entirety to the new location, Drouillard.
Boby hadn’t realized selection of this new location would bring about such a large expansion of the program. Because of its location near Cité Soleil, the poorest and most violent slum area of Port-au-Prince, the program in Drouillard received a lot of word-of-mouth discussion as the new place where kids could play safely and without hassle. Since the majority of children in Cité Soleil do not go to school and have no real recreational activities, this resulted in a rapid increase in the number of kids asking to be involved. Boby, who lives his personal commitment to Haiti in his unsalaried devotion to the program, saw the opportunity to make a positive change in the lives of these kids.
Atlèt Peyi Dayiti was born.
Since its inception in 1995, the program has grown to provide sports training, nutrition, medical and educational assistance to more than 1,500 participants each day. The short-term goal is to continue to expand the program to double its current capacity, but the long-term goal is to make physical education and sports the backbone by which kids can have positive healthy lives that make them productive citizens.
Robert Duval
Founder & Director of L’Athlétique d’Haïti
“Duval has turned a patch of dirt on the outskirts of an industrial area into a rare sight here in Haiti’s capital: a wide-open green space with lockers, showers and equipment usually unavailable even in the nation’s biggest athletic club.” - David Gonzalez, The New York Times
You can help the poorest kids in Haiti learn and play:
“$25, $50 or whatever you can afford will make such a difference and help us keep the program going. Thank you so much for your donation” -Boby Duval, President, Fondation L’Athletique D’Haiti
