Foi et Joie
Website
Community Partner
PORT-AU-PRINCE – Haiti 18.54498° N, -72.3356° E
Foi et Joie, or the English translation, “Faith and Joy”, is a Haitian based non-profit organization that is part of the federation “Fe Y Alegria”. The organization is located in Haiti, occupying a small portion of the island of Hispaniola. Their mission focuses on the development of education. Foi et Joie’s purpose is to create access to education, quality education, and develop transformative education so that personal and academic development is produced for the whole person and their communities. Foi Et Joie helps those individuals in impoverished and marginalized communities in Haiti grow on a personal and academic level. The belief holds that “education is the most powerful tool to break the fateful cycle of poverty, inequality, and exclusion” (Magis Americas). Currently, Foi et Joie operates 18 formal schools and vocational training centers for almost 5,000 students.
Challenge
Our main objective was to create a website that would clearly showcase the mission and beliefs of Foi Et Joie. The organization wished to have an online presence that could be viewed from all parts of the world. Streamlining online donations would prove to be tremendously beneficial for Foi et Joie to further their mission. In order for the organization to improve in the area of donations, an accessible website was needed.
Before our team partnered with Foi et Joie, their web presence relied mostly on Social Media rather than through a well trafficked website. As we dove into the project, we created a research question: How can we design a professional website to highlight the mission of Foi et Joie and increase donations?
Strategic Thinking
We conducted a comparative media analysis for inspiration from other branches of the Fe Y Alegria federation. We approached this research by comparing other Fe Y Alegria websites, as well as another similar non-profit organizations that we found to be the best functioning and most appealing (those including Fe Y Alegria Ecuador, Fe Y Alegria El Salvador, and Fe Y Alegria U.S. Projects). As we met in person with our partner, we further solidified and brainstormed our ideas for the website.
Results
By the end of the semester, we provided Foi et Joie Haiti with a personalized Wordpress.com website to include a homepage, an about page to share their story, a partnerships page to showcase their numerous partners, a contact page, and a donation page for visitors to get in touch with and support the organization. As of right now, the pages are templates with placeholder text and images to showcase what a finalized page could look like. In the future, more images, as well as text in four different languages will be included into the site.
Additionally, we provided Foi et Joie Haiti with written documents which include what we have completed thus far and guidelines as to how the content can be edited through the Wordpress platform to add the copy and images that will better fit the aspect ratios of the website.
One of the most important guidelines we created is related to the option to include a multilingual feature for the website. We provided three different options to choose from with details on how each option functions, links to video explanations, demos, and the varying costs to implement the feature as well.
Due to the Coronavirus outbreak that took place in the middle of our semester, our project will have to continue into the next semester. The future group of the Beautiful Social Research Collaborative will be able to pick up where we left off, and further implement the mission of Foi Et Joie into their new website. They will be able to add the multilingual feature, the interactive world map for the homepage, finalize the text and images, and set up the donation page to be able to receive donations.