Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty

The Foundation was created in April 1995 after Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis received the mandate by Karen J. Greenberg, vice-president of programs of the Open Society Institute founded in the 1980s by philanthropist Georges Soros. This network of foundations, projects and partner institutions present over 100 countries is known today as the Open Society Foundations (OSF). Aryeh Neier, then president of the Open Society Institute (OSI), was the first to contact Michèle D. Pierre-Louis in January 1995 in Port-au-Prince. Michèle D. Pierre-Louis was then invited to meet Georges Soros, founder and chairman of OSI, in New York in February 1995 and from that meeting came the decision to entrust her with the creation of a foundation in Haiti. A notarized official mandate was then be communicated to Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis "for the purpose of signing the constitutive act, the statutes and all acts necessary for the constitution of the Foundation knowledge and freedom; To constitute all the values or all the sums necessary for the assignment of this foundation. "

In July 1995, the founder of FOKAL, Michèle D. Pierre-Louis, invited seven volunteers to form the first board of directors; as recommended by the article 4 of FOKAL’s statutes which confers to the founder the power to appoint the members of the first board of directors. Members of the board have the status of volunteers and do not receive any salary. On 14 June 1996, notary Garry Brisson Cassagnol officially transmitted the Statutes of the Fondation Connaissance et Liberté to the Mayor of Port-au-Prince, after their notarial registration according to a mandate granted to Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis. The Statutes were to be transmitted via the Mayor’s office to the Ministery of Interior for final approval and publication in the Official Journal : Le Moniteur. The articles were filed in the presence of the following witnesses: Lorraine C. Mangonès and Evens Toussaint, respectively Deputy Director and Financial Director.On 21 April 1997, the Mayor of Port-au-Prince, Joseph Emmanuel Charlemagne, transmitted to the Minister of the Interior, Jean Joseph Molière, the certificate of registration of the Foundation in the special city ledger of Port- au-Prince. The publication will be made in the January 28,1999 issue, number 8 of the 154th year of the Official Journal Le Moniteur. The following year, FOKAL will receive from the Government of the Republic the declaration of public utility giving it legal personality that will appear in the Moniteur of May 4, 2000, number 35, 155th year.The Article 3 of the Foundation statutes defines the vision of the institution: to promote the necessary structures for the establishment of a just and solidary democratic society concerned with the development of education and the communication of science and culture.