Meet Rolguens: the inspiration behind Katalis

By: Sarah Fuchs, Katalis Executive Director

Haiti's future is bright,

and his name is Rolguens Meristil

Some people are born with a drive and determination that refuses to let life stand between them and their dreams. In Titanyen, Haiti lives just such a person, and he is changing the world around him everyday.

I met Rolguens in the summer of 2014, shortly after he had graduated near the top of his class. He was working as our translator, but his dream was to study to become a civil engineer - a career that would position him to play an active role in the continuing rebuild and development in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010. A little prodding and we (myself along with our Katalis board chairman, Kyle Dietz and his wife Samantha) discovered that Rolguens had been accepted into the civil engineering program, but lacked the tuition to actually attend. Roughly $2,500 USD per year was keeping him from becoming the civil engineer that Haiti needs. In that moment we realized that Rolguens had the potential to impact Haiti in ways we never could, and our greatest investment would be in empowering him. We committed to providing his tuition, and that was the spark.

Rolguens has since earned his degree in Civil Engineering. In the years since we met he not only thrived in his program, but in addition opened Titanyen's first library (pictured above), and started teaching literacy along with English. Rolguens is also the first to help when disaster strikes, which has happened in the form of hurricane after hurricane, and now a pandemic. Through it all Rolguens maintains that drive to build a stronger Haiti, both figuratively and literally. Rolguens is an inspiration in so many ways, and for Katalis he is the beginning of what we hope is an extensive alumni of scholarship recipients dedicated to being the catalysts for sustainable change throughout Haiti.