In July 2007, SODA organized a two-week training seminar attended by teachers from the AVJ and Solino schools as well as more than 40 aspiring teachers from six other Port-au-Prince slums who hope to start their own community-run schools. The focus of the seminar was to impart basic teaching skills and strategies that encourage active student participation as opposed to learning by rote, which is standard practice in most Haitian schools.
Armed with a projector and screen, SODA has created an open-air film festival, showing movies to the public free of charge in the slums of Port-au-Prince. There are only a few movie theatres in the whole city, and most Haitians do not have enough money to buy a ticket or even the means to get to the theater. The films often attract more than 100 people who pack into plazas and dirt streets, children sitting on the ground and adults standing throughout the screening.
Members of SODA have helped reclaim an abandoned orphanage in downtown Port-au-Prince called Lafanmi Selavi, or The Family Is Life. The orphanage was once the biggest in the city, but several years ago it was closed and the building was later looted. Recently, a group of former orphans who had grown up in Lafanmi Selavi, led by members of SODA, occupied the building and re-opened the shelter to street kids. Every day, SODA volunteers give classes to around 20 street children, most of whom sleep on the floor of the facility at night.
