STEM is everyone

Inspiring and mentoring the leaders of tomorrow

Why do you care about Katalís?

Under-representation is a significant issue in STEM, as many of us have never had the chance to see people that look like us in this field. Hopefully, this project can tackle that issue in Montreal before I tackle the world.

What we do

Katalis Goals

Mentorship

Inspire and transmit our passion for STEM to the next generation of young leaders.

Spreading Knowledge

Knowledge is the key to growth. We organize many educational demonstrations wherever it's needed

Diversity

We aim to empower young students to succeed regardless of their background, orientation or gender.

Always Giving

Donating scienceware, textbooks, and money to empower and ensure growth.

Events

We continuously participate in public activities to raise awareness and spread our message

Making a positive change

Our Story

Katalís was dreamed up while our founder was living in Haiti during high school. Melize hated science, as a child, but when she met with a great teacher for Electricity and Magnetism. When she saw how amazing science could be, she thought that everyone should have access to this field, but bad teaching and worldly circumstances tend to wean potential great minds out of the field.


In August 2018, while attending the funeral of her uncle—who was a humanitarian figure—she thought a good way of combating the loss of his service to the country would be getting this project rolling, and so Katalís was born.

Our name was a product of our Vice-President of Fall 2018, Kelly Burchell-Reyes, thinking of ways that we plan on affecting the children we meet. We are going to Haiti to make a positive change and hopefully, expediting their growth as a young professional. Everyone can make an impact on the world; all you need is an agent to start the reaction towards growth. Thus a catalyst tends to be the missing ingredient. Translated into Kreyól, and you have the word Katalís! We aimed to be a little better than your average catalyst though, as they remain unchanged throughout the reaction, and it is our goal to grow as much as the environment around us.

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Our reach

WAYS TO HELP

You can make a change too!

Donate We are always in need of scienceware, textbooks, gadgets and money to ease the load of achieving our goals. If you have something you’d like to donate, please contact president@katalisoutreach.com

DONATE NOW

Become a Sponsor Would you like to be represented at our next event? Does our mission align with your corporate responsibility missions? Katalís is a great place to start tackling your annual mandate. We have many visibility tiers and as a Concordia Student Union recognized organization, we have a wide reach throughout the Concordia community. Please contact haiti@katalisoutreach.com to know where the money will be used and president@katalisoutreach.com to negotiate and solidify your sponsorship details.
Join the Team Would you like to make a difference in CEGEPs? In Montreal? In the world? Then this is the team for you! Regardless of major, though we focus on STEM issues, we are more than happy to integrate anyone into our organization that cares about our cause and wants to work towards the goal of inclusion. Feel free to contact our primary email katalisoutreach@gmail.com stating your interest or area of expertise, may it be mentorship, design, videographer or anything in between and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Current Missions

Teaching the leaders of tomorrow

International Outreach

This is our oldest branch with the initial mission of tackling the lack of STEM education in Haiti. Unless you are of a privileged background, STEM is often not taught within the curriculum of public schools in Haiti. We have partnered with an organization, Here Am I Haiti, that makes education their mission with higher educational standards and meals for students. We will be going annually for as long as this club is intact to teach science, encourage locals with STEM education to continue our efforts in our lapse to eventually get the most enthusiastic minds to University one day with our help. Education is a fundamental human right, and we’d like to be the Katalís for the children.

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Featured

Gonaives, Haiti

Institution Mixte Les Frenes Nau de Bayonnaise

Mixte les Freres Nau is a school located just outside of Gonaives. It was started soon after Elise Cadet and Icy Mae Fredrick began their non-profit in 1988 and as of 2016, is the learning hub for over 800 children from K-12. A dream of Mr. Cadet’s was to incorporate profession-based learning into the classroom, and Katalís fit right in. We get over 100 kids in grades 6-8 inspired about STEM through a week of workshops and leave enough resources to hold them over in our year of absence to ensure positive development and learning.
A donation of a laptop, textbook or anything in between could be what it takes to create the next innovator in social networking, quantum physics or even rocket technology! Give what you can today!

DONATE NOW

Mentorship

The mentorship program started in the Summer of 2019. It is an initiative dedicated to helping high school and college students transition into their next academic step. We aim to inspire and transmit our passion for STEM to the next generation. We want to partner mentors and mentees together based on the mentees’ needs and the mentor’s ability to help them. Our program would involve tutoring the students, guiding them towards their goals, and creating a supportive and welcoming environment.

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Local Outreach

In March 2019, the members of the first international outreach team thought there was some components lacking in the Montreal education scene. Many of the outreach teams targeted children, but of the typical demographic. In a conference of February 2019, it came to light that the amount of minorities in the field of STEM is highly non-representative of the Montreal community and we decided to make it a mission of ours to bring the local STEM community up to date to the national human demographics. As of May 2019, we have started reaching out to sectors of Montreal with a high immigrant / minority demographic to give children role models that resemble themselves.

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Our Team

Celeste-Melize Ferrus

President

Under-representation is a major issue in this field as many of us have never had the chance to see people that look like us in this field. Hopefully, this project can tackle some of that issue in Montreal before I tackle the world.

Rinrada Puntuleng

VP Finance & Local Outreach Member

It all started when my friend from Katalis asked me to help in advertising events in the first year of Katalis. I have learned about Katalis’ main goals in helping and giving the right tools for the underrepresented groups to get more opportunities in pursuing their dream in the STEM field. Therefore I joined Katalis to help the organization expand its network and reach out to more and more people for many years to come.
 

Narimane Branci

Public Relations

The idea of helping people have always been important to me, and being able to help people that are actually in need of our help is even more meaningful and powerful for me! So being able to help numerous people understand and discover everything the STEM field has to offer us, is actually an honour and I’m glad Katalis helps us achieve this goal. 

Walid Berbara

VP Internal

The project seemed very interesting and it ended up being better than my wildest expectations

Arvind Gupta

VP Mentoring

I like the idea of Katalis, being from a rough immigrant background myself I can relate to the numerous difficulties and challenges that face underprivileged students face I have tutored before and I truly enjoyed it, It feels good to make a difference and to help improve the lives of future generations.

Aglaia Ruffino Jalles

Education Coordinator

I believe that universal and accessible education plays an important role in society. It develops social and individual consciousness, promotes social justice and equality, as well as creates new opportunities. So, I joined Katalis to help expand quality educational experiences in STEM, reaching underrepresented groups and communities that don’t have as many opportunities in pursuing their studies in the field and, most importantly, to fascinate them with the beauties of learning.

Full Members List

Special Thanks to

Our Sponsors