I have always believed in betterment programs and projects to help a community progress and uplift its residents.  Looking back, my early experiences with community projects and events set the stage for me to gravitate toward building a soccer tournament. My name is Gorbens Mervilus is the founder and president of Haitian Cup. My journey began on February 5^th, 2025. I received a few WhatsApp voices and video from my soccer colleague, Makino Guillaume. He invited my soccer team Inite FC to participate in a scrimmage competition against S.V.S by Emilus Lormil during summer 2025. I expressed to Makino that I didn’t have a problem to participate in his scrimmage competition you are programming but we should focus more on creating our own soccer tournament this summer. We organized scrimmage games every year and to have our own league will be a better for the community. Makino voiced that creating a soccer league is going to be too complex. He talked to a lot of people, they advised him to stay away from making a soccer league, and his objective was to put the scrimmage competition together for the summer.

Every summer, my team mates, and I exchanged ideas about putting a soccer tournament together. My peers always held back from the project and the spirit faded away, then everybody went about their lives. I was trying to stop thinking and walked away from the ideology of building soccer league, but the more I pressed the idea, the more it dominated my thought process. I couldn’t find peace with myself and nothing felt right. I knew that I had to do something, even if things did not workout but at least I knew I tried and my intentions were good. Emilus Lormil believed and supported the vision.

First thing I did was contacted my leadership teammates from Inite FC Board: Chris Pierre, Yves Edouard Desrosiers, and Simson Millard about the project. Based on the conversation I had with my peers regarding the tournament, they knew I was serious. They understood that I would not stop until the project become a reality

Our community has been very quiet, distanced and slowly disconnected. Creating special events like the soccer tournament will help uplift and bring our community together again. I ran the project ideas by some of my closed community leaders: Reginald Charles, Wilfrance Suffrard, Johan Orange and Mackenson Senrelus to get their supports. Within two weeks of February 5th, 2025, I proposed the name of the tournament, “Haitian Cup.” I asked Makino to create a logo for the tournament, a google gmail account and different social media platforms. Johan Orange worked on the donation and sponsorship letter, while I was creating and implement the necessary structures, and documents like Haitian Cup Teams Invitation letter, Registration Forms, Teams Rosters etc…The first Year of the tournament was very successful. We closed the year with Haitian Cup 1^st, Annual Award Ceremony.