Dear Donor,
Happy new year 2013!
We thank you for your continous support.
Since our previous report our team has been training the 25 widows and 25 orphan about having self esteem and the importance of working in teams for the betterment of a the family. We also thought them growing mushrooms as a income generating project. Growing mushroom does not require a big space of land, yet it produces income to farmers. We are so excited to share with you the pictures showing how some of our mushrooms have well grown up.
Our team is making an amazing impact in the lives of the women in our community. Mutumwinka Thacienne one of our beneficiary gave us a testimonial saying that:" I am 22, and I stopped my secondary school when I was in third year. At that time, my two parents and one big sister had and a car accident and died. That sister was the one who paid for my school fees, as I had no one else to pay it for me I stopped my studies. Since then, my life become so difficult. Although I was smart at school, I was fired as I was not able to pay for my school fees. I used to spend days withought eating, and at night I slept in churches as I had no shelter. Later on, the church guard forbidden me to do so saying that it was not allowed. Then, I started sleeping in bathrooms of some people. As a consequence I was raped and become pregnant. My child was almost dying of cold due to spleeping here and there. I was desesperate and hopeless. Finally, I joined this team. I am learning how to plan for my child's future through the training I receive. I am determined to start selling mushrooms that I grew to famous local restaurents. I am so grateful to people who had this idea of supporting us. Everyone can help for sure. "
Our beneficiaries were impressed to see us their neigbors with little income, helping them! They even were surprised to see how they are able to help each other to overcome their own problems by using encouraging conversations and actions. We are serving fifty (50) beneficiaries. we visit them and follow up on how they apply the skills they got from our training. For those having children with malnutrition diseases we help them with sensitizing them to grow vegetables and we give them mushrooms. The women had an opportunity to share together their challenges and encourage one another in order to successfully overcome them.
We plan to train these people, so that after the six months we can serve another group of widows and orphans with similar problems.
Don't you agree with Thacienne that everyone can help?
Our joined effort can make an impressive impact in the lives of the people in dangers to lose hope.
Once again thank you for your support!
It is with such joy and inspiration that I write to you to share the outcomes of our first Girls Academy for Conscious Change. With your support, Global Grassroots was able to deliver its core conscious leadership and social entrepreneurship curriculum to 70 vulnerable high school girls over November and December. Of these, 57 girls are Komera Scholars, identified by The Komera Project to receive scholarships and ongoing support so that they may complete their education - vital to their ability to advance their lives out of poverty. The remaining 13 girls were extended a special invitation through a recommendation from Partners in Health. Many of our participants are the heads of their child-headed households, some are teenage mothers, and others are HIV+. Yet all were engaged and extremely enthusiastic about becoming change agents to fight issues of importance to them in their communities. The girls have formed six teams and will be working over the next year to advance the following self-designed solutions:
Brave People
18 Team members
Issue: Street Children
Mission: To reduce the number of street children, ages 8-14, by educating them in performances using songs, plays and poems which mobilize these children to leave their street life, so that we can bring them back to school and to their families. We will target them where they sleep at night.
Budget: $572
Invincible
5 Team Members.
Issue: Hunger
Mission: To reduce hunger in Mbarara by increasing productivity by raising domesticated animals that will provide fertilizers, and by training people on how to use fertilizers; so that we can improve the fertility of the soil in our community. We are planning to provide pigs to four families in Mbarara so that they can have fertilizer for their land. We will also train them on watering plants, so that they can improve the productivity, and teach them to use anti-erosion techniques while cultivating. After a year, the offspring of these pigs will be given to 10 more families.
Budget: $241
New Life
17 Members
Issue: Overpopulation
Mission: To fight overpopulation by providing 400 people with trainings on family planning, performing educational plays, songs and poems that show the public the bad effects of overpopulation and mobilizing people to use family planning. Overpopulation is mainly caused by the fact that people don’t use family planning and as a result, they end up by giving birth to children they cannot afford to feed. This brings poverty in that family. These families aren’t able to pay health insurance, and they cannot afford to pay school fees for their children. As a consequence, instead of going to school children become street children or prostitutes, which makes our community less progressive.
Budget: Under development
Hard Workers
9 Members
Issue: Violence Against Women and Girls
Mission: To reduce poverty among women and girls in our community by fighting their lack of self-confidence. We will provide 30 women with trainings about using their assets like embroidering, and waving basket, etc. and train them in doing small income generating projects that do not require a big investment. We believe that women and girls who are poor will not be vulnerable to abusive relationships and cannot turn to bad professions such as prostitution to look for money if they are self-confident and have leaned skills like waving baskets.
Budget: $240
Step Forward
9 Members
Issue: Child Abuse
Mission: To reduce domestic violence faced by children, ages 7-20, by conducting trainings among 300 parents in the villages of Mukoyoyo, so that we can reduce the ignorance of child rights. We want to see children going back to school among those who dropped out of school. Also, for those children who are overworked (which means that children do a lot of work beyond their strength) we want to see that they are no longer overworked, and that children receive health insurance. We want to see that people who abuse children’s rights are punished seriously, and we will be reporting them to local leaders in charge
Budget: $400
Withstand
12 Members
Issue: Lack of day care centers that result in children under age 7 playing on the streets and getting into accidents
Mission: To solve the problem of lack of day care centers by training parents and local leaders about the importance of these centers, and to build and register pre-school aged children in those centers.
Budget: under development
We extend our deepest gratitude for your support which will enable these 70 young women to have a successful experience creating positive change in their communities. We will be monitoring these teams over the next year and will be evaluating the impact of this program on their self-confidence, self-awareness, social-emotional learning, leadership skills, problem-solving capacity, academic performance, trauma healing and engagement with others, as well as their social impact in their communities. We look forward to keeping you updated on their progress and encourage you to continue to support this partnership between Global Grassroots and The Komera Project for the benefit of vulnerable girls becoming self-aware community leaders.
With wishes to you and your families for a happy, healthy and meaningful New Year.
This past year represented a turning point for Global Grassroots in moving from a successful pilot program to a growing organization that is expanding, replicating, scaling and adapting its core curriculum to new audiences while integrating supporting structures and revenue streams to enhance its sustainability. With your support, we have not only continued our commitment to our core Academy for Conscious Change for women change agents in Rwanda, but we have laid the groundwork for our geographical expansion into Northern Uganda, established partnerships for future issue-based investments in women-led water ventures, initiated a new offering for the next generation including high school girls in Rwanda and university women in the US, leveraged technology to disseminate our curriculum globally beginning in Liberia, and broadened our corps of trained practitioners who can help us meet the demand for our work.
In Rwanda, over the last year we have completed the launch of three new social ventures (Kind People, Education for Young Girls and People of Love) and have completed the design of three additional ventures (United People, Perseverance and A Friend Indeed) that are currently in the process of launching. We conducted a small Academy for Conscious Change training program for additional members of two teams (Perseverance and People of the Same Compassion) who had management changes and were no longer led by our graduates, as required for funding. People of the Same Compassion will resume their design work this winter. Our final team of the 8 we have been coaching over the last two years (Handicap Rwandais Reabilite Reintegre dans ses Droits) has continued to revise their program plan and is not yet decided on a strategy to move forward. Because our program is fiercely committed to local leadership, the pace of each team’s progress is driven by its own members. As such, though our incubator is designed to serve teams for 18 months (the average time needed to develop and launch a social venture), we will continue to provide facilitation as long as is necessary for our teams to establish their work. A brief overview of the mission of each of these teams follows:
Kind People is working to educate about the laws protecting the family and the mutual benefits of legal marriage. By promoting women's rights to property through legal marriage, they are advancing equality and reducing oppression and gender-based violence.
Education for Young Girls is working to prevent the harassment of and drop-out rates among 2000 girls during menstruation by building safe latrines at school.
People of Love has constructed a water-access point to provide clean water to a community of 200 families to eliminate the abuse of women associated with water collection.
United People is working on the issue of domestic violence, and will be teaching 210 couples about gender-based violence, family law, reproductive health and family planning, while providing women with income-generating activities, so that they have greater economic power to leave abusive relationships.
Perseverance is working to reduce teenage pregnancy and school-drop out rates among grils by providing educational programs and safe latrines at Mahembe primary school.
A Friend Indeed is working on the issue of teenage pregnancy and the stigma that further marginalizes single mothers and their children. They will address this issue among nearly 700 community members through theater, mentorship programs, public discussions and income generating projects.
People of the Same Compassion is working to eliminate child malnutrition by educating parents and children on cultivating kitchen gardens, cooking nutritious meals and raising chickens for eggs.
Handicap Rwandais Reabilite Reintegre dans ses Droits is preventing discrimination against mothers of disabled children and working to provide specialized care and avenues to reduce economic vulnerability.
Further, this year we established a new partnership with the Komera Project to develop a Girls Academy for Conscious Change. Launched in November, the partnership adapts Global Grassroots proven social venture incubator to serve 70 vulnerable girls who have been selected as Komera Scholars during the 2-month school holiday in November and December. Our young participants are now working on 6 inspiring social ventures of their own design addressing issues such as hunger and child abuse. You can learn more about the Girls Program here: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/girls-academy-for-conscious-change/
Attached, please find a year-end report that provides further detail on our specific progress in meeting our goals for 2012. In summary, this past year we deepened our core programs and took significant steps towards establishing new pilot endeavors that will not only expand our influence and raise our visibility, but also generate resources for our work. Our success is due to your commitment to our programs and your belief in our vision and philosophy. We look forward to a productive year ahead in supporting grassroots, conscious change agents working to benefit vulnerable women and girls. Thank you for your support!
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