By Brian Stevens | Donor Engagement Director
Your Generous and Thoughtful Support is Creating Lasting Change for Girls
Thank you again for your generous and thoughtful support for Beyond Borders’ Free, Educate, and Empower Girls in Haiti project on Global Giving. We are so grateful!
Your generous support is expanding work to improve access to educational opportunities for girls’ and make schools safer; end child slavery, which disproportionately traps girls; and train and mobilize activists in communities across Haiti to prevent violence against women and girls. Thank you for making this work possible!
You are Making School Safer for Girls Like Selimene
Today, girls in Haiti are more likely to experience sexual violence than to enroll in high school. Your gift is changing this for girls like Selimene though, reducing the risks they face by expanding our Power To Girls programming to reach more schools, more communities, and more girls.
Through your generous gift, you are joining Selimene, girls like her, and Beyond Borders’ Rethinking Power Team in building the movement to prevent violence against women and girls, to balance power between women and men and girls and boys, and to ensure that every girl lives free from violence and inequality. Thank you again!
Power To Girls Puts Girls at the Forefront of the Change Process
Selimene is a senior at a Catholic high school in southern Haiti. She remembers the day when Beyond Borders’ Rethinking Power Team held a meeting for parents about the Power To Girls program.
“At first my parents didn't understand what Rethinking Power and Power To Girls was about,” Selimene said. Then they went to a meeting organized by Beyond Borders and afterwards they said they that I could participate in Power To Girls.”
Power to Girls recognizes schools as institutions with both power over girls’ lives in the here-and-now and the power to shape future social norms in a community.
Beyond Borders created Power To Girls to put girls at the forefront of the change process, and to help boys become key allies.
A Toolkit Designed to Create Deep and Lasting Change in Schools and Communities
To do this, Power To Girls includes a complete, three-year methodology to integrate lessons on equality and preventing gender-based violence in to the school curriculum, including sample lesson plans for social science, biology and language teachers.
Power To Girls also includes a guide to help schools and communities create and support local girls’ groups, and a set of community organizing tools designed to create deep and lasting change among adults too.
By equipping girls and boys and school and civic leaders with the knowledge and skills they need to influence attitudes and behaviors related to girls’ safety and voice, schools and communities can address the root cause of violence against women and girls: gender-power imbalances.
“Once we started using Power To Girls at my school, things started to change.”
“Before Power To Girls came to our school, neither boys nor girls understood how to use their power -- and we girls didn't even think we had any power,” Selimene said. “There was an inequality between girls and boys. Once we started using Power To Girls at my school, things started to change.”
Power To Girls understands that boys have a role to play in the change process too. By actively engaging boys through Power to Girls, they are learning how to balance power with girls and treat them with respect.
“This is how girls can build power,” said Wesley, a classmate of Selimene’s who also takes part in Power To Girls. “The Power To Girls program at school is a good initiative … for all students.”
Thank you again for making the work of Power To Girls possible!
30 Girls and Boys Freed From Slavery and Brought Home by Their Parents
Your support is also making the work to end child slavery, which disproportionately traps girls, possible. Thanks to the community mobilization and intervention work of Child Protection Brigades and Adult Survivors of Child Slavery groups that you help make possible in 16 communities, 30 girls and boys were freed from slavery and situations of abuse and reunited with their families in the past three months. Thank you!
More than 500 Activists Trained to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls
Your gift is also supporting training for activists throughout Haiti who are working to prevent violence against women and girls (VAWG). From April through June, a total of 534 activists received technical support training to engage their fellow community members in conversations to promote balanced power and to prevent VAWG.
On Lagonav Island, five communities – Bouziyèt, Masikren, Fonnèg, Chenkontan, and Gransous – continued their work in the Awareness Phase – the second of the four phase program we use to balance power between women and men known as SASA!*
A total of 420 SASA! activists (215 women) were trained in these five communities. We are now preparing to conduct rapid assessments to gauge these five communities’ readiness to enter the third phase –the Support Phase.
In two additional communities on Lagonav Island – Nan Kafe and Matènwa – Beyond Borders continues to support 114 community activists and network members to conduct VAWG prevention activities as part of the Action Phase – the fourth and final phase of SASA!
Thank you for making the work to prevent violence against women and girls possible!
*Created by our friends at Raising Voices, SASA! (Start, Awareness, Support, Action) is a ground-breaking, internationally-recognized model of community-mobilization to stop violence against women and the spread of HIV. Engaging all actors in the community — women, men, cultural and religious leaders, local officials, police, health-care providers — SASA! fosters critical reflection on gender and power and instigates local-level activism.
Thank You Again!
Thank you again for your generous support for Beyond Borders’ Free, Educate, and Empower Girls in Haiti project on Global Giving. You are building the movement to prevent violence against women and girls in Haiti through your generous and thoughtful support. We are grateful for your generosity, your care, and your concern. If you have any questions about what you read in this report, please feel free to contact Brian Stevens, Beyond Borders Donor Engagement Director, at b.stevens@beyondborders.net or at (305) 450-2561.
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