Free, Educate, and Empower Girls in Haiti

Thank You for Your Generous Support to Free, Educate, and Empower Girls in Haiti!

Your generous support is expanding the use of innovative strategies to prevent violence against women and girls (VAWG) and balance power between women and men and girls and boys, improve girls' access to educational opportunities and make schools safer, and end child slavery, which disproportionally traps girls.

Thank you again for your kind and thoughtful gift!

A Particularly Challenging Moment in Haiti.

You may have heard that this is a particularly challenging time in Haiti. A massive protest movement is demanding the resignation of the president, who has been implicated in a corruption scandal. Much of the country has been paralyzed by protests. 

Our team is feeling a heightened urgency to their work, as the extreme stress of a prolonged and seemingly unending political crisis like this often contributes to a spike in domestic violence, particularly against women and girls. 

I’m proud of my colleagues in Haiti who are doing everything they can to continue our work in this difficult time. They believe deeply in our mission and they are responding to the challenge of this crisis with courage and commitment. Your continued solidarity and generosity strengthens and fortifies them in their work.

You are Making a Difference for Girls Like Abi.

Despite the current crisis, your support is making a difference for girls like 12-year-old Abi. She's in the sixth grade at a school on Lagonav Island that is part of Beyond Borders' Schools Not Slavery network. Thankfully, schools on Lagonav Island like Abi’s have remained open during the current political crisis.

"I love mathematics," Abi told us just last week when we visited her school. “I want to work in a bank when I grow up,” she added.

Your generous support is expanding initiatives to increase access to quality schools for girls like Abi and make schools safer, organize communities to end child slavery, and balance power between women and men and girls and boys too.

The kinds of initiatives that you are making possible include: training for teachers in nonviolent classroom management techniques; support to train and organize Child Protection Brigades and chapters of our Adult Survivors Network; and the continued expansion of Beyond Borders' SASA! and Power To Girls programming, to equip schools, parents, and grassroots leaders with the skills they need to organize their communities to prevent VAWG and empower girls to be at the forefront of the change process.

We’re Growing the Movement to Prevent VAWG -- Thanks to You!

With your generous support, Beyond Borders has delivered short and long-term training and technical support to more than 30 Haitian human rights organizations in the last year and a half on the Power to Girls and SASA! methodologies, and printed SASA! and Power to Girls toolkits and communications resources for use by organizations.

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.

This training is building the capacity of local organizations to organize communities to prevent VAWG, and ensure that women and girls live free from discrimination and inequalty.

Here’s some of what your generous support has made possible in the last year and a half:

1. Short courses -- Five short courses delivered to staff of more than 30 organizations working in the fields of women’s rights and/or human rights, providing 21 days of workshops. Organizations select from various training offerings, including community mobilization, the various phases of SASA! or Power to Girls, or other themes related to preventing VAWG and HIV.
2. Training for long-term technical support partners -- Seven capacity-building workshops delivered over 24 days to five long-term technical support partners in varying stages of acquiring, implementing, and evaluating SASA! in their communities. Workshops supported capacity building in Awareness, Support, and Action Phases, and on advocacy techniques as well as monitoring and evaluation, specifically database management.
3. Ongoing long-term technical support -- Ongoing technical support provided to five long-term technical support partners, including countless coaching phone calls, 16 days of site visits to coach partners and support training of community activists in their communities.
4. Exchange visits -- Four exchange visits facilitated for technical support partners to promote learning and network building. Visits were hosted by Beyond Borders in Jacmel and Lavale, where technical support partners learned about their roles as Local Activism staff by shadowing BB staff in community activities and also sharing experiences and challenges.
5. Communications materials -- Thousands of pages of Power to Girls and SASA! Communications Materials, including toolkits, posters, and Quick Chat tools printed and distributed to technical support partners to facilitate activities in their own communities.
6. New technical support partner prospecting -- Methodologies and technical support programming promoted with a view to recruit prospective technical support partner organizations. BB sought to identify at least four new long-term partners ready to use SASA! or Power to Girls in their own communities. In addition to short courses which serve as targeted publicity for long-term partnership, BB used radio and BB’s Rethinking Power Creole-language website to publicize the opportunity. The team also finalized a video explaining the two methodologies and the technical support opportunities. Additionally, staff travelled to Jérémie and Les Cayes in the south and southwest departments of Haiti to introduce the two methodologies and technical support opportunities to women’s organizations and coalitions.
7. SASA! Faith adaptation for Haiti -- SASA! Faith materials to engage religious leaders in the movement to prevent VAWG were co-created by Trócaire and Raising Voices and co-authored by Beyond Borders’ Sara Siebert in her capacity as a Technical Advisor with Raising Voices. BB began testing sermon guides with Christian religious leaders with a view to revise, adapt and finalize for use in Haiti in coming months.

Thank You Again!

Your continued support and solidarity are building the movement to prevent violence against women and girls and ensure that every day more and more girls in Haiti are growing up free, educated, and empowered. If you have any questions about what you read in this report, please contact Brian Stevens, Beyond Borders’ Donor Engagement Director, at (305) 450-2561 or b.stevens@beyondborders.net. Thank you again!

Links:

• Read our latest 4-Star rating from Charity Navigator
• Learn more about SASA! Faith on the Raising Voices website
• View all of our preventing VAWG communications materials