Fund Emergency Housing for Girls in Barbados

In general, our day-to-day operations for girls were strengthened because of the resources from your support.

While we are still commemorating ten (10) years of achievements, we want to also celebrate you and your contributions over the past year, and share an overview of some key lessons we have learned this year.

These funds raised have helped us to cover a few months of programming delivery, which contributed directly to supporting the needs of some of the most vulnerable among our girls, inclusive of:

• Educational Resourcing
• Basic Day-to-Day Needs
• Food & Hygiene Security
• Capacity Development
• Mental Wellness Support

 This year we have served more than 250+ girls in Barbados alone, with them getting access to:

1. 25+ inter-generational mentors
2. 3 specialty workshops (financial literacy, SMART Goal Setting, investment planning)
3. 30 weekly girls club sessions (leadership, entrepreneurial thinking, self-awareness)
4. Community Give Back Initiatives (feeding programmes, period poverty initiatives for the homeless, food drives for the elderly)
5. National Youth Consultations (advocacy initiatives, national youth dialogues)
6. More than 25+ Educational Small Grants and more than 100+ Food and Hygiene Kits
7. More than 750+ Individual Mental Counselling Sessions 

Challenges:

Someof our core challenges have included:

• Inadequate staffing complement and/or expertise for the amount of programming touch points required to maintain sufficient engagement and support for the girls we serve; i.e. bigger sums of work being spread across a small team.
• The above, in some instances, led to team burn out and fatigue, which meant more support being poured into providing down time and increased mental wellness support.
• There is a very high demand for safe spaces for youth in general, however, with financial limits it means we can only cater to so many girls at any one time. We want to maintain quality and intimacy, while serving as many girls as we can with the resources we attract.

Evaluation and Lessons Learned:

Our evaluation takes different forms, and these three are the most common in our process:

• Needs Assessments – individualised interviews where we assess which solutions work best
• Observation – we observe in sessions and workshop key behaviours and communication
• Reports – periodic surveys completed by girls, volunteers and team members to learn more

Throughout the past year we have learned and been reminded that:

1. We cannot expect girls’ development, education, and growth to be excellent if we are not sustainably focusing on their mental wellness and health first, so our support must be consistent in that regard.
2. We have an unprecedented existence of incest within the region, and besides not having a sex offenders registry, our communities are relatively quiet about these issues, and the impact they have on our girls, which we recognise we must do more to speak up and cultivate leaders in them that they feel liberated to resist themselves.
3. We are adamant that with limited resources we cannot be everything to everyone, but we are learning that for those most in need they get exactly what would make them whole, thus, ensuring that there are no further limits to the support provided.
4. The girls are our guide at every stage, and we mentor to provide feedback that is valid for them.  They tell us just what they need, and we listen.  These are their lived experiences, and no one should intervene on shifting their desires for their own growth.
5. Even with many similarities, girlhood looks different to everyone experiencing it, and many desire to maintain their girlhood as long as possible.  With that we are conscious that the definitions and awareness of safety, abuse, neglect, depression, support, growth, etc. may shift depending on the beneficiary.
6. We need more.  More human capital, especially those more skilled in integral capacities, and more funding to allow for us to truly tackle all the major challenges girls are facing. 
7. Good process and good leadership lead to high value productivity and progress, and we have seen shifts when both are working seamlessly together, not just this year, but over the years.

Future Help Needed:

As usual, your contributions have adds tremendous value to our annual budgets, and puts us in a functional space.  Thank you so much for all that you do, and continue to do. 

While there are still challenges, which we are constantly aiming to overcome, we are aware that our progress and stability may not have been as steady without your support.

As we charge ahead towards another decade of impact for girls within the Caribbean, we welcome your partnership in sharing our results for girls with your colleagues, friends and family, so others know just how much more this community could do with their support.

Thank you again and happy holidays!

Links:

• Learn More About Our Work!