Help Haitian Families Rise From Poverty to Dignity

Thank You for Your Generous Support for the Family Graduation Program

We are so grateful for your generous support for families as they complete their journey to escape ultra-poverty for good. 

Your generosity and solidarity and their courage and determination is changing the trajectory of their lives.

In-Depth Evaluations Ensure Families Graduate

To ensure that every family in every cohort of the Family Graduation Program graduates and escapes ultra-poverty for good, the Beyond Borders team conducts an in-depth evaluation in the 12th and 17th months of the 18-month program.

The evaluations measure each family's progress against a set of key metrics designed to gauge a family's economic strength and resiliency. They include things like food security, asset growth, social inclusion, savings, stable housing, and a plan for the future. If a family is found to be lagging behind in any area, their case manager works with them to close the gap and keep them on track for graduation.

Your generous support makes this kind of careful, constant monitoring and evaluation possible, ensuring that the gains that families make are transformative and lasting -- long after they graduate.

By the Numbers: Indicators of Success

Here’s a look at how families in two communities -- Nan Mango and Ti Palmis -- did in recent evaluations:

• 40 Nan Mango (100%) and 52 Ti Palmis families (100%) demonstrated improved food security.
• 40 Nan Mango (100%) and 46 Ti Palmis (88%) families increased their productive assets (i.e.- farm animals, goods to sell).
• 37 Nan Mango (93%) and 38 Ti Palmis (73%) participants now have savings accounts.
• 40 Nan Mango participants (100%) and 52 Ti Palmis participants (100%) reported making at least one new friend during their participation in the program, decreasing their social isolation.
• 40 Nan Mango (100%) and 52 Ti Palmis participants (100%) demonstrated that they had developed a plan for their future, including goals, targets, and timelines.
• 36 Nan Mango (90%) and 46 Ti Palmis participants (88%) participants demonstrated the ability to write their names.

Your generous support makes these successes possible. Thank you again!

A Look at Some of the Activities with Families Your Support Made Possible

The Family Graduation Program includes a variety of activities meant to address the range of challenges that families struggling to escape extreme poverty face. Here’s some of what your support made possible:

• Cash transfer distributions to 52 Ti Palmis families.
• Six days of refresher training to reinforce livelihood skills with Nan Mango families and six days of refresher training with Ti Palmis families.
• Weekly coaching visits to provide one-on-one training and support.
• Construction materials and labor to support 40 Nan Mango families and 52 Ti Palmis to complete construction or renovations of their homes and latrines.
• All participants and their family members received checkups and other home-based and clinic services from the program’s health agent; 96 family members received support to seek healthcare at the hospital.
• Supported the ongoing operation of Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs), through which all Nan Mango and Ti Palmis participants built their savings accounts -- many for the first time.
• Confidence-building training and graduation ceremony with 40 Nan Mango families; planning for both of these for Ti Palmis families is underway.

Keeping Families Healthy is Key to Their Success

Your generosity and solidarity is also keeping families healthy throughout the 18-month program by ensuring that they have access to health care when they need it.

Thanks to you, they can choose from three options for care on Lagonav Island: the main hospital, a health clinic in the remote community of Ti Palmis, and a mobile clinic.

Helping families stay healthy is one of the best ways to support them as they work to earn a living, provide for themselves, and ultimately graduate from the program.

Your gift also supports training in basic hygiene, the construction of a sanitary latrine and the installation of a water filter at home, and most importantly in the age of COVID-19, education on how to stop the spread of the coronavirus. 

A Safe, Dignified Home for Every Family

Everything your support provides to families is life-changing, to be sure, but perhaps nothing more so than the help they get to build a safe, dignified home.

A stable place to call home was never something that these families could count on. In fact, the vast majority of families in the program were either homeless or living in houses that were in dire need of repair when they joined the program.

Now, thanks to you and supporters like you, every one of the 110 families in the current cohort of families will have a safe, dignified home where they can put down roots -- a place of their own -- instead of drifting from place to place or having no place at all to live.

Thank You Again

Your generosity and solidarity with these families has transformed the trajectory of their lives, giving them the opportunity to earn a dignified living and provide for their children and themselves long after they graduate.

If you have any questions about what your support helped make possible, please call or write to me anytime at (305) 450-2561 or b.stevens@beyondborders.net Thank you again for your generosity, your care, and your concern for vulnerable children and families. I am grateful!

Links:

• Meet Genese, who graduated from the program.
• Check us out on Instagram!
• You can see all our work in Haiti on our You Tube page.

You are breaking the cycle of ultra-poverty for the most vulnerable families in Haiti. Thank you! 

Thank you again for your generous support for Beyond Borders' Family Graduation Program. You are helping the most vulnerable among us to escape extreme poverty for good with your care, your concern, and your commitment.

You already know that your generosity is helping families to escape ultra-poverty -- but you may wonder, how and why do families become mired in such extreme poverty in the first place?

Breaking the Cycle of Poverty by Protecting Children from Slavery and Abuse

Preliminary results from research we've done with families in Beyond Borders' Family Graduation Program found a strong correlation between child domestic servitude and ultra-poverty in adulthood.

Thankfully tho', a key component of your generous support is helping impoverished rural families to keep each and every one of their children at home and in school, where they belong -- instead of sending them away to live with others where they risk becoming enslaved.

While our research is still preliminary, the initial results are clear: children who are enslaved in domestic servitude are much more likely to grow up to head families that are trapped in extreme poverty. 

What the Survey Results Show: Two-Thirds of Ultra-Poor Parents Were Enslaved as Children

We surveyed 193 of the 220 families who've already graduated from the program. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of respondents reported that they had lived a meaningful portion of their childhood apart from both their parents. This is disproportionately high given that recent studies indicate that a quarter (25%) of all children aged five through 17 live apart from both parents. Of those who said they'd been sent away to live with others, 78% said they’d experienced exploitation, abuse, and neglect -- sadly a typical experience for children who become trapped in domestic servitude in Haiti.

But the good news is that your support is changing this for the most vulnerable families, ensuring that their children grow up at home, in the safety and security of their own family.

Your support is making it possible for them to begin earning a living, to start saving, to enroll all their children in school, and to have a safe and sturdy home in which to live.

Restoring Dignity, Self-Confidence and Hope for the Future

Vulnerable families often live their lives on the margins of society -- isolated, excluded, and hopeless. They feel as though they have little or no reason to hope for a better future, much less plan for one, so they don’t.

That’s why restoring each family’s sense of dignity and self-confidence, by encouraging their hard work and determination, is a key component of the Family Graduation Program.

With a renewed sense of confidence and dignity, families begin to have hope and make long-term plans for the future, opening the door to genuine and lasting transformation in their lives.

The opportunities that your generosity makes possible for families gives them a reason to hope and teaches them how – sometimes for the very first time – to earn a living, plan for the future, and have confidence in themselves.

The Key Components of the Family Graduation Program that You Make Possible

As a reminder, here are the key components of the Family Graduation Program that your generosity makes possible: Using an approach called The Graduation Model, proven globally to help families lift themselves out of extreme poverty in 18 months, each family receives: assets to earn a living with, for example livestock, or goods to start a small store; training to manage the assets and start a savings account; initial cash support to reduce the need to sell their assets in an emergency; weekly coaching visits to reinforce skills, and build confidence; access to healthcare so they can stay healthy and work; and help repairing their home or building a sturdy new home.

Your Generosity + Their Hard Work = Lasting Change

Families are working very hard to begin earning a living, to start saving, to enroll all their children in school, and to have a dignified place to live, but none of what they've achieved so far would be possible without your generosity and solidarity.

I can never thank you enough for your generous support. The future for some of Haiti’s most vulnerable families is being rebuilt on a foundation of dignity and self-reliance that is filled with opportunity and hope -- and it's all made possible by you.

If you have any questions about what you read in this report, please contact Brian Stevens, Beyond Borders’ Donor Engagement Director at b.stevens@beyondborders.net or (305) 450-2561.

Links:

• See how the Family Graduation Program transforms lives.
• Watch a video about a family earning a living by raising pigs.
• Like us on Facebook for the latest on our work in Haiti.