Free, Educate, and Empower Girls in Haiti

You Are Advancing the Health and Wellbeing of Haiti’s Women and Girls

Thank you for your generous support for Beyond Borders’ Free, Educate, and Empower Girls in Haiti project on GlobalGiving.

Your support is building movements that address key social determinants of the health of women and girls, including violence, exploitation, discrimination, extreme poverty, and limited access to education.

Your generosity fosters the movement to end violence against women by promoting methods that reduce intimate partner violence (IPV) by over half community-wide. This success stems from significant shifts in local norms that balance power between women and men, which leads to a range of other improvements in the wellbeing of women and girls. 

Why We Are Prioritizing Girls

We give special attention to girls because the violence and deprivation they experience have lifelong health repercussions. The biggest threat girls face is a form of labor trafficking called restavèk, which affects nearly one in six girls. BB is playing a leading role in building the movement to end restavèk largely by mobilizing adult survivors of the practice, who receive therapeutic support that offers significant healing from childhood trauma. Your generosity and your solidarity makes all this possible.

With your support BB is also helping build two other complementary movements – the movement for universal access to quality primary education and the movement for economic justice and sustainable livelihoods – which address two other significant determinants of women’s health in Haiti.

All these movements work synergically to dramatically improve the health and wellbeing of marginalized women and girls in Haiti. Our vision is to scale these movements to larger regions of Haiti through new partnerships to a tipping point where they begin to have a national impact. 

Thank you for being part of this movement building effort. 

Your Generosity Empowers Those Most Impacted by Injustice

The most important stakeholders in any movement are those most affected by the problem that the movement aims to address. This is why we prioritize their engagement, even though histories of exclusion can make them initially reluctant.

Effective movements develop broad, diverse bases. We use tools like the Ecological Model to help activists analyze their movement's ecosystem and Open Space to bring stakeholders together across traditional barriers to achieve this. 

Some stakeholders are easily identified—schools, religious groups, cooperatives, women’s groups, etc. Identifying other unaffiliated and less visible demographic groups is more challenging. It took time, for example, for the anti-violence movement to recognize people living with disabilities as crucial stakeholders due to the violence and discrimination they face. 

Seeing Oppressive Groups as Potential and Even Essential Stakeholders

It is also difficult to see oppressive groups as potential and even essential stakeholders. We have seen many former perpetrators of child trafficking become passionate leaders in the movement to end the practice. Additionally, our approach to preventing violence against women relies on fully engaging men who come to understand that everyone benefits when women live without fear. BB also identifies national and international allies, leveraging their expertise to help strengthen movements and more effectively address the key determinants of women’s health.

Thank you for supporting work that empowers the people most impacted by injustice and seeks to convert oppressive groups to allies.

Your Generosity Supports a Multi-Faceted Approach to Empower Women and Girls

To build the movement to prevent violence against women, we began in 2011 by adapting an approach that reduced IPV community-wide in Uganda by more than half. We then developed two complementary models that focus on violence against girls and those living with disabilities. Our approaches produced equally dramatic reductions in IPV even as gang-related insecurity grows.

In 2006 we began building a movement to end a form of child trafficking that disproportionately affects girls. While successfully advocating for legislation that outlawed this practice, enforcement has been lax except in regions where we have helped build the anti-trafficking movement. There we see dramatic reductions in trafficking, large numbers of children being liberated, and survivors finding significant healing from childhood trauma.

Child trafficking is both a consequence and cause of extreme poverty. More than half of the poorest rural households are led by women who are trafficking survivors. We promote the Graduation approach, which equips 97 percent of participating women to develop sustainable livelihoods and free their families from the intergenerational cycle of hunger, homelessness, poor health, and servitude in just two years. We also promote Village Savings and Loans, greatly increasing women’s access to affordable credit. 

Traditional schooling in Haiti relies heavily on violence and shame to manage classrooms, and has abysmal educational outcomes. The movement we launched three decades ago promotes student-centered, nonviolent, native-language instruction, significantly increasing the access girls have to quality education with significantly better outcomes.

None of this work would be possible without the generosity and solidarity of people like you. Thank you for supporting this work.

Your Generosity Supports a Bottom-Up Rather Than a Top-Down Approach

The most disadvantaged women in Haiti face a complex web of interconnected detriments to their mental and physical health. Top-down interventions that address only one or two factors rarely offer sustained improvements because other untreated factors eventually cause a regression to the norm.  

Social movements are better suited to tackle this complexity because they function as complex adaptive systems, evolving dynamically to shift norms, mobilize resources, foster grassroots leadership, and generate broad systemic change. Progress is more sustainable since leadership and intelligence are decentralized and widely dispersed among those most affected. 

BB maximizes its impact by acting as a catalyst for locally-led change. While much of our work relies on local volunteer activism and structures beyond our direct control, this approach ensures greater scalability and sustainability. BB’s Haitian staff are specifically trained in movement-building skills by partners like the Highlander Center and MPP Training Center.

We use a broad range of movement-build tools to promote and assess progress. We have become skilled at identifying approaches in Haiti and abroad that can be adapted to strengthen specific movement outcomes. 

In more than 200 communities and neighborhoods, BB is helping build movements that have dramatically reduced violence against women and girls, significantly lowered the risk of trafficking, enhanced both the quality and access to education for girls, and achieved substantial and lasting improvements in the economic and social wellbeing of the most economically disadvantaged women and their families. These advancements greatly contribute to their current and long-term health.

Thank you for investing in this bottom-up approach to building social movements.

Thank You Again

Thank you again for all that you are making possible through your generous support for Beyond Borders' Free, Educate, and Empower Girls in Haiti project on GlobalGiving. We are deeply grateful for your solidarity in these challenging times.

You are building the movement to prevent violence against women and girls and ensure that every day more girls and women in Haiti are living free from violence, discrimination, and inequality. If you have any questions about what you read in this report, please contact Brian Stevens, Beyond Borders’ Engagement Director, at (305) 450-2561 or b.stevens@beyondborders.net

Links:

• The Lancet: BB Approach Reduces Violence Even as Gangs Grow
• Global Women's Institute: Shifting Power and Reducing Violence
• Visit our website for the latest on our work in Haiti.

500 Haitian Girls Meet Weekly in Girls' Groups, Thanks to You

Every week in southern Haiti nearly 500 girls and their mentors gather at Beyond Borders' Girls' Clubs -- and you make it possible!

That's because your support -- together with a generous grant from the European Union -- is expanding the number of Girls' Clubs in Haiti. In the first six months of this year nearly 500 girls between the ages of 12 and 19 met weekly in a local Girls' Club.

Like you, we believe in the power and potential of girls to change Haiti and our world.

Girls' Clubs are at the center of Beyond Borders' broader community-wide initiative to prevent gender-based violence by balancing power between women and men and girls and boys. 

At Girls' Clubs -- thanks to trained mentors -- girls come to understand that they are equal to boys. Girls find their voice and are encouraged to take leadership roles advocating for equality at home, in school, at church and everywhere in their communities.

That's why creating and launching Girls' Clubs is a key aspect of the strategy designed by Beyond Borders' Rethinking Power team to empower girls.

Thanks to your support, we are continuing to train new Girls' Club mentors -- young women who work tirelessly to empower girls and create a more equal path for them to walk.

Thank you again for your generous support for the movement to prevent violence against women and girls. More girls in Haiti are growing up free from violence and inequality and realizing what a powerful force for positive change they can be, thanks to you.

Building a Violence Prevention Movement that Reaches Thousands

The number and quality of activities conducted by Rethinking Power staff and community network members shows the intensity of community engagement efforts and the continuous desire to learn and improve activities. Significantly, since January, there were more than 2,500 activities conducted by community-based activists, leaders, and drama groups in door-to-door campaigns, community meetings, street theater performances and in informal opportunities within community life.

This led to engagements with 30,000 community members (some of the same community members ideally did participate more than once as part of this number). 

Thank you for making this kind of movement building work possible!

Mobilizing Communities to Continue Moving Through Phases of the SASA! Program

With your generous support, Beyond Borders’ Rethinking Power team is currently planning the assessment to see if communities are ready to transition from Phase 3 (Support) to Phase 4 (Action) of the SASA! program.*

Five monthly meetings were held with different groups in the network (community activists, leaders, Girls’ Group Mentors). Topics were selected based on observations of strengths and weaknesses in regular activities as well as topics of interest to the group; typically meetings included experience sharing from activities in the previous month, planning for the upcoming month, and practice sessions for facilitation of new materials.

*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.

Your Generosity is Supporting Women’s Leadership Meetings

Thirty women network members also met twice in women’s leadership meetings, to discuss leadership, communication, power, understanding our bodies, personal development, and organizational leadership topics such as staff capacity building. Women’s leadership meetings not only support the capacity of women/young women network members to lead activities, but also strengthen leadership and activism skills in those women to support their communities to thrive.

Supporting Access to Community Institutions for People Living with Disabilities

Thanks to your generosity, three community advocacy committees in Lavale continue to actively support accessibility of community institutions to women, girls (and people) with disabilities, as well as to support a communal decree on VAWG prevention. They also continue with some community mobilization activities, which has included support for the two girl-led advocacy committees by the Southeast branch of the human rights organization RNDDH as well as local women’s organizations. One committee (GAPEP) was invited to join a mayoral working group on prevention of VAWG with disabilities. Advocacy committees in the current implementation communities of Lamontay and Benè are expected to be formed in the upcoming Action phase.

Strengthening Four Partner Organizations Working to Prevent VAWG

Your generosity is making it possible to support at least four partners (AFASDA, COSOFH, MPP-Fanm, Locally Haiti/ ASFPN) by reinforcing organizational capacity and creating and fostering community and/or girls’ advocacy committees. These partners are on the front lines of the work to prevent violence against women and girls in their communities.

All four partners (AFASDA, MPP, COSOFH and ASFPN/ Locally Haiti) completed implementation of their respective methodologies – SASA! or Power to Girls and Safe and Capable* – through the Action phase during the reporting period, with only graduation and final evaluation results remaining for two of them. COSOFH and ASFPN held a graduation ceremony for 478 network members (217 COSOFH; 261 ASFPN). Completion of the methodologies was no easy task, involving brokering funding for completion, as well as providing technical and organizational development support. 

Rethinking Power staff worked with all four partners on continued technical capacity building throughout the period, including a two-day advocacy. A three-day exchange visit was held for partners to share experiences and seek solutions to challenges. 

Two site visits were conducted to see activities and connect with and support staff and advocacy committee members. Regular (at least weekly and sometimes daily) distance support around challenging issues in Phase 4 (Action), including Learning and Assessment also took place.

With this support, 18/18 key staff across the four organizations demonstrated sufficient technical capacity (knowledge and skills) for effective use of SASA! or Power to Girls and Safe and Capable before the end of implementation, with nine of these classified as having “excellent” skills by Rethinking Power staff members completing evaluation forms.

11 Violence Prevention Advocacy Committees Created

Eleven VAWG Prevention Advocacy Committees were established by the four partners (3 AFSPN/Locally Haiti; 4 COSOFH; 2 AFASDA; 2 MPP) composed of network members from the communities graduating from SASA! or Power to Girls; these committees are actively engaged in leading ongoing violence prevention and feminist movement building in their respective communities.

During several tailored, multi-day training and accompaniment visits with partners based on a SWOT analysis conducted at baseline, our organizational capacity building consultant reported six staff with sufficient skills who are able to use best practices across the first two domains, ‘results-driven project management’ and ‘financial management and administration’ (3 for Locally Haiti; 3 COSOFH).

Furthermore, 14 staff (9 Locally Haiti; 5 COSOFH) received some training in the last two domains, ‘use of information technology and online communications’ and proposal development/grant-writing and other values-driven fundraising. Documents critical to organizational functioning provided to each include updated legal registration, new/updated financial and procurement procedure manuals and staff manuals, and other critical documents developed will not only encourage/follow best practice but also open doors to effective fundraising.

Thank you for making this kind of investment in partner organizations possible!

*Created by Beyond Borders’ Rethinking Power Team, Power To Girls includes a complete, three-year methodology to integrate lessons on equality and preventing gender-based violence into 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.

Also created by the Rethinking Power Team, ‘Safe and Capable: Haitian Communities Preventing Violence Against Girls and Women with Disabilities’ is designed to change how people see women and girls living with disabilities and to increase their social inclusion and better protect them from violence. Created with funding from the UN Trust Fund/UN Women, the program is being integrated in communities alongside our SASA! and Power to Girls programming. Safe and Capable includes a five-part introductory guide, training curriculum, theater plays, dialogue-based posters, “quick chat” sessions, and learning and evaluation guides.

Additional Advocacy Efforts with 20 Organization in Southeast Haiti

Beyond the four long-term partners, progress was made in a number of areas with overall advocacy and influencing work. For example, the Southeast VAWG Prevention Advocacy Committee that includes 20 organizations and is led by seven organizations throughout the Southeast department met two to three times per month during the reporting period.

Meeting topics included committee structure (coordination, communications focal point, secretary, and membership) as well as a draft collective advocacy agenda. The main advocacy topic the group collectively selected was around internet-facilitated VAWG––a topic of increasing local, national and global importance.

In addition, Rethinking Power staff participated regularly in the UN Cluster meetings on GBV, to keep in touch and advocate for effective prevention during the humanitarian crisis.

What People Are Saying About The Impact of This Work

One of the best ways to convey the impact of the work to prevent violence against women and girls that you are making possible is by sharing with you what community members themselves are saying. 

“I am happy with the work Rethinking Power is doing with the SASA! Together methodology. My mother and father are beginning to live without violence. Before, they didn’t respect one another, there was violence, my mother didn’t want to make my father food, my father used to always make my mother jealous, and there were always insults in the house. The way my mother and  father  used to interact  created a lot of problems for my brothers and sisters and me. We were ashamed in the community because of the way they were. Now, my mother and father live without violence; there are no insults in the home anymore, there is respect, love. They have started to balance their power well. All the things my mother didn’t used to do for my father, she does them now. They no longer insult each other, but they often sit and talk. My mother doesn’t find a reason to be jealous anymore, now there is joy in our family. I am so happy, I do not know how I would thank Rethinking Power for the changes it has helped bring about in my family, and in the lives of my mother and father. - A Young Woman in the community of Lamontay

Thank You Again

Thank you again for all that you are making possible through your generous support for Beyond Borders' ‘Free, Educate, and Empower Girls in Haiti’ project on GlobalGiving. We are deeply grateful for your solidarity in these challenging times.

You are building the movement to prevent violence against women and girls and ensure that every day more girls and women in Haiti are living free from violence, discrimination, and inequality. If you have any questions about what you read in this report, please contact Brian Stevens, Beyond Borders’ Engagement Director, at (305) 450-2561 or b.stevens@beyondborders.net.

Links:

• Visit our website for the latest on our work.
• Like us on Facebook for updates from Haiti!
• Review our 990s and Audited Financial Statements here.