Schools Not Slavery for Rural Haitian Children

Thank you for your generous gift to the Schools Not Slavery initiative. We are grateful!

Your generous, kind, and thoughtful support is helping to build 16 Model Communities in rural Haiti, in which grassroots leaders are building social movements to ensure that:

• every child goes to a good, safe school, with well-trained teachers who encourage creativity, curiosity, and leadership;

• every adult is trained in and committed to protecting every child from slavery and abuse;

• every family can provide for themselves and live in economic security and stability; and,

• every woman and girl lives free from violence and exploitation, in a community that balances power between women and men.

Your support for these social movements in Model Communities on Lagonav Island is making a real difference in the lives of girls like 12-year-old Gardie*. She and her four sisters are in school thanks to your care and concern. “I love school because it taught me how to read and write,” Gardie said. “My favorite subjects are French and Creole.”

Children who don’t get the chance to go to school, either because their parents can’t afford tuition, books, and uniforms, or because the nearest school is too far away, are at far greater risk of being sent away to live with others and becoming trapped in slavery.

Your support for Schools Not Slavery is changing this for Gardie and so many more boys and girls like her, protecting her from slavery, ensuring she can go to a good school, helping her family develop the means to earn a living, and organizing her community to balance power between women and men.

Thank you again for all that you are making possible for vulnerable children like Gardie and their families.

* We've changed her name to protect her privacy.

Building the Movement to End Child Slavery

Your gift to the Schools Not Slavery initiative supports innovative work to challenge social norms and transform prevailing attitudes and behaviors that endanger children. Through extensive training programs, engaged dialogue, and community organizing, hundreds of adults in 16 communities on Lagonav Island are mobilized to become Child Rights Activists who build neighborhood Child Protection Brigades that raise awareness and advocate for the rights of children, intervene to protect children being enslaved and abused, and link children and families to child protection services.

Your generosity is also supporting the expansion of a nationwide network of more than 900 Adult Survivors of Child Slavery, who gather in their communities for peer support, healing and solidarity and to use their voices to advocate for change. These survivors also work to raise awareness among neighbors about the rights of children and intervene to protect children, specifically those being held in child domestic servitude and those in need of protection and family reunification services.

In the first three months of 2019, 26 children were freed, reunited with their families, and enrolled in school, thanks to your generous support and the courage and determination of the Child Protection Brigades and the Adult Survivors of Child Slavery Network.

Building the Movement to Guarantee Universal Access to Quality Primary Education

Walk in to any of the 25 schools in our Schools Not Slavery network on Lagonav Island and you'll see how your gift is supporting the expansion of a nonviolent, native language, participatory approach to classroom management designed to encourage creativity, curiosity, and leadership among students.

In the school year that just ended, more than 3,000 students on Lagonav Island were taught by teachers using this methodology -- a methodology proven to deliver student reading scores that are nearly three times higher than the national average in Haiti.

Thanks to your generous support, Minose and Edzer are two of more than 100 teachers being trained in this approach to classroom management. 

"I always thought that hitting was the only way to control your classroom, even though I was afraid to do it" said Minose, a second-grade teacher. "When I was a student, the teachers hit us, and I was afraid of certain teachers," she said. "But I've come to understand that there's no place for violence in the classroom, thanks to this training."

Edzer, also a second-grade teacher, said that the nonviolent approach to classroom management that he's using has changed the way his students feel about school. "Students aren't afraid to come to school anymore. They like to come to school. They share their thoughts and their dreams now," he said. "In this way, we're forming good citizens for our country's future."

Building the Movement to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls

There's some wonderful news to share: beginning July 1, 2019, Beyond Borders will join with seven other organizations in Haiti to launch the Haitian Coalition for the Prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls.

Thanks to your support for the development of our grassroots, community-based approach to preventing gender-based violence, Beyond Borders and seven other organizations successfully secured a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the NoVo Foundation for this new coalition. The goal is to scale up the work to change social norms around violence against women and girls (VAWG) while also strengthening the capacity of coalition-member organizations to be change-makers in their communities.

The coalition-member organizations will receive funding to implement two groundbreaking efforts to prevent VAWG that your generous support has made possible:

• SASA!, the three-year community-based initiative to prevent VAWG developed by Raising Voices in Uganda and adapted for Haiti by Beyond Borders; and,
• Power To Girls, the school and community-based toolkit created by Beyond Borders to end VAWG in schools and empower girls to help lead the process of balancing power between women and men and girls and boys.

Your generous support makes these kinds of innovative initiatives possible, and further expands the movement to prevent VAWG across Haiti. Thank you!

Building the Movement for Sustainable Livelihoods

Your gift supports a variety of economic initiatives designed to empower the 110 families in Beyond Borders Family Sponsorship Program to lift themselves out of extreme poverty AND ensure that they can provide for themselves long after the 18-month sponsorship ends.

Families work with their life coach to identify and track specific, achievable economic goals like starting a small business, creating their own savings account, and investing in a community-based savings and loan.

Community S&L groups promote solidarity among neighbors and provide each family with a greater measure of economic security, serving as a resource in an emergency or helping families to increase their purchasing power to grow their new businesses.

The economic success and independence that families achieve is a huge boost to their self-confidence -- confidence that will sustain them when they face future challenges and uncertainties.

Through your support, you are giving families a path to a brighter economic future, filled with dignity, hope, and opportunity. Thank you again for your generosity, your care, and your concern.

Thank You Again!

Because of your generosity and solidarity, Beyond Borders sees in these 16 Model Communities, the seed for a new world, a world where people overcome great challenges by learning to question, dream and act together. A world where women and men find more power by balancing power equally. A world where families and communities thrive on foundations of trust and mutual respect. A world where diversity is seen as a sign of strength. A world where all children grow up surrounded by people who love, nurture, and educate them. A world where we all find deeper meaning and shared liberation. Thank you for bringing this world closer to becoming a reality in Haiti.

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

Links:

• Read about our commitment to accountability and transparency.
• Follow us on Facebook for the latest news from Haiti.
• Watch our newest video on Power to Girls in School!

Thank You for Providing Essential Support to Free & Protect Children from Slavery, Guarantee Quality Primary Education, Prevent Violence Against Women & Girls, and Lift Families Out of Poverty

In 16 rural communities on the island of Lagonav, your generous support is advancing the rights of children, by changing social norms about the treatment of children, organizing Child Protection Brigades, and mobilizing communities as part of the movement to end child slavery.

Your support is also advancing the movement to guarantee participatory, nonviolent quality primary education for every girl and boy at 25 schools in all 16 communities.

And in seven Lagonav Island communities, your gift is supporting efforts to build the movement to prevent violence against women and girls and achieve gender equality, making it possible to train and mobilize dozens of volunteer activists in each of these communities.

You are also helping to make it possible to launch the third cohort of our family sponsorship program, in which we are working with 110 ultra-poor families to equip them with the skills they need to earn a dignified living, improve their food security, living conditions, and the welfare of their children.

Together, these initiatives are building slavery-free, violence-free communities for vulnerable children and families. Thank you for making this possible through your generous support!

Family Sponsorship Program: “Life started to take a different path.”

Beth* -- a 15-year-old who lives with her mother, father, and two siblings on Lagonav Island -- is living a new life, thanks to support from people like you who made it possible for Beth’s family to be part of the family sponsorship program.

The family sponsorship program prioritizes the most vulnerable families, those living on the margins, in extreme poverty, forced to beg from others to survive, and isolated from their own community.

“We did not live very well before,” Beth said. “Then my mom started the [family sponsorship] program and we started to see some big changes . . . Life started to take a different path.”

With your support, families in the family sponsorship program like Beth’s select two different assets they can use to generate income, usually livestock like goats, chickens, and pigs, or the goods to start a small business.

Weekly coaching visits train families like Beth’s in how to manage their new assets, and establish a savings account. Families also receive help making basic home repairs, getting access to healthcare so they can stay healthy and keep working, materials to purify their drinking water, and a latrine to better ensure their long-term health.

Families in the program are also required to raise all of their children at home and send all of their children to school.

“They told [my mom] not to send her children away to live with other people . . . don’t let your children miss days at school and to let us go to school each day,” Beth said. “Because my mom always sends me to school, I think this will make things better and life will be different.”

Your generous support for the Schools Not Slavery project on GlobalGiving makes these kinds of transformations possible for Beth and other vulnerable girls and boys, and for vulnerable families like hers too. Thank you!

* We’ve changed her name to protect her privacy.

Ending Child Slavery: Nine Communities Working to Achieve Slavery-Free Status

Your generosity is also supporting work to build the movement to end child slavery. Seven of the 16 communities where the Schools Not Slavery initiative is at work have already achieved slavery-free status. This is in large part thanks to the partnerships formed between schools that are in Beyond Borders’ Schools Not Slavery Network, local Child Rights Activists trained by Beyond Borders and the community Child Protection Brigades that these trained activists organize and launch with support from Beyond Borders. The remaining nine communities are on track to join this group of slavery-free communities, thanks in large part to the partnerships formed by school leadership and teaching staff, grassroots Child Rights Activists -- and your generous commitment to supporting this work. Thank you!

Ensuring Quality Primary Education: Training Teachers in Nonviolent, Native Language Classroom Management

This academic year, thanks to your support, two educators from all 25 schools in Beyond Borders’ Schools Not Slavery network have so far taken part in three day-long trainings at the Matènwa Community Learning Center, our primary education partner on Lagonav Island. Using a train-the-trainer approach, these educators have then taken what they’ve learned and shared it with their fellow teachers. In addition to these off-site trainings, teacher-trainers from Matènwa conduct technical support visits to schools to observe how teachers are implementing what they’ve learned in their classrooms. The trainings and technical support visits are designed to strengthen the capacity of teachers to teach using an approach that encourages student curiosity, creativity, and leadership so that students are prepared to become the next generation of leaders in their communities.

Preventing Violence Against Women & Girls: Training Grassroots Community Leaders in the Latest Tools

Thanks to the support of people like you, members of our team on Lagonav Island just took part in a three-day training from April 2-5, 2019 on how to implement Phase 1 of the Power to Girls methodology to organize communities and schools to prevent violence against women and girls (VAWG) and balance power between women and men and girls and boys. In the training, participants took part in an in-depth, critical review of the content in Power to Girls, which includes how to present Power to Girls to different groups in the community, how to understand and create action plans around key activities in Phase 1, and what results to expect (i.e. - change in knowledge and attitudes) and how to understand and act on those results to further build the movement to prevent VAWG. Power to Girls is making schools and communities safer for girls like Julesa*, a 9-year-old who is enrolled in a school using the methodology. You can read what it’s meant to Julesa and her fellow students here: https://beyondborders.net/julesa-has-learned-an-empowering-lesson/

* We’ve changed her name to protect her privacy.

Thank You Again for Your Generosity!

Your generous support makes this work to build slavery-free, violence-free communities and lift families out of extreme poverty possible. Thank you for your generosity, your care, and your concern. If you have any questions about what you read here, please contact Brian Stevens, Beyond Borders’ Donor Engagement Director, at (305) 450-2561 or b.stevens@beyondborders.net.

Links:

• Read our full organizational profile on GuideStar.
• Follow us on Twitter for the latest on our work in Haiti.
• See how Power to Girls is transforming schools like Julesa's.