Girl Power Campaign Hopes to Free More Girls Like Natacha

Spring 2016
“I feel like I’m
alive again!”
Girl Power Campaign
Hopes to Free More Girls
Like Natacha
Port-au-Prince —
E
very bit of 10-year-old Natacha’s body
shook with fear as she pleaded not to
be sent out into the darkened streets of
her Port-au-Prince neighborhood.
It was nearly 11 p.m. and the family
Natacha worked for insisted that she take
the garbage to the neighborhood dump.
The family’s oldest son - as he did
countless times before - violently and
repeatedly kicked Natacha until finally,
grudgingly, she slipped out into the night,
garbage in tow.
“Helping girls like Natacha return
to their families is what Beyond
Borders’ Girl Power campaign is
all about.” — Freda Catheus
Natacha suffered this and even more
unspeakable abuse, said Beyond Borders’
Freda Catheus, at the hands of a family
whose care she had been entrusted to –
but who instead treated her as their slave.
“Helping girls like Natacha return to
their families is what Beyond Borders’ Girl
Power campaign is all about,” Freda said.
With the help of Beyond Borders,
Natacha’s mom brought her home – but
not before Natacha spent six years in
domestic servitude.
You can help bring an end to this
kind of abuse and free more girls like
Natacha by forming a team and joining
Beyond Borders’ Girl Power
campaign.
“We need to raise
$150,000 this spring to
help end the violence and
exploitation girls face and free
and empower them to reach their full
potential,” said David Diggs, Beyond
Borders’ executive director. “We need
teams of caring people to come together
and help us reach our goal.”
Nationwide one in six Haitian girls
between the ages of five and 17 live apart
from their parents and are trapped
in slavery like Natacha, enduring exploitation, social isolation,
neglect and abuse.
“Their days are defined by endless work and humiliation punctuated by bouts of physical, verbal
and sometime sexual abuse,” David
said, as he described the experience of so many girls like Natacha.
“Any perceived failure is
severely punished,” David said.
“When Natacha failed to clean the
toilet to the satisfaction of her
caretakers, they beat her and forced the
toilet brush into her mouth.”
But very few rural parents have any
idea of the grave risk that they’re taking
when they send their children away.
Continued on page 2
Natacha’s
mom brought her
home – but not before Natacha (pictured
above) spent six years trapped in domestic
servitude. You can help free more girls like
Natacha by forming a team and joining
Beyond Borders’ Girl Power campaign.
More than 500
women and men
graduated from
Beyond Borders’
child rights training
last fall. The training
helped Natacha’s
mom bring her home.
This spring, 500 more
adults will graduate
thanks to the support
of generous donors.
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Power to Girls
New Community and School-Based Violence
Prevention Toolkit Ready for Launch
Jacmel —
T
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hree years in the making and packed
with almost 500 pages of newly
created tools and resources, Power to
Girls – Beyond Borders’ community and
school-based violence prevention kit – is
nearly ready for launch.
“Power to Girls is about ensuring that
girls have every opportunity that boys
have: the chance to go to a good school
and to live in a community that loves,
cherishes, protects and values them –
the chance to realize their dreams,”
said David Diggs, Beyond Borders’
executive director.
Beyond Borders is working to raise
the funds needed to launch Power to Girls
in eight communities in southeastern
Haiti this spring.
Meanwhile, interest in Power to Girls
goes beyond Haiti, with an organization
in Tanzania already committed to
employing an English-language version.
“With Power to Girls, Haiti will be
giving the world a tool to decrease
girls’ risk of violence and increase their
freedom,” said Sara Siebert, who provides
technical support to Rethinking Power–
Beyond Borders’ program to prevent
Girl Power Campaign, Continued from page 1
Instead, rural parents like Natacha’s
send children to urban families as a way to
cope with rural poverty and in the oftenvain hope that their children will fare
better in the city.
In fact, when Natacha first learned
she’d be moving from her rural village on
the island of Lagonav to live with a family in Port-au-Prince, she could barely contain
her excitement.
For the first time ever,
she thought, she would
violence against women and girls.
Power to Girls, or Kore Tifi in Creole,
promotes the voices of girls and their
rights through a combination of girlcentered programming rooted in a
community change approach.
Inside Power to Girls teachers and
community leaders will find a complete,
three-year methodology to change
gender-power imbalances in classrooms
and communities.
The toolkit integrates a school violence prevention curriculum into existing
classroom objectives, creates and supports local girls’ groups and includes a set
of community organizing tools designed
to create deep and lasting change.
“The key is equipping girls and
school and community leaders with
the knowledge and skills they need to
influence attitudes and behaviors related
to girls’ safety and voice,” Sara said.
Kore Tifi
Above right, Beyond Borders’ groundbreaking
community and school-based violence prevention kit is ready for launch. Right, posters like
this encourage readers to think about ways they
can empower and support girls and women.
get the chance to go to school. What child
wouldn’t be excited?
But this seeming opportunity – as
presented by Natacha’s father – masked a
danger that Natacha and tens of thousands
of children face every year.
“What parents do not generally know
is that once their children live apart from
them, they have a one in two chance of
becoming enslaved, where they endure
violence and neglect. Enslaved girls are
especially vulnerable, with roughly 60
percent reporting that they endured sexual
violence,” David said.
Natacha finally gained her freedom
after her mother joined a child rights
training program organized by Beyond
Borders in her rural village of Tikoma.
“I love my mother so much,” said
Natacha, who is now 16, back at home
and enrolled in the fifth grade at Heart
of Jesus School.
“When my mom joined the Child Rights
Training and learned what danger I could
be in, she searched and searched and
finally found me and brought me back
home,” Natacha said. “And now I feel like
I’m alive again!”
You and your friends and family can help free more girls when you form a Girl Power team today and help us
meet our goal by May 31. Visit www.GirlPowerHaiti.org to get started.
In Their Own Words
Women Who Mentor Haitian Girls Share
Their Reality
W
hen we first started to create the
Power to Girls community and
school-based toolkit, we interviewed 14
women who mentor girls from a variety
of backgrounds including girls who are in
school and live at home and girls who live
in domestic servitude, or restavèk.
The interviews helped to guide the
themes in Power to Girls and helped to
ensure that the toolkit is grounded in the
realities of Haitian girls.
The following are a few select
quotes from these interviews with
mentors. We have changed their names
How do girls experience violence and abuse
in their families and communities?
“[Even some girls who live at home] go
days without eating, with no money,
unable to go to school, unable to finish
the school year and growing older every
day. Girls suffer more than boys because
when they don’t have money they may
sell themselves to men just to get the
money they need.” — Beatrice, a YWCA
mentor to girls in Port-au-Prince
“A huge problem is girls living in restavèk
don’t go to school, they don’t have time
to even comb their hair, they work all
the time, they sleep in the dining room,
everyone in the house sends them on
50 different errands to buy little things,
everything is a luxury for them. They rape
her and no one says anything to defend
her. I heard one story of a 14-year-old
restavèk girl who became pregnant and
they threw her out of the house. ‘They
should just kill her,’ someone said. All
girls are extremely vulnerable to rape.”
— Stéphanie, a mentor to girls living in restavèk
in a Port-au-Prince suburb
“Girls suffer verbal, physical and
sexual violence right in their own
neighborhoods. I heard one story in
which a mother sent her daughter to
the market to buy something and along
the way a man molested and raped
her. Girls suffer more violence than
boys.”— Roseline, a YWCA mentor to girls in
Port-au-Prince
to protect their anonymity.
Their words present the often-harsh
realities girls in Haiti face, but they also
show how women are developing solutions to empower girls and create a new
reality rooted in
gender equality.
How can parents and community members
support and encourage girls?
“Recognize and understand their concerns
and share your guidance without judgment. For example, I can say, ‘What you’re
doing is good, but here’s something else
that goes with what you’re doing. If you
do this too, here are the benefits you’ll
gain.’ Other guidance you can give is to
say, ‘Don’t judge people based on external
factors. Respect the worth and value of
everyone.’” — Marie, a mother of three young
girls who mentors a network of young girls
“Help her see that she is a person, show
her that she is a valuable member of
society.” — Stéphanie, a mentor to girls living
in restavèk
“A mother can ask her daughter what kind
of career she wants to pursue. She can help
her see that if she wants to have a chance
to realize her dreams, she needs to protect
herself.” — Esther, a mentor to girls in a suburb of Port-au-Prince
“In my family, on Sundays we sit with our girls and we share
guidance and advice, we encourage them to stay positive in their
approach to life and to never think they have to have a man to
provide for them.” — Beatrice, a YWCA mentor to girls in Port-au-Prince
“This is the first time they’ve had a girls club in the neighborhood,
and in our girls group they affirm each other’s value and worth.
Parents tell us that they wish every girl in the neighborhood could
be in the club.” — Johanne, a mentor to girls in Jacmel
“If a girl asks to take part in an activity or club, let her do it. If she
sees someone [learning a skill or trade] that interests her, when
you answer her, do so in a way that she knows you support her.”
— Madeleine, a mentor to girls in a Port-au-Prince suburb
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Proving Our Work
George Washington University To Study
Rethinking Power — BB Program to Prevent
Violence Against Women and Girls
Washington, D.C. —
T
he stakes could not be higher for girls
in Haiti.
Seven in 10 will experience sexual,
physical or emotional abuse by age 18,
and HIV rates of girls are twice that
of boys.
“We have a profound responsibility to
ensure that our programming is effective
at both reducing the rate of violence
against women and girls and balancing
power between women and men,” said
Sara Siebert, who provides technical
support to Beyond Borders’ Rethinking
Power program.
This spring Sara and the Rethinking
Power team will partner with the
Global Women’s Institute (GWI) at
George Washington University to begin
an extensive study on the impact of
Rethinking Power’s work.
“This research opportunity is really
exciting because it gives us a chance
not only to improve our work, but to
contribute to the global movement
what we know about how to effectively
prevent violence against women and
girls,” Sara said.
An internationally recognized leader
in research to advance gender equality and
prevent violence against women and girls,
the GWI will study the effectiveness of the
SASA! methodology used by Rethinking
Power and the new Power to Girls toolkit.
The research will take place over the
next three years in the eight southeastern
Haiti communities where Rethinking
Power works.
A 2015 study in the British medical
journal The Lancet found a 52% drop in
intimate partner violence community-wide
CONNECT WITH US!
in villages in Uganda that use the SASA!
Methodology.
Raising Voices, a Ugandan-based
NGO working to prevent violence against
women and girls, created and launched
SASA!, a Kiswahili word that means ‘now.’
Now GWI researchers will study
Rethinking Power’s work to see if SASA!
can produce similar results in Haiti and
to see what additional impact comes
from adding the Power to Girls toolkit
to the mix.
“By replicating the results of
previous studies we hope to show that
Haitian communities have the power to
create lasting change that will prevent
violence against women and girls and
balance power between women and men,”
Sara said.
Rethinking Power Technical Support Team
Rethinking Power Goes Global
Beyond Borders’ work to end violence against women and girls and promote
gender equality in Haiti has benefited enormously from the global movement to
end violence and inequality against women. And our Rethinking Power team is
contribuing what they are learning in Haiti to the global movement too.
As an example, the core of our work is rooted in methods developed and perfected in Uganda. Rethinking Power adapted those methods and then added Power
to Girls, the community and school-based toolkit that focuses on the reality of
girls. Now people in Tanzania are seeking to replicate Power to Girls in their work.
Australia, Honduras, Italy, Mongolia, the United States, Myanmar, and Belize
are all countries where the Rethinking Power team has shared knowledge, tools
and strategies for success from our work in Haiti.
Every nation and every person has a role to play in the movement to end violence
against women and girls and advance gender equality. So today ask yourself,
‘What can I do to help advance the rights and equality of women and girls in
our world?’
Beyond Borders Haiti
BEYOND BORDERS helps people build movements to liberate themselves from
oppression and isolation. In Haiti and the United States, we are bringing
people together for just and lasting change. We support movements in Haiti to:
End child slavery
Guarantee universal access to education
End violence against women and girls
Replace systems that oppress the poor with systems that
support dignified work and sustainable livelihoods
This is the second time Rethinking
Power and the GWI have collaborated.
In 2015 the GWI and the George
Washington University School of Nursing
partnered with Rethinking Power to
launch the first-ever course on violence
against women and girls for students at
the Haitian National School of Medicine.
The course is now required for all thirdyear medical students.
BB_Haiti
beyondbordershaiti
Board of Directors: Serge Bellegarde, Jayne Engle, Dr. Robert Fatton, Anne Hastings PhD, Britt Lake, Thomas Mulloy, Jody Myrum, Adam Vanfossen,
Aswathi Zachariah
Staff: Michelyne Beaubrun, Marie Solange Beauvil, Freda Catheus, Marie Maude Charles, Adonis Daniel, Guyto Desrosiers, David Diggs, Jean Prosper Elie,
Jonathan Haggard, Coleen Hedglin, Roberts McJirony LeBlanc, Smith Maxime, Emanuela Paul, Jeoaddo Mingo Prochet, Marie Isnise Romelus,
Manasse Rosemond, Sara Siebert, Jean Souffrant, Brian Stevens
Beyond Borders U.S. headquarters is located at: 5016 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20008
Contributions: PO Box 2132, Norristown, PA 19404
Toll-free: 866-424-8403 | Email: mail@BeyondBorders.net | www.BeyondBorders.net
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