FREE THE GIRLS

 

Free The Girls provides economic empowerment through sustainable employment opportunities for women and girls rescued from sex trafficking in developing countries. This is done by helping trafficking survivors set up micro-enterprises in the second-hand clothing markets prevalent in developing countries, wherein the women sell bras donated by women and industry partners in North America and Europe. Free The Girls works with established safe houses and aftercare programs, and provides free job training and an initial inventory of bras to help the women set up their own business. Women purchase additional inventory from Free The Girls and that money is used to cover the in-country costs of storage, import, and transportation. Once a program is launched, it quickly becomes self-sustaining through the sale of inventory. The women work only with other women, so they are insulated from the demographic that exploited them in the past.

Free The Girls seeks funding from FAWCO to create the infrastructure needed to fully support their program expansion into Kenya, Uganda and El Salvador. They currently have one paid part-time position, a strong core of 100 volunteers in the US providing hundreds of hours of time, and considerable pro bono services. Free The Girls requests funding for expansion of inventory storage facilities; modest part-time salaried positions for: Global Director (currently the only paid employee); Volunteer Coordinator to prevent turnover of high-functioning volunteers; National Director for oversight of domestic operation/securement of long-term funding; and International Program Manager for oversight of international operations.

PROJECT DIGNITY

Project Dignity supports the establishment of Medica Liberia, a 100% Liberian-led NGO which provides the women of Liberia with access to trauma sensitive services, ensures women's engagement in the reconstruction of the war torn country and ensures that women's human rights issues are high on the country's political agenda.  Medica mondiale Liberia, will become independent from its long-term partner medical mondiale through this transition and become Medica Liberia. Medica mondiale proudly offers a 20-year track record of cooperation and successful handovers of program leadership to local women (in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Bosnia). They hope to achieve similar results in Liberia by securing funding for this critical phase of transition - the evolution of medica mondiale Liberia to Medica Liberia.

 Project Dignity will ensure that critical services provided by medical mondiale Liberiacontinue by enabling the transition into Medica Liberia: a self-sustaining, 100% Liberian-led women's rights organization. FAWCO funding will be used for: (partial) salaries of key staff - Country director, finance manager, cashier and driver; rent and fuel; training workshops and coaching for new Board members (Board governance, budgets, project planning, team conflict prevention); and training workshop for the creation of overall strategy for the new organization Medica Liberia.

WOMEN'S MICROFINANCE INITIATIVE 

Women's Microfinance Initiative (WMI) is a village level microfinance program that offers loans and business training to rural women in East Africa to start income generating businesses.  Borrowers are organized by village in groups of 20 and cross guarantee each other's loans, creating a responsible atmosphere with a high repayment rate.  After 24 months, successful WMI borrowers graduate to commercial bank loans with favorable terms.  A full loan hub becomes self sustaining after two years as loan income and repayment is sufficient to support all future loans and all program operations.

In 2013, loans were issued to three pilot women's groups in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya as 'sisters' of existing loan hubs.  Due to their success, WMI would use FAWCO funds to turn the pilots into full service loan hubs.  Each full hub supports 16 groups of 20 women, so 3 new fully functioning and independent loan hubs will initially benefit 960 women - each loan impacts at least 10 people (including family, employees, suppliers and customers) meaning 9,600 villagers will benefit in just the first two years, plus the self sustaining loan hub operations can continue indefinitely.