Happy Holidays to All of You! As Global Grant Chair for our Rotary District 7170, I recently received this following letter from Carole Coppins - ED for Binghamton's YWCA. She had just returned from Haiti where she met with the Director of the YWCA in Port au Prince. She had hoped to coordinate a district grant directed towards their needs, however because of the time constraint, this won't be feasible. So - Carole is asking that our local clubs consider this appeal individually. The letter follows, and I hope your club and perhaps its individual members might respond generously. Thank you - Lana Rouff
To: YWCA Binghamton, NY -Mrs Carol Coppens
Your Solidarity Is Needed To Help Us Sustain Our Programs
Dear Sister YWCA of Binghamton -
The Young Women's Christian Association Haiti (YWCA Haiti) is proud to be an affiliated member of the global YWCA movement and to have helped empower thousands of young women over the years, gradually transforming the power structures in our society. The YWCA Haiti was founded on November 28th, 2008 and began to actively support girls and young women living in difficult conditions outside the city of Port-au-Prince after the January 12, 2010 earthquake.
Thanks to the generosity of sister organizations worldwide wanting to facilitate the healing process of earthquake survivors, the YWCA Haiti was able to address the enormous problems girls and young women faced. Later, we opened the Youth Center where we provide after school tutoring services and soft skills programming to girls and young women aged 6 to 18 years old. Our Center is considered a safe space, feeding nearly two hundred girls every day who come from the most deprived and marginalized areas of Pétion-Ville.
Through the Leadership Academy program, we have trained approximately two thousand young women aged 19 to 35, who are better equipped to face daily life challenges, make important life choices and be more competitive in the job market. Many of these program participants come from areas such as Cité-Soleil and Martissant that are at the mercy of violent street gangs. They come from these areas where girls live in despair and danger every week determined to learn and to lead positive changes in their lives and their community.
Today the YWCA Haiti is facing a very difficult financial situation. Yearly, around 20 to 25% of our budget relies on our fund-raising activities. Unfortunately, due to the instable financial, economic and political situation in Haiti in 2018, our fund-raising efforts have led to a poor outcome, leaving us with a gap of one-month worth of costs to be able to fully complete our year.
Over the past decade, we have been successful in attracting funding from renowned donors such as USAID, World Bank, International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), American Red Cross (ARC) and Horyzon Switzerland. As we approach our 10th anniversary, however, we are facing a severe financial crisis that puts the continuity of our daily activities in jeopardy. We need the help of our YWCA sisters more than ever to support our programs. While we are doing everything in our power to keep our Youth Center open in December, your solidarity would represent an important step in maintaining our programs, which are essential for the well-being of our girls.
To facilitate donations from anywhere in the world, a GoFundMe page has been created: https://www.gofundme.com/ywca-haiti-fundraising-initiative. Our immediate goal is to raise $10,000 but each contribution counts and will make a difference in the lives of our participants. To know more about the YWCA Haiti and our programs, visit our website: www.ywcahaiti.org.
We thank you in advance for your solidarity, your generosity and sisterhood.
--
Sandrine Kenol Wiener
YWCA Haiti
Program Manager
Board Vice-President
509-3816-0555
Se Ave'm chanjman an komanse
Change starts with me