WHO WE SERVE

Adolescent girls in Haiti have tremendous talent, capacity, and potential. They also face multiple challenges, including a high mental health burden, school attendance rates between 21 and 34%, and a high proportion of girls who are not in any form of education, employment, or training. These realities, exacerbated by Haiti’s ongoing natural disasters and political turmoil and instability, impede adolescent girls’ ability to build healthy relationships, cultivate their innate, educational, and economic potential, and serve as leaders in their communities.

Lidè programs reach girls ages 11 to 21 who are out of school or significantly behind in age-to-grade, live in rural underserved communities where the majority of the community is living in extreme poverty, have experienced trauma or live in chronic stress, live in situations of domestic labor, have or are currently suffering abuse, are experiencing food insecurity or the effects of malnutrition, and/or have a disability.

WHERE WE WORK

We work in rural communities through the Artibonite region and the South of Haiti. We currently have programs in the following localities: Gilot, Tripo, Souvenance, Mapou, Bayonne, Les Coteaux, and Gonaives. Lidè trains and employs locals within the Haitian communities it serves, and collaborates with grassroots organizations and schools so that programs derive from and meet local needs, strengthen and utilize local capacity, and foster the community support girls need to complete their educational journeys.

OUR IMPACT

Lidè participants are learning to read, getting scholarships to begin, continue, and complete primary and secondary school, building their psychosocial resilience and self-confidence through our arts programming, improving their physical and mental health through counseling and medical services, and strengthening their nutrition through the thousands of meals we serve a year to participants-meals that are often their only source of daily food in an atmosphere of food scarcity. And, we know that our participants are transmitting the skills they are learning to others, particularly siblings and peers.  This dynamic multiplies Lidè’s impact, as capacities developed ripple beyond program participants to diverse members of each community we serve. The infographics below gives a great snapshot of our results over the last few years. Hear from our participants about the impact of our work here.

OUR PROGRAMS

ARTS

Girls in Lidè discover their unique voice through our arts programs, which include creative writing, theater, photography, and dance. These programs are designed to support girls to: foster healthy relationships, appreciate diversity, strengthen their ability to resolve conflict, and cultivate flexible thinking, adaptability, innovation, and hope.

The arts also enable girls to deepen awareness of their emotions, develop a growth mindset, improve their cognition and communication skills, build their ability to problem-solve, and develop a sense of dignity and confidence in their ability to create a better world.

Our arts programs become a gateway into an academic education as well as a means for improving literacy, leadership and critical thinking. And, all our arts activities incorporate values-based themes, such as compassion, service, kindness, and justice, which help adolescent girls explore the life questions that all youth face on a local and global scale.  

EDUCATION

Lidè enables girls to access formal and informal education and learning opportunities, offering over 1,150 primary and secondary school scholarships, tutoring, literacy instruction, computer skills, guidance counseling, vocational scholarships, and a chess program.

Research shows that girls education yields tremendously positive outcomes across multiple domains, including: increased economic growth, reduction of child marriage and domestic violence, healthier mothers and babies, higher education rates for children, improved mental health for girls, reductions in climate change, reductions in terrorism, and increased female leadership in government.

HEALTH

To support girls healthy development, Lidè provides nutrition, health education, counseling, and medical services to our participants. Our team of nurses provide regular health screenings, reproductive health education, and training in first aid and CPR. Lidè also offers mental health supports through individualized psychological counseling to participants in need, support calls to participants and their families. And, our community food program serves hundreds of meals a week to our participants.

PARENT AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Building relationships with participants’ parents and like-minded community organizations is central to our efforts to help build an ecosystem that supports gender equality in the communities where we work and is essential for the success and health of our programs. This means regularly holding spaces for parents, school principals, and community organizations working on child protection to come together and share, learn, and deepen collaboration on behalf of the girls we serve.

Our parent and community engagement work includes home visits, parent education and advocacy, trainings with school principals, and participation in a regional child protection working group.