Dignity for Women! Restoring Hope and a Future. 

I trust this Annual Report will inspire you to continue to be involved with For Her Dignity and share the opportunity with others, as together we reach the most vulnerable women with dignity.

The highlights of the year are found in every beaming face within our community dignity projects. We wanted to share these beautiful moments captured during our 2019 projects, accessible via this URL: https://forherdignity.ihubapp.ca/posts/5857/4

Although the audio is a bit rough between transitions, it is authentic and gives you a glimpse of the "behind the scenes" ... the essence of the “why” we do what we do. Thank you for partnering with us and making what we do possible.

Critical Assessment on our Progress:
GOAL:  Our ambitious goal with the “Dignity For Women” Community Approach was to establish 10 pilots in a year, each one focused on 100 - 200 women per targeted community pilot, broken down further into small groups of 20 women or less per focus group for a total of 1000-2000 women

ACHIEVED:  We reached 460 women in 2019 and we are pleased with this progress, given that 2019 was our first full year of operations and we are still setting up systems and developing contacts.  More importantly, we are working with four diverse population subsets in three countries: Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq. Each community outreach completed five smaller focus groups of 20 - 30 women per session, with several having repeat sessions with the same women 4 - 6 weeks after their first session.  These repeat sessions fulfill our goal of building relationships based on dignity and hope.  

Breakdown of “Dignity for Women” Community Pilots begun in:

Alexandria, Egypt x 2 locations (approx. 100 women)
2 communities of rural women

Cairo, Egypt x 4 locations (approx. 120 women)
2 communities of refugee women, 1 refugee school, 1 women’s conference

Amman, Jordan x 5 locations (approx. 100 women) 
Various groups in urban and rural settlements

Erbil, Iraq x 4 locations (approx. 140 women)
2 refugee camp settlements, 1 Kurdish rural village, 1 secondary girls’ school

Dignity Kit Movement:
Total of 3200 Dignity Kits pre-positioned in Egypt
Total of 2100 Dignity Kits pre-positioned in Jordan, in the process of moving the majority to Iraq
Total of 300 Kits to Iraq & Syria

Challenges Faced:
Establishing a base team that is bilingual in Egypt has been the greatest challenge. It is through this country team that all other pilots will be supported in ongoing measurement and evaluation. Significant momentum was lost over the summer and fall, as one-half of our trained staff and volunteers either moved away, found other jobs, or were not available to help.  We had a great start but we do need at least one strong bilingual teammate who can consistently help in the training, support, and management of our non-English team. When we lost that teammate, the Egypt momentum stalled. However, that situation is about to change as a wonderful bilingual full-time assistant will join us in March 2020.

Over the summer our highly-motivated Jordan partners faced competing interests for their time. The key to success for the community work is strong, on-the-ground relationship-building which was hampered by a fractured focus in Jordan. The silver lining of the Jordan connection was their introducing us to a wonderful community organization in Iraq who is very enthusiastic about the dignity pilots on multiple levels.  Their existing purpose is to reach vulnerable women in areas of health, education, and the environment. I took a brief trip to Iraq in late fall to meet them and in a few short days, accomplished more than in the previous six months.  We are not daunted by the current events that have transpired between Iran and the US – but are praying for wisdom and favor. 

It can be discouraging when obstacles arise to interfere with goals, yet agility is a key part of this work.  The strong, positive feedback from the women who participated in our various community approach pilots constantly affirmed that the education and solutions we offer them are significant, impacting their lives daily and restoring their dignity.

We remain convinced that we are on the right path to bring dignity, hope, and opportunity to the most vulnerable of women living in very restrictive nations and using local women to join us. We have many doors open to serve with community and humanitarian aid organizations and we look forward to growth in 2020.  

Goals and Focus for 2020: 

• To refine the framework and system for successful replication of “Dignity for Women” Community Outreaches, giving people the tools to build on the resources they already have:

• TOT (Trainer of Trainers) Guides in English, Arabic, and Kurdish. 

• Reproducible tool kits with easy on-line shareability and access across social platforms in the Middle East.

• To train local language group facilitators to carry out a community outreach for women with 200 participants within their targeted community. We want to facilitate replication and sustainability.

• To refine our pilot participant evaluation surveys.  We embrace the importance of ongoing research, evaluation, and data. Using the feedback gained, we will constantly fine tune our approach, education, and solutions to ensure that they are culturally acceptable across multiple geographic regions and contexts.

• To establish a safe on-line Arabic community forum to facilitate ‘mother-daughter’ talks about menstruation or light incontinence by removing communication barriers that previously prevented these discussions.

We want to continue the impact and momentum started and reach 2000 women and provide local community leaders an approach and tools that lead to greater sustainability and empowerment.

We are thrilled to be part of this great effort. Thank you so much for helping to make this possible. We are so honored to be your hands extended to bring impact and transformational change to the most vulnerable women.

Rachel Starkey 
International Director, For Her Dignity