Update on Selected Grantees Approved in April 09 (UK) Cycle

Lua Nova, Sao Paulo state, Brazil ($27,500 grant)
This grant is to Lua Nova, a community-based organization that supports pregnant and parenting adolescents and young adults in Sorocaba, in southeastern Brazil. Most of the young women Lua Nova works with dropped out of school at an early age, and many have spent time living and working on the streets. Lua Nova provides a safe space for them to live, grow, learn, and begin to earn their own incomes. EMpower's grant (our second to Lua Nova) is supporting a pilot project to equip a group of young women to become independent entrepreneurs. The following quotes are from four young women currently participating in the project:   

“At the beginning, I thought the training would be boring. But participating in this project changed my attitude. This is a space for learning, reflection, analysis, and exchange."
- Ester

“This project is a very important opportunity that's allowed us to learn more, and to dream about how to become entrepreneurs running healthy, successful businesses.”
- Pamela

Hoops 4 Hope, Western Cape, South Africa ($44,000)
Through its life skills/sports program, H4H is providing basic tools that young people need to face the many challenges of growing up in communities plagued with poverty, crime, and HIV. At midterm, H4H is using EMpower support for H4H youth coaches’ stipends and on an overhaul of their monitoring and evaluation system. Over the next six months, it will implement this plan to improve how it measures its impact, while at the same time improving key elements of its HIV education and life skills program.

Ikamva Youth, Western Cape and Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa ($29,000)
Ikamva Youth has used their EMpower grant to provide supplementary tutoring, career guidance and mentoring, HIV testing and awareness, school holiday programs to under-served youth living in townships in Kwa Zulu Natal and Cape Town, as well as support program management. The results of all this hard work will be available when students receive their exam scores in early 2010. 2008 exam results arrived later than expected due to the implementation of a new government curriculum. We are pleased to report that in 2008, 75% of students in Kwa Zulu Natal passed and 90% in Western Cape (compared with a 62.5% nationally).

Jabala Action Research Organisation, Kolkata, India ($29,000)
To date, 50 young women survivors of violence and/or trafficking have received basic formal education and literacy training, as well as training in market oriented vocational skills (such as catering, retail sales, and silk-screen printing). Of these, 27 have already been placed in positions where they can start earning money from their skills.

Navsarjan Trust/Dalit Shakti Kendra, Uttar Pradesh, India ($23,000)
The Dalit Shakti Kendra vocational training center has provided training opportunities in vocational skills to 705 students—423 males and 282 females since April 1, 2009. 117 women enrolled in the most recent session, which began on December 1. Since April, 314 women received toolkits (basic supplies need for particular training courses, such as fabric, needle and thread for the tailoring course) to help them advance in their training. Furthermore, 44 female students enrolled in courses for skills traditionally conceived of as ‘male’: furniture making; photography; policing; electrical work; mobile phone repair; driving; and motor rewinding. Additionally, Navsarjan made the institutional decision not to run a male batch of students until a full female batch with 250 students is formed to address the gender imbalance in vocational education (families are more likely to support men’s training than women’s) and has also set forth a goal of having 51% of DSK trainers be female.