By Elizabeth Droggitis | MADRE Staff Member
In our last update, we shared with you that KOFAVIV launched Saturday workshops for young teenage girls at risk of sexual exploitation. MADRE Program Coordinator Sahita Pierre-Antoine was recently in Haiti visiting our sisters at KOFAVIV. She brought back this update from the Saturday workshops that we’d like to share with you now:
The Saturday workshops organized for young girls engaging in sexual exchange are still underway at the KOFAVIV Center. Currently, forty girls participate in the weekly meetings. The sessions have been very successful in building the girls' self-esteem and teaching them skills that can later be applied to income-generating activities such as arts and crafts, fabric printing and dying, jewelry making and hair dressing. While I was speaking with KOFAVIV about the sessions, they shared this success story with me:
"Minou", a 16-year-old girl, was regularly exchanging sexual favors in order to provide for herself. She was brought to the KOFAVIV Center by one of the organization's community agents and was enrolled in the Saturday program shortly after. Six months into her participation, Minou's behavior had changed: she began opening up with her peers and therapist about her past experiences and started to adopt a more positive outlook on life since entering the program. Minou was so invested in the Workshop that she became a KOFAVIV outreach worker. She has since been actively working with other young beneficiaries, using her personal experience to engage and motivate her peers.
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