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Highlights from MADRE Programs around the World

With your support, and in partnership with our sister organizations around the world, MADRE is offering creative and critical solutions to the struggles faced by women and families everywhere. We thought you might like to see the kind of work your support has helped make possible.

Arts Education in Peru

For the second year, MADRE, in partnership with our sister organization CHIRAPAQ, supported a one-month sculpture workshop for Indigenous youth living in conditions of extreme poverty in rural Peru. Fourteen young people from Indigenous communities in Ayacucho participated in the workshop, which was taught by a sculptor who is as committed to human rights as she is to sculpting. MADRE Executive Director Vivian Stromberg, who attended the final exhibit, said she was impressed with the sculptures that the youth produced (hand-chiseling for the first time). We are so proud to have made this opportunity possible, and we look forward to continuing and expanding the program. Thank you Nora Valdez—sculptor, mentor, inspiration—for your dedication and love. View the Peru Sculpture Project photo gallery.

Women's Health in Africa

The Indigenous Information Network (IIN) and the Umoja Women's Group, MADRE's Kenyan partners, have completed the first stage of a program to address female genital mutilation (FGM) in Samburu communities in northern Kenya, and, with MADRE, have developed a multi-year HIV/AIDS prevention initiative for those same communities that will begin later this year. The pick-up truck that MADRE donated will help them reach remote communities. The local MADRE-supported pre-school and kindergarten have begun a curriculum in personal hygiene, and MADRE and IIN have planned a series of workshops for young women in Maasai communities in the south of the country; these workshops will address HIV transmission and issues of sanitation and personal hygiene (including how common practices, such as sharing razors or toothbrushes, can spread diseases like HIV/AIDS).

Emergency Relief in Pakistan

In the aftermath of the earthquake in Pakistan in October 2005, MADRE partnered with long-time colleagues, Shirkat Gah, a women's community-based organization, to deliver relief—including food, baby bottles, blankets, and temporary shelters—to women and families in remote communities. Large-scale relief efforts were not reaching rural areas, and aid agencies feared that tens of thousands of children would die of hunger, hypothermia, and disease if aid did not reach them before the onset of winter. Shirkat Gah's experience and networks gave them access to many of these remote communities not being served by the large-scale aid efforts. Support from MADRE members made it possible to design and provide safe, winter-worthy, semi-permanent shelters for 450 families in the remote areas of Punjgran, Paniola, and Kohistan. While the tents that were initially supplied by some relief agencies were not able to withstand the winter weather, the new shelters provided by Shirkat Gah are designed to last several winters, and are made of reusable materials, which will be converted into more permanent shelters once the winter has passed.

None of this work would be possible without your support. All of us at MADRE, and our sisters in all of our partner organizations, thank you for your crucial contributions to our programs.

Updated February 2006