Library empowers Girls & Women in coastal Ecuador

To all our wonderful supporters, collaborators and volunteers for the GlobalGiving  project # 24509 “Library Empowers Girls & Women in Coastal Ecuador”:

                                                                         Well, we did it!!

Hi, my name is Susan Poats and I am the vice-president of the Corporación Grupo Randi Randi (CGRR) in Ecuador.  We are part of GLOBAL GIVING and have been supporting project # 25409 since November 2016. Though CGRR figures as the institutional or fiscal sponsor, the project has always been operated and managed by Fundación A mano manaba or FAMM.  This small NGO based in Don Juan began in response to the massive April 2016 earthquake affecting coastal Ecuador. When FAMM first approached GLOBAL GIVING it was too new to qualify as part of the platform. So I proposed that CGRR, with 20 years of experience and project management in Ecuador, partner with FAMM and provide an “institutional umbrella”. GLOBAL GIVING approved and we were off, using our combined talents to reach out to all of you to help support the FAMM intercultural library in Don Juan. Beginning as a portable children´s library on the back of a pet donkey, today the library is a 2 story seismic-resistant bamboo structure where FAMM offers a wide variety of programs not only to help children improve their reading and schoolwork, but to empower young women and men, and their parents and family, to become active, supportive, egalitarian, mindful citizens in a community that has long been overlooked by the outside and dominated internally by destructive, violent patriarchal patterns.  

 3.6 years as an institutional lifespan is short.  Many NGOs are still just getting started at this point.  But FAMM has pushed hard to create the legal, organizational and fiscal structure necessary to create and conduct innovative programs. CGRR has always been ready to help with these structures, and provide guidance or oversight when necessary.  We recognize that this arrangement has been not only appropriate and expedient but fruitful.  We raised the funds needed and we have all learned a lot!! CGRR is proud of the work and accomplishments of FAMM in Don Juan, and for the impact, the library and its programs are having on the immediate community, and increasingly in neighboring communities that are following the example.

 So, we are very pleased to report to all of you that CGRR has completed its role, and now is the time for FAMM to become independent on GlobalGiving and take full responsibility for the work you support.  Together with the GlobalGiving staff, we have navigated a process to hand over the original Library project to FAMM’s new location in the platform at NGO # 40234 and transfer most of the credit and recognition, as well as the funding process.  We invite you to visit the project now listed as # 46889.  The project reports and history will remain under CGRR and #25409 for the time being until we can make all the information available on the FAMM website.  All the funds raised as #25409 to date have been received by CGRR and transferred to the FAMM bank account.  GLOBAL GIVING will now channel new donations bi-annually directly to the FAMM account. 

 CGRR relinquishes its fiscal sponsorship with delight and now becomes an equal collaborator with FAMM as we develop new ways to support learning and empowerment in coastal Ecuador.  COME VISIT US!!!

Links:

• Our web page
• FB

Dear Donor 
Friend of Fundación A mano manaba (FAMM)

Hopefully, these words find you in the midst of the calm and discretion necessary in these unprecedented days and weeks in the social life of the entire planet. 

I am writing to thank you for your generosity during the GlobalGiving Girl Fund Campaign on March 6 -13th and for accompanying us in the strengthening of our Library and Intercultural Center. This was our first time to participate in the Girl Fund and thanks to the diligent enthusiasm of our volunteers, in addition to raising $5,806 we were able to expand our donor base by 50% and we have acquired important experience for future campaigns. 

At the end of the first stage of the campaign we placed sixth among 250 participating organizations and this was made possible because of your response and contribution, so Thank you! 

Reaching sixth place was an important achievement, especially if we compare the size of Fundación A mano manaba FAMM's organizational structure with that of most other finalist organizations. In the second stage of this competition, the 15 organizations that obtained the largest number of donors had to choose the 6 organizations that would accompany the first 2 that had already secured the bonus offered by GlobalGiving. During this second stage there was a discussion among the 15 on a a private GlobalGiving page on Facebook. 

Unfortunately, we were not chosen among the six voted to receive the bonus. We believe that the small size of our organization and the limitations of our technological resources and promotional material did not work in our favor. Now in the midst of the imminent needs of the present pandemic, we want you to know that the funds raised are going to be crucial to sustain the current programs and to extend our support to other girls and members of the Don Juan and Jama community. 

Temporarily we are working behind closed doors of the Library due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but we are still active in Don Juan, supporting the neighbors in their weekly purchases, helping the elderly collect their monthly bonuses and delivering previously disinfected reading material, to the homes of our users.  We are also preparing readings and other activities that will be shared by virtual means on our social networks. 

We hope that, in a few weeks, we will be able, gradually and according to official regulations, to reopen our reading, art and sports programs to empower girls and women in the north of Manabi that all of you so generously support. We say goodbye with the solidarity and affection that unites us in all our efforts to improve our earthly home.

 

Rut Román 

Fundación A mano manaba FAMM President

Links:

• our web page
• Our FB