Mid-year Report

CONTENTS Letters from our Togo Leaders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2.

Our Purpose and Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.

Our Service Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5.

Recent Milestones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

6.

Seamstress Impact Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

8.

Student Impact Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

10.

Upcoming Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

13.

Potential Barriers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

14.

Impact Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15.

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15.

from our Togo leaders

Françoise | Education Director This year 2022 is a year full of successes. I am personally so proud of the work we've done throughout this school year. Everything from our school kit distribution to our weekly tutoring is having an extremely positive impact for our girls.

Our students have achieved their highest success yet. With 100% of our girls passing the first semester of classes, we know their determination and work ethic will carry them very far in life.

During a recent meeting with our parents, it became clear to me how much community trust and support we have built. They made it clear that they feel it is thanks to S H E that their girls are at ease in their education.

We're more inspired than ever to continue growing S H E throughout Togo so that all girls and women may benefit from our program.

We are so grateful for the S H E community that continues to make it possible for us to serve so many of the girls and women of Togo. I hope you know the great organization you've helped build.

Thank you very much. Merci Beacoup.

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from our Togo leaders

fawziyat | Development Director First of all, I would like to say a big thank you to all people who support our work from near and far.

Thanks to you, S H E will soon celebrate its 5th anniversary.

I say all the time that S H E is special. I watch as our seamstresses continue to share their joy every time they walk through our doors. They are so grateful for the guaranteed salary at the end of each month, the literacy classes they receive, and the unconditional support from the team. They continue to remind me that S H E is more than a workplace, S H E is a second family. And many of our women are starting to make their dreams of owning land, owning a motorcycle, or starting a savings account come true.

When I was finishing my English degree, people used to ask me, "what would you like to become?" I said with hope that I was going to work in international organizations, knowing that most people ended up as teachers - the majority in private schools with meager salaries and only the luckiest in public schools.

So I thank you all for making my dreams come true, too.

As I look to the future, I am encouraged by all of the projects we are exploring to earn revenue for our program and make our organization locally sustainable. I'm honored to help develop our social enterprise model to make your donor dollars go even further. As with all things, building this program has taken some time, but we are learning so much and we will not give up. Thank you so much again.

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Introduction 2022 has been an amazing and exceptionally busy year at S H E. Our team has grown to employ 30 incredible women in Togo year-round, and our student program has expanded to serve 1,500 girls across 21 villages. As we pass the mid-year mark, we're honored to share the work you've made possible so far, the lessons we're learning along the way, and the adjustments we're making to better serve the needs of our girls and women.

our holistic approach S H E believes in a world where all girls and women can do more than survive, they can flourish. Why? Because when women rise, we all rise.

At S H E, we focus our work on three main barriers that prevent girls and women from flourishing long-term: 1. limited access to education for girls, 2. lack of stable employment opportunities for women, and 3. climate change.

our core pillars

01. GIRLS' EDUCATION

03. SUSTAINABILITY

We help girls break down

We create dignified jobs

We make innovative

their own barriers to

for seamstresses from

products like our S H E

education with new school

low-income and low-

school uniforms that grow

uniforms, full-tuition

education backgrounds.

scholarships, menstrual

and reusable menstrual

100% of our products are

supplies, and year-round

pads that are better for

made by women in the

girls, women and the

communities we serve.

planet.

support from our local team of women.

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02. WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT

Our service areas

rural Togo, Africa As you know, we've increased our focus on rural, economically excluded communities throughout the southern region of Togo. Today, we partner with 21 villages and serve students in a total of 42 partner schools.

The rural communities we serve face much larger barriers to accessible education than urban communities. As a result of this, the average education level for girls in rural Togo is just 2 - 3 years, with only 33% of girls advancing to junior high school. That's roughly half the rate of girls in urban areas.

Poverty remains the largest barrier to education for students in Togo. With roughly 69% of rural Togo living on less than $1.90 per day, our partner villages overcome extreme adversity on a daily basis.

our rural partner communities Our focus on rural Togo enables us to serve areas where the barriers are highest for girls and women. We especially thank each of our partner communities for continuing their commitment to educating their girls and opening doors of opportunity for their women.

1. Notsé

6. Bitoka

11. Mangotigomé

16. Havouko

2. Dzidzolé

7. Avovo-kpopé

12. Kpové

17. Kpélé

3. Rodokpé

8. Avassikpé Gan

13. Djemeni

18. Atsidomé

4. Agbatitoe

9. Avassikpé Vi

14. Djekloe-Atitsohoe A 19. Todomé-Atimabizo

5. Akoesso-Kopé

10. Tsavé

15. Djidomé

20. Atchavé 21. Attitsohoe

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recent milestones 01 100% student pass rate

02 Revamping our curriculum

As a program first, 100% of students passed the first semester of classes!

Togo's education system is a product of French colonization. It's heavily rooted in passive teaching methods like memorization, repetition, and lecture, and it is designed for specialization in subjects that students show early signs of potential in.

Students are still wrapping up classes and final exams for the 2021-2022 school year, and we have every ounce of confidence in their year-end outcomes. Last year, 92.5% of students passed their final exams, and our tutors have ramped up efforts this year to help our high school students with the notoriously difficult national exams.

We're more encouraged than ever by the progress of our girls.

We have started to see more participation from our parents, our students, and our teachers. We know the S H E will have longterm success in our communities.

- headmaster from a partner village school

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However, Togo represents a rare statistical circumstance. As the education rate in Togo increases, the unemployment level also increases. Meaning, the higher your level of education, the less likely you are to find a job in Togo.

This is due in large part to the annual population growth rate outpacing development progress and limited job opportunities for highly specialized fields.

With this in mind, we've spent years thoughtfully building a curriculum that creates greater optionality for students when they graduate high school. Our curriculum focuses on: Fundamental Proficiencies Critical Thinking Skills Creativity Personal Development Pathways Agency building Skills training & Entrepreneurship Because we don't operate our own schools, our curriculum is supplementary to what students are already learning in the public school system.

03 The S H E Cooperative As a quick reminder, the S H E Cooperative is our newest job creation program that employs 8 seamstresses in our rural partner village, Kpové. We intentionally hired women from low-income and loweducation backgrounds who had previous sewing experience but lacked seamstressing opportunities.

The 8 amazing women we hired were either subsistence farmers or full-time care workers for their family. Their talent level was extremely high, the only thing lacking was an opportunity to exercise their full income-earning potential.

In just three weeks, they began surpassing production goals for our school uniforms, mastering new sewing techniques, and thriving as a team.

Of course, this program has taught us so much about bringing people together from vastly different backgrounds, developing our adult education programming for women who have never stepped foot inside a classroom, and creating a workplace that empowers all women to thrive regardless of background. But thanks to the incredible work ethic and diligence of our S H E Cooperative members, this is quickly becoming on of our most successful impact programs.

All S H E Cooperative members are up for promotion this September, and we couldn't be more thrilled for them to join our fulltime team.

Impact stories

Mawumegno

S H E Cooperative Seamstress My name is Mawumegno, and I'm from Kpové. I learned to sew 10 years ago, and after my apprenticeship, I opened a workshop. But since I am in the village and poverty is common, I would see only one or two orders per month. This forced me to close my workshop and cultivate the fields to survive.

When I heard there was an NGO recruiting seamstresses in Kpové, I did not hesitate. I went home and found my old sewing machine to practice. I went to all of the meetings that S H E hosted, and I participated in their sensitization.

But the whole time, I thought to myself that this NGO, where the women are so clean and welldressed, will never select me. I thought that no one would see my value. But it turns out that I underestimated myself, and I was selected for the program.

I was so proud when I started working for S H E not only because I was earning an income, but because people in the community would start respecting me. Through the salary I receive, I have started hiring people to help cultivate fields for me, and I now help my mom earn an income by selling things at the market. I also opened a bank account and I save money every month.

S H E is special because she cares about us, she wants us to be autonomous, she wants us to be women decision-makers, entrepreneurs, and women who are not marginalized. S H E is special because she tells the truth, she pays us on time, and she is not like other NGOs that come to the village and deceive us. S H E keeps her promises. S H E is helping us become extraordinary women; women worthy of the name. S H E has given me a lot of respect in my community, and I'm honored to be part of this program for women like me.

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Noëlie

S H E Cooperative Seamstress I am Noëlie, and I'm a mother of 4 children. I come from a very difficult personal background, and I can say that I was in a state of real suffering in the fields when I learned of S H E. I didn't know if I would be selected, but I prayed every day that I would be chosen for the program.

S H E has completely changed my life through the work she offered me. She wiped away the tears that I had been carrying for several years. Today, I have purchased a machine for myself because my husband had refused to help me buy one for years.

Now, I make clothes for my children. I can take my children to the hospital if they are not feeling well. I pay for their schooling, eat what I want, and I save a little for the future. Thanks to S H E, I am a well-situated woman now.

My favorite thing about S H E is the way we learn to read and the process of working with patterns to ensure the measurements are not skewed.

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Impact stories dogbeda S H E student since 2021 I'm Dogbeda. I'm 17 years old, and I'm in the first year of high school. We are two children at my parents' home, my sister and me.

I was a very happy girl since I was a child, but when I finished primary school, I lost my father at the age of 12. That's how my family's ordeal began. After my father's death, my mother did everything she could to try to earn an income to support us. She learned how to make indigenous soaps, and she was starting to make bigger and bigger orders. But when a bad batch failed, it took all of her savings with it.

One day, I was telling a friend of mine about our struggles at home, and she told me that I should go talk to the good women at S H E. The very next day, my mom took me to S H E. At first, the enrollment was full, but my mother taught us to never give up. And so, she returned the next day to explain our situation and Francoise helped her find a spot for my sister and I. Now that I have started the S H E program, my goal is to get my mother and my sister out of poverty. I see myself as a famous doctor in the future because I am inspired by the work of doctors. And I know I can work hard enough to achieve this.

S H E is a special place because it ensures that girls can continue their educations, and it provides us with teachers to strengthen our abilities. I was especially grateful for the mathematics tutor that helped me pass my exams last year.

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Adjovi

eveline

S H E student since 2019

S H E student since 2019

My name is Adjovi, and I'm in the first year of high school. I'm 17 years old, and I'm one of seven siblings.

My name is Eveline, and I'm 16 years old.

I am one of 9 children. We are 7 girls and 2 boys.

I joined S H E after several years of struggling to pay for schooling a friend recommended that I come to the office to explain that my mother was no longer able to afford my school fees.

For me, S H E is special because it helps students grow in many ways. It teaches students manners, life skills, leadership skills, and public speaking skills.

In addition, S H E creates a safe environment for girls to express themselves. Together, we learn how to realize our value as women and become empowered.

S H E is raising the level of education for girls in our schools, and we even see girls return to school when S H E sponsors them.

Among my parents' children, I am currently the only one who is still in school. All of my other siblings are married.

I joined S H E 3 years ago because my mom was still struggling to make ends meet, and a friend of mine told me about the organization that supports girls through their studies.

I started attending the meetings every week, and when the next school year started, I became a sponsored girl.

S H E is special because without her, I would have had to drop out of school like many other girls and like my sisters. S H E is special because it supports both urban and rural environments, and it promotes the well-being of all girls.

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upcoming 2022 objectives 1 | Maintain all 1,500 girls enrolled in the program When we originally developed our strategic plan for 2022, we set out to sponsor 1,750 girls. However, what we did not anticipate at the time was that school supply costs, school uniform materials, and tuition fees would nearly double with the global economic downturn. To best fulfill our commitments to the 1,500 girls currently enrolled in the program, we'll be re-enrolling all students again this year, but we will not be adding the 250 sponsorships that we initially hoped for. While we're saddened to not serve more girls in need this year, we believe that this will allow us to better serve our students and partner communities in the long-term.

2 | Launch our teacher training program One of the on-going challenges our schools have shared is that up to 60% of their teachers work as volunteers. This is mostly due to a lack of funding in rural schools. The good news is that there are amazingly generous people in our partner communities that have worked for years without pay to ensure children have teachers.

Unfortunately, this leads to much higher rates of teacher truancy, a lack of teaching resources for volunteers, and inconsistent learning outcomes.

So we thought to ourselves - rather than having program coordinators travel out to our villages to distribute our curriculum periodically throughout the year, why not hire some of the local volunteer teachers as part-time program coordinators for S H E? We can provide teacher training resources to help them improve their regular classroom environments, and they can help distribute our programming more regularly throughout the year in a way that our students can best relate to the curriculum.

We'll be rolling this program out in two of our selected partner villages this fall, and we hope to learn what it will take to successfully implement this program throughout all of our partner schools in the coming years.

03 | Extend our S H E Cooperative and build our earned revenue Most of our S H E community knows that we strive to build a social enterprise model that enables us to earn revenue to sustain our programs and further increase the impact of every donor dollar we receive. In 2021, we launched the first S H E cooperative to increase our job creation for marginalized women. With the amazing success of this program, we couldn't be more excited that our women are making the transition from project-based employees to fully registered team members this September!

Not only does this keep our women gainfully employed, but this also allows us to expand our production of school uniforms, reusable menstrual supplies, and other revenue generating projects throughout the year.

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potential barriers

We anticipated that serving geographically excluded communities would require a much higher level of effort to overcome the amplified barriers to education. However, as we've continued to build trust with our village partners, even our local staff has been surprised to learn the depth of need that some of our communities have shared with us. For example, Only 6 of our 20 rural villages we serve have Junior High schools (0 have High Schools), so accessible secondary school opportunities are extremely limited for students. If parents want to keep their girls in school, they have to send them to a different town. This is one of the main reasons only 33% of girls in rural Togo continue to Junior High School.

None of our partner schools have running water or bathrooms. Girls are most likely to drop out when they reach puberty due to lack of sanitation facilities.

Classroom Investments: While our tuition funding has already helped our partner schools build classrooms, issues like the lack of school benches, equipment, and books remain.

For added context, the two images below are both schools that we partner with. The school on the left is in the town of Notsé, where our office is located. The school on the right is in our partner village of Mangitogomé. Both schools support several hundred students, however, Mangotigomé reports much lower attendance rates among students. The main reasons for reduced attendance are cancelled classes due to rain, girls walking a reported average of 12 kilometers each way to collect water, and that the school can only afford to pay two teachers.

As we continue serving our communities, we recognize that S H E cannot solve all of these challenges. However, we will continue to advocate for funding partners to help us address the multi-faceted challenges our communities are overcoming.

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our impact this year While much of our work remains in the coming months, our team has achieved some remarkable impact results already. Here's a quick glance at our impact so far.

1,500 girls in school

30 women employed

With our focus on serving girls in rural Togo, 87% of all girls enrolled in our program live in rural villages.

We are proudly women-led by an amazing team in Togo. We've experienced 0 turnover since 2020.

100% student pass rate

154 seamstresses trained in Ghana

All of our students passed the first semester of their classes and are on track for one of our highest year-end pass rates in program history.

In March, our lead seamstresses invited to travel to rural Ghana to teach women displaced by the pandemic how to make our menstrual pads and replace their lost income sources from the pandemic.

6,000 pounds of fabric

100% literacy

diverted from landfill with the help of our factory partners. After our school uniforms are finished, we'll be transforming this fabric into reusable menstrual pads.

In the past three months, all of our seamstresses can now proudly read and write in basic French. With only 2 of our 16 seamstresses having gone to school, this is an incredible achievement that comes with a great amount of perseverance.

Thank you so much for joining us for another leg of the journey. We're honored to do this work alongside our incredible donors, partners, and supporters.

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thank you

Our work is not possible without the collective support of our S H E community. You are helping 1,500 girls receive the chance to go to school, employing 30 women year-round, and empowering our team to continue expanding services for our 21 amazing community partners. We're so grateful.

Our partners Reid Family Foundation

the s h e collective The S H E Collective is a dedicated community of change makers who invest in S H E every month. Thank you for taking every step of this journey with us.

Allison Mattson

Julie McDonald

Niels & Erin Damman

Ashley Porter

Julie Stevens

Ron and Ellie Hampton

Brooke Ramstad

Kenton and Nikki Lee

Rowen Fitzgerald

Chloie Dale

Lesli Pennock

Shawn Weingartner

Dennis Sherman

Mara Litushko

Stacey & Tyler Targee

Dr. Sarah Nelson

Mark and Jeanette Priddy

Stephanie Austad

Greg Luhn

MaryAnn Smith

Tami Miller

Jordan Chambers

Nina Steffens

Theron McGriff Tracy Hitchcock

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