Appeal – June 2019

Please help us raise $83,500 to invest in women and girls, ensuring their right to education, safety and leadership

It’s an ambitious target – but so are the plans and the capabilities of our community partners. Your donation will mean we can kick off a new partnership in Bougainville, ensuring a Safe House for women facing facing violence stays open. It will also mean we can build on our proven partnership to keep girls in school in Afghanistan and scale up leadership and education initiatives led by and benefitting women and girls across the communities we partner with.

“Six years ago, I took my first daughter out of grade 7 because we didn’t feel safe for her to study in an open space. It was a common experience in our community…. [However], we allowed our second daughter to continue her schooling, when she reached grade 7 two years ago. It was because the new building, and now new furniture, gave us the confidence about her safety while she is in school.”.

These are the words of Mohammad Ali, a father whose daughter attends Qaraqul High School in Jirghai, Afghanistan.

Thanks to generous supporters, over the past two years we have worked with the local community to build a new school equipped with desks and chairs, separate male and female toilets and access to clean water.

Students hard at work in their new classrooms at Qaraqal High School in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan

Previous to this, the school operated out of tents and was forced to close in bad weather. Last year was the first year that students, including Mohammad’s daughter, could attend school all year round. Not surprisingly, student results improved.

Millions of girls around the world are still denied an education.  The longer a girl stays in school, the less likely she will marry young, the more likely she will find work and the more control she will have over her own life. Investing in girls and women creates a path out of poverty for girls and their communities.

As we approach 30 June we are asking you to make a donation so we can improve education outcomes for the next generation of students in Jirghai and improve outcomes for women and girls across all of our partnerships.

Your support has enabled incredible outcomes over the past year – 1,100 students in Afghanistan now have new school buildings, desks and clean water, 2,100 children impacted by HIV in Uganda have had access to school uniforms, sanitary pads and school supplies and 135 teachers have been trained in South Sudan, including a four-fold increase in the number of female teachers graduating compared to the previous year. This is just a snapshot of what can be achieved with modest levels of support when development is genuinely community-led.

See what your support has meant over the past year here.

Please donate to indigo foundation today. Your contribution – however big or small – counts. Use your power to stand against family and sexual violence, improve access to education and support women’s leadership. Together we can dramatically improve lives.

  • $40 will support one young dancers in Rwanda to undertake a five day training in peer-to-peer education on sexual and reproductive health in July. This builds on our partner Club Rafiki’s already successful outreach program that last year reached out to 5,100 young people.
  • $80 will support one bursary for a young woman from a female-headed household on Lembata Island in Eastern Indonesia to stay in high school and graduate. This year we want to launch 40 new bursaries for girls and women on Lembata Island, Indonesia.
  • $379 will fund one seven day a week staff position for one month at the Resource Centre and Safe House run by the Hako Women’s Collective in Bougainville, including a person on call 24 hours to provide emergency shelter and support for women facing family violence.
  • $510 will fund six truckloads of stone to build a new school building and separate male and female toilets in Jirghai, Afghanistan. This year we want to partner with the local community to build new school buildings for three schools and ensure a further five schools have desks and chairs and clean water.

Your donation today will help us launch a new partnership in Bougainville

Violence against women and children in Bougainville has reached pandemic levels. The UN estimates that three out of four women have experienced physical violence at the hands of their partner – and the Haku region is a hot spot with the highest number of violence-related cases in the District Court.

We want to work with you and our new partners at the Hako Women’s Collective to change that statistic.

The Hako Women’s Collective was established in 2006 when more than 700 women and girls came together to find ways to address the challenges they face. They have developed into a strong volunteer-run organisation. The Collective have worked hard to fund and build a Resource Centre which includes a library and a small two-bed emergency safe house, the Meri Seif Haus, for women escaping family and sexual violence.

The Safe House and Resource Centre are run by a formidable group of over 40 local women volunteers, including trained counsellors. The Safe House is in high demand but without some funding for staff and operating costs, the women are struggling to meet that demand.

So, in this initial phase, we are stepping up to support the Resource Centre and Safe House. This will ensure the Centre and Safe House can stay open seven days a week to survivors of family and sexual violence and have someone on-call 24 hours a day.

The Hako Women’s Collective have planned and will lead this initiative. By supporting them, we have the opportunity to make a difference in this community, and today you do too.

Your donation today will give families the confidence and the means to keep their girls in school

This year we celebrate 15 years of working in Afghanistan – building schools, training teachers, improving student results and helping girls stay in school. The impact of this work has been life-changing. You can read a personal reflection on this from our Partnership Coordinator Ali Reza Yunespour, himself a former Hazara refugee.

Last year, our partners made significant strides at getting girls into education and training teachers in Afghanistan and South Sudan, providing women with access to training and employment in India, launching a mentoring and skills-development program in Rwanda and supporting women take up decision-making roles. In Afghanistan, our partner, the Jirghai and Behsud Shura, opened its membership to women for the first time and accepted two female teachers from Jirghai schools.

In the coming year, your support will enable our partners to continue this work and scale up their impact. In Afghanistan, it will mean three new school buildings and funding to ensure a further five schools have desks and chairs and clean water.

In Rwanda, it will mean that our partners at Club Rafiki ca run a five-day training for 30 young people in peer-to-peer education on sexual and reproductive health.

And on Lembata Island in Indonesia, your support will allow PEKKA Lodan Doe to launch 40 new bursaries for girls and women from female headed households. You can read here the difference a bursary has made to Yeni Sella, who is studying food technology in year 11 in Rote, pictured above.

Why indigo foundation?

When it comes to international development and human rights, we know you have choices about where to direct your support. With indigo foundation, the power of local community development is unleashed through respectful long-term partnerships. We are small and nimble team with big goals and 100 percent focused on the impact communities can achieve. Our work is driven by the community at every step and, in the case of our Afghan and South Sudan programs, guided in Australia by Partnership Coordinators who themselves are former refugees from the communities in which we work. Your donation will make an exponential difference in communities not reached by other non-government organisations and donors.

Thank you for believing in community-led development and thank you for being an important part of indigo foundation.