Tostan on PBS Religion and Ethics Newsweekly!

On July 15th, Tostan was featured on PBS Religion and Ethics Newsweekly! PBS crew members Fred de Sam Lazaro, Tom Adair, and Nikki See traveled to rural Senegal to profile the abandonment of female genital cutting (FGC) among communities with which Tostan partners.



Discussing the unprecedented number of communities abandoning harmful practices, Molly Melching, Tostan’s founder and executive director, said: “Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that I would be sitting here years…[after the first public declaration], 13 years later, saying that 4,792 communities in Senegal had abandoned. In the beginning it was just unthought of, unbelievable, because it was so taboo.”

In 1997, 35 women in the village of Malicounda Bambara declared their abandonment of FGC and other harmful traditions upon learning about human rights and the negative effects of these practices through Tostan’s Community Empowerment Program (CEP), a human rights-based education program. From that first declaration, the movement has grown to include over 6,000 communities in six African countries.

The PBS crew was hosted by two communities involved in Tostan’s CEP. During their visit they met with CEP participants and Tostan team members as well as attended a CEP class, a community meeting, and a film screening. Tostan is currently collaborating with communities in eight African countries.

Click here or the image above to watch the PBS spotlight of Tostan!

Watch the full episode. See more Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

Exclusive Article on Molly Melching in the Financial Times

Molly Melching, Tostan’s Founder and Executive Director, was featured in the Financial Times article “Turning Senegalese” on June 24, 2011. Interwoven within Melching’s personal journey to Senegal, the author, Candida Crewe, discusses the development of Tostan’s unique approach to creating positive change in African communities. She describes how Melching founded Tostan in response to the development initiatives she saw fail when outsiders acted without properly consulting village residents. In contrast, Tostan works collaboratively with communities to equip them with the knowledge and the confidence to realize their own development goals. Today, Tostan’s human rights education program is fostering sustainable development in eight countries in East and West Africa.

Snowballs, Senegal and Social Change

Madeleine Balchan, a Global Citizen Year Fellow in Senegal, recounts in a recent blog post her first memory of building a snowman. This seemingly simple memory gains new meaning as she recognizes its similarities to positive development work, specifically Tostan’s community-driven approach to human rights and empowerment. Continue reading to learn more about Balchan’s thoughts on Tostan and development work.

Top: Tostan office in Dakar, Senegal
Bottom: Madeleine Balchan and other GCY Fellows

Snowballs

February 18, 2011

Madeleine Balchan

This is my first winter without snow.

I remember the first time I ever made a snowman. I scooped snow into my mittens and tried to form a ball, but the powder just crumbled apart and fell as I separated my hands. I watched in jealous frustration as my older brothers rolled their rapidly expanding snowballs around the yard. I knew I could do the pushing part, but I couldn’t get it started! Then my dad came and handed me a ball already half a foot in diameter. Using all the strength of my two-foot-tall-puff-jacketed self I slowly rolled the ball across our yard. Eventually, my snowball was the head of our family snowman, towering high in the front yard with 2 coal eyes and sticks for arms.

My father enabled me. I recognized something I wanted but couldn’t do on my own, and he gave me the help I needed to take things into my own hands and “run with it”. The most effective aid addresses the needs and wants of the receiver, and requires the end-user to push the ball along.

I’ve often talked about “developing countries” in the past. But “developed” countries are still developing. The cultures within families and organizations and countries are dynamic and always changing, always developing. I now approach the term “underdeveloped” with caution. This land rich in culture and history has developed, though perhaps not in ways apparent to the West.

We had the opportunity to meet with Molly Melching, a woman who left the “developed” US almost thirty years ago to commit herself to service in Senegal. Her response to people who gasp and wonder at her having given up the luxuries of the States? “This is no sacrifice. I’m living here because I love it.”

My favorite thing about TOSTAN, the non-profit Melching founded, is that after 12 years of service they looked back on their approach and totally changed it. They took out literacy as a focus of the program to fit into the culture of oral tradition. Their current strategy is to train one community member to lead community think-sessions based on Human Rights and the responsibilities that come with them. In these community sessions, they begin by valuing the positives, and then ask where they are not respecting the rights of everyone in the community.

TOSTAN is widely recognized for the number of villages that have ended the process of Female Genital Cutting. That was never a part of their goals. TOSTAN’s culturally sensitive educational approach to development empowers the community, but develops “only” in the direction, and “only” as far as, the community is willing to push their own snow-ball.

This Senegalese snowball has grown bigger, and broader, and farther than Molly Melching could have ever imagined or pushed it on her own.

To learn more about Global Citizen Year and application deadlines, please click here.

Advocate, Julia Lalla-Maharajh, Inspired by Recent Public Declaration

Julia Lalla-Maharajh, "passionate advocate" for the abandonment of FGC and founder of the Orchid Project, recently visited several communities where Tostan's Community Empowerment Program is in place. Her experience talking with community members and witnessing the excitement at Sare Ngai's public declaration left her energized, ready to continue working towards positive social transformation. Here is the full article from The Huffington Post:

Dancing to End Female Genital Cutting

February 8, 2011
The Huffington Post
Julia Lalla-Maharajh

I'm here in Dakar, Senegal. It's a long way from London, Davos and Ethiopia. I'm seeing different things, learning so much and marvelling constantly at the changes that are happening here on the ground and in communities.

As a "passionate advocate" to end female genital cutting, my story is a pedestrian one, mimicked (I'm sure) across the Western world. A lifetime of mortgage enslavement, corporate kowtowing and daily commuting on packed London Tube trains led me to rethink. My second life began about two years ago, when I headed out to Ethiopia to volunteer. It was in Addis Ababa that my eyes opened in wonder as I viewed the lives of women and girls around me. How had they been born into this life of hard work, of carrying loads far too heavy for their backs, of little schooling?

It got worse when I heard about female genital cutting, its scale and impacts. The shock I felt was tangible. On a trip to Lalibela, an ancient relic of a holy city in northern Ethiopia, I met two little girls who have stayed in my mind's eye throughout this journey. I wanted to talk with their parents, their community, beg for them not to be cut. But I knew I had no agency, no right, no legitimacy to intervene in anyone's culture in such a stumbling, righteous way.

Back in London, I volunteered with Forward learning about a better way to engage with communities. Rather incongruously, I appeared on the plinth in Trafalgar Square and exhorted crowds not to look away from this very complex, heart-rending issue.

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