Giving a Shout out to the 12 Small Grant Recipients

UN.GIFT piloted its Small Grants program in 2009, with recipient projects having an implementation period in fiscal year 2010-2011. This week I was asked to use the interim reports from the 12 recipient organizations to assess the outcomes of the program.
I know I’m not supposed to have favorites, but my favorite by far was Solidarites—a Brazilian NGO who worked with victims of trafficking to help them tell their stories. Despite being printed in Portuguese, I dedicated the translation time (thank goodness for google translate) in order to read the report on the situation of women in Brazil that was written by the victims themselves. Its difficult to say that Solidarites is my favorite, because the work being done by all 12 organizations is phenomenal.
The broad range of approaches to awareness raising, prevention, legal aid, and direct victim assistance was interesting for me to read through. It seems that despite major differences in culture, region, and organizational structure, that there are common threads between the success stories.
Some of the common threads: economic and emotional empowerment of at-risk individuals and victims; collaboration and transparency with law enforcement; distribution of materials in order to raise awareness of available services, etc.
Unfortunately, it seems that each of these organizations relies nearly exclusively on external donations and questions of sustainability do not seem to be a priority.