OUR VISION
A HAITI WHERE EVERY GIRL CAN PLAY, CREATE, LEARN, AND LEAD
OUR MISSION
To accompany Haitian girls in underserved communities as they improve their learning, health, and well-being through art-centered educational programs in safe and nurturing environments.
WHO WE SERVE
Lidè programs reach over 1,200 girls ages 11 to 21 who are out of school or significantly behind in age-to-grade, live in rural underserved communities where the majority of the community is living in extreme poverty, have experienced trauma or live in chronic stress, live in situations of domestic labor, have or are currently suffering abuse, are experiencing food insecurity or the effects of malnutrition, and/or have a disability.
We work in rural communities through the Artibonite region and the South of Haiti. Lidè trains and employs locals within the Haitian communities it serves, and collaborates with grassroots organizations and schools so that programs derive from and meet local needs, strengthen and utilize local capacity, and foster the community support girls need to complete their educational journeys.
OUR PROGRAMS
We offer year-round programs in the creative arts, education, health, and parent and community engagement to adolescent girls in underserved communities across Haiti.
CREATIVE ARTS
Photography, Theater, Creative Writing, and Dance
EDUCATION
Primary, Secondary, and Vocational Scholarships, Guidance Counseling, Tutoring, Literacy, Financial Literacy, Computer Skills, and Chess
HEALTH
Mental Health, Medical Support, Food as Medicine and Culture, Health and Sex Education
PARENT AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Home Visits, Parent Education, Trainings with School Principals, and Participation in Regional Child Protection Working Group
OUR IMPACT
Lidè participants are learning to read, getting scholarships to begin, continue, and complete primary and secondary school, building their psychosocial resilience and self-confidence through our arts programming, improving their physical and mental health through counseling and medical services, and strengthening their nutrition through the thousands of meals we serve a year to participants-meals that are often their only source of daily food in an atmosphere of food scarcity. And, we know that our participants are transmitting the skills they are learning to others, particularly siblings and peers. This dynamic multiplies Lidè’s impact, as capacities developed ripple beyond program participants to diverse members of each community we serve. Hear from our participants about the impact of our work here. Check out our Annual Reports below for more details and stories about our impact.
OUR STORY
Lidè was established by Author Holiday Reinhorn, Actor Rainn Wilson and Dr. Kathryn Adams as a short term project to provide healing through the arts for adolescent girls who had survived the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. During a two-week program, the three of them watched girls mend and find their own voices. Afterward, they watched those same girls try to hang on to those voices and teach other girls what they had learned. But they needed support, and so the idea of creating year-round programs aimed at building resiliency and empowering adolescent girls began.
Lidè started working in the Artibonite region of Haiti, in Gonaives, in January 2014 and initially partnered with CARE, who provided us with participants that needed schooling.
To hear more about the origin story of Lidè and it’s evolution, listen here, here, and here.
