Sauti Yetu empowers immigrant African women and girls to articulate, demand and exercise their human rights. We focus on gender-based violence, reproductive and sexual health and rights and enhancing women's and girls leadership.
Sauti Yetu accomplishes this through outreach, advocacy, public education, training, and capacity building to respond to the concerns and needs of immigrant African women and girls. Our approach incorporates issues of gender, race, religion, ethnicity, and citizenship as interdependent and salient features of women's lives and experiences, as reflected by our continuously evolving program areas.
Description
Sauti Yetu Center For African Women, Inc. is a non-profit organization linking social justice activism with scholarship to promote and protect the rights of immigrant African women and girls. Sauti Yetu means "Our Voice" in Swahili, a language spoken in most of east and central Africa.
OUR CORE VALUES AND PRINCIPLES:
Taking a human rights perspective to ensure that women's rights are protected and that their voices are heard from the community level to the highest councils of government and policy arenas.
Incorporating participatory processes (including women, men, youth, and all stakeholders) in decision-making, planning and implementation.
Ensuring equal access to essential services
Using evidence-based approaches to facilitate change and justice where it is required.
STRATEGIES:
Building human capacity and empowering women and girls for long-term and sustained change.
Advocacy with government and other stakeholders by bringing public attention to issues that might be neglected such as women's health and sexual and gender-based violence.
Raising awareness through forums and media outreach about violence against women and girls and developing strategies to support victims and survivors in the community.
Developing culturally appropriate information, education and training materials.
Ensuring that women have access to information and services on reproductive health, rights, including the consequences of practices like female genital cutting.
Educating the general public about Africans and in particular African women by providing analysis of emerging issues and experiences of immigrant African women in the Diaspora.
WHO WE WORK WITH:
Communities
We work with individual women and girls, community-based organizations (CBOs), leaders and community media to ensure that messages and projects on women's human rights, sexual and gender-based violence and reproductive health are widely disseminated and that women and girls have access to this information.
Service Providers
We conduct innovative outreach, technical assistance and capacity building activities for local health and social services agencies to ensure that their services are culturally appropriate for African immigrant women. These activities include cross-cultural competency trainings, interpretation and translation services.
Policymakers
We engage policymakers by providing accurate information and facilitating the participation and representation of African immigrant women in public forums and other policymaking arenas. RECOGNITION:
2006 Honoree, New York City Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs
2005 Union Square Award
2004 Open Society Institute NYC Community Fellow
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