Amanda Lane, Executive Director Collateral Repair Project
Reflecting on a Remarkable Year and Aims for the Future
As our Back to School distributions wind down this week, I am finally finding myself with a spare moment to reflect on all the work we have been able to do this year thanks to FAWCO’s support and the exciting ways that our work will be able to expand because of the additional funds all of you are raising.
Your support enabled our Back to School drive to be larger than ever this year. Thanks to the $10,000 you raised this year, and the $2,400 left over from last year’s funds, we were able to send 507 kids back to school this month. All told, our Back to School drive served a grand total of nearly 700 families and over 1,800 individual students! We wouldn’t have been able to meet that demand without your support.
Each student received a backpack full of much-needed supplies, including uniforms, notebooks, and pens and pencils. Thanks to our new Back to School tracking application, designed in-house, we were able to work faster and more precisely than ever to register families and deliver supplies on the basis of age, gender, and other relevant information. Watch the joy...
Our two FAWCO-sponsored programs for addressing gender-based violence (GBV) also re-launched this month, after a break for July as we trained new program leaders. Hesham, our volunteer leader of that program, just returned from a three-week leadership exchange program in the U.S., led by the U.S. State Department, where he learned about best practices for addressing trauma arising from natural disasters and conflict. He looks forward to applying those skills as he leads the next session of our GBV courses.
Hesham (center) with the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), a program run by the State Department in Washington DC
Looking forward, we are excited by the new opportunities that additional FAWCO funding will bring. We really cannot say thank you enough for going above and beyond your fundraising goals for us, and we appreciate all the energy and hard work that went into that. The extra funds will make it possible to both improve our programs here in East Amman and expand them to many more people at our new downtown center—which we plan to open by the end of this month. We have already expanded our FAWCO Program Coordinator position to full-time so she can begin to plan and implement that work.
FAWCO Program Coordinator
Within the next month, we will double enrollment in our Beauty School program by adding an additional course. It is one of the most popular programs at CRP, and we have been wanting to expand it for some time now. With a waitlist of over 120 women, we are excited for the opportunity to begin to meet more of that demand in our community.
Additional funds are also already helping participants in our ICDL course, by covering the costs of new exam preparation materials and testing fees. A lack of test materials caused students to struggle when they first took the test in July, and these new resources will go a long way towards putting participants on a stronger footing when they re-take the test this month.
And at our new downtown center, FAWCO’s funds will allow us to expand current programs to serve our downtown beneficiaries. Our Women’s Empowerment and GBV Awareness and Advocacy for Teens programs will be launched downtown starting early next year, as will our After School Club, once our Basic Needs Assistance programs are up and running there.
The extra funds will also cover smaller, much needed improvements to our programs here at CRP. We will finally be able to renovate the playground used by our After School Club, making it safer and more accessible for our younger beneficiaries. With more safety measures, and sturdier equipment, we will be able to leave the playground open any time that CRP is, without needing a staff member to oversee activities. Some of the funds will also be used to translate our Super Girls curriculum into Arabic and make it more accessible to volunteers who do not speak English.
It continues to be an exciting time to be at CRP, with our new center opening and our already-established programs being taken in new and exciting directions. CRP took the week of August 19-24 off to celebrate the Eid al-Adha holiday, so everyone is feeling refreshed and eager to get back into it as our fall programming kicks into gear.
I’m in the planning stages for a visit to Europe in early November, and I’m hoping to see many of you while there! Please reach out to Tricia if you would like more information about where I will be. Thank you again for all that you’ve done and continue to do for CRP! As always, we are beyond grateful for your amazing support for refugees in Jordan and CRP’s work.
- Amanda Lane, Executive Director Collateral Repair Project
Update V - September 2018
