Tostan
Tostan is a US-registered 501 international non-governmental organization headquartered in Dakar, Senegal. The organization's mission is "to empower communities to develop and achieve their vision for the future and inspire large-scale movements leading to dignity for all" in several West African countries, including Senegal, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, The Gambia, Mali, and Mauritania.
Tostan takes a holistic, integrated approach to development by facilitating human rights-based, non-formal education programs, most notably the Community Empowerment Program, which aims to support and empower participants and communities to lead their own development. The organization employs over 500 people and works to foster and promote community engagement in projects relating to literacy, health and hygiene, child welfare, human rights and democracy, environmental sustainability, and economic empowerment.
Although Tostan is best known for its success in accelerating the abandonment of harmful traditional practices, particularly female genital cutting and child marriage, across Africa, the organization has also achieved positive results in the impact areas of governance, education, health, economic empowerment, and the environment, as well as in the intersecting issues of child protection, empowerment of women and girls, and early childhood development. In 2007, Tostan received the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, the world's largest humanitarian prize, for its "significant contributions to the alleviation of human suffering."
History
Tostan was founded in 1991 by Molly Melching, an American educator and human rights advocate, with the original goal of providing non-formal holistic education programming to rural communities in Senegal. Relying heavily on feedback from local communities, Melching and a team of Senegalese cultural specialists developed a program called the Community Empowerment Program, a curriculum that engages communities by working in their own language and making use of a blend of modern and traditional African methods of learning, such as dialogue, theater, and dance. The program was first launched in 44 Senegalese communities, expanding to 350 by 1994.Prior to 1997, the CEP contained six modules, covering problem-solving skills, health and hygiene, child mortality prevention, financial management, leadership and group dynamics, and feasibility studies for income-generating projects. In 1997, Tostan added a seventh module on human rights and women's health that also included information about the possible health effects of female genital cutting. After going through this module, the women of Malicounda Bambara, a village in western Senegal, decided collectively to abandon the practice of FGC, starting a movement that has since led nearly 9,000 African communities to abandon the practice.
Tostan worked exclusively in Senegal until 1997, when it began implementing the CEP in communities in Burkina Faso in a six-year partnership with the NGO Mwangaza Action, which ultimately resulted in 23 Burkinabe communities declaring their intent to permanently abandon FGC. In 2002, Tostan expanded its programmatic offerings for the first time, implementing an initiative called the Prison Project in a Senegalese prison in Thiès, the third-largest city in Senegal and the then-location of Tostan's headquarters. The Prison Project consists of a modified form of the CEP that aims to provide detainees with the resources to help them to develop valuable income-generating skills, restore contact with their families, and reintegrate smoothly into society, thereby also reducing recidivism rates.
During the 2000s, as demand for its programming grew, Tostan continued to expand, opening national offices in Guinea, The Gambia, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, and Mali, in addition to now-closed offices in Somalia, Sudan, and Djibouti.
In recent years, Tostan has launched two large-scale campaigns, known as the Generational Change in 3 Years Project and the Breakthrough Generation Project, in an effort to promote the empowerment of women and girls and the abandonment of harmful traditional practices in West Africa. During the Generational Change in 3 Years Project, which lasted from 2013 to 2016, Tostan implemented the CEP in 150 communities across Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, and Mauritania, reaching over 9,000 people directly and leading more than 350 communities to abandon FGC, child marriage, and other harmful traditions, in addition to pledging to support human rights. Tostan subsequently launched the Breakthrough Generation Project in 2017, again directly reaching 150 communities over a period of three years in Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, and The Gambia.
Since 2014, Tostan has been in a partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve its monitoring and evaluation systems, and the organization now uses a results framework developed in cooperation with the foundation that measures impacts in five key areas: health, governance, economic empowerment, environment, and education. In 2015, in response to widespread interest in its community-led model, Tostan open the Tostan Training Center in Thies to external participants. At the TTC, it offers a 10-day training program on its approach to community-led development in both English and French for community activists, members of local, national and international organizations and governments, and representatives from academia and the media.
In 2017, Melching transitioned from the position of CEO to become the Creative Director of Tostan, and was succeeded as CEO by Elena Bonometti. Under her leadership, the organization is looking to develop effective scaling models for its programs and training seminars, build upon its organization structures in order to support such a move to scale, continue improving results measurements, and explore further research opportunities by developing partnerships at the national and international levels.
Work on intersecting issues
Although the Tostan program is holistic, Tostan has been widely recognized for its success in accelerating the abandonment of child marriage and female genital cutting, a tradition that has existed for centuries in most parts of Africa. According to UNICEF, FGC is a "self-enforcing social practice" or social norm to which families feel they must conform in order to avoid being ostracized by their community. In general, FGC is performed on young girls between the ages of two and five, though adolescents also often undergo the practice. Type II female genital cutting is the most common type of FGC in West Africa, the region in which Tostan conducts most of its work, though Type I FGC is also performed. Type III FGC, known sometimes as infibulation, is the most severe form and is rare in West Africa.In 1997, Tostan began providing information about the possible health effects of female genital cutting in the CEP in a module covering human rights and women's health. Tostan had at first hesitated to raise the issue of female genital cutting in its programming, believing it to be too sensitive and liable to undermine its work, but insistence from employees in the field eventually led the organization to include information about the practice.
This new information, together with a newfound understanding of their basic human rights, led the women of Malicounda Bambara, a village in western Senegal, to decide collectively to abandon the practice. They declared publicly before Senegalese and international media in June 1997 that they would no longer cut their daughters. Surrounding communities, angry that they had not been consulted and uncertain about the motives the women had for renouncing the practice, reacted with hostility. An imam from the nearby village of Keur Simbara, Demba Diawara, made it clear to Melching and the Tostan staff that such a monumental social change would be difficult for the women of one village alone to sustain. In areas where FGC is practiced, it is common for a girl to marry into another family that lives in a neighboring village. Because not cutting a girl impacts her marriageability, a community that independently abandons FGC without the agreement of surrounding communities effectively ruins its daughters’ prospects for marriage. As a result, ending the practice in a sustainable way requires widespread agreement among communities whose children intermarry.
After learning himself about the risks of the practice, Diawara decided to walk from community to community in the Thiès Region of Senegal, where Malicounda Bambara and Keur Simbara are located, to raise awareness about the dangers of FGC. In February 1998, thanks in large part to his efforts, 13 neighboring villages declared their decision to join the Malicounda Bambara pledge. Since then, Tostan's approach has successfully encouraged nearly 9,000 communities in Africa to abandon both female genital cutting and child/forced marriage, another harmful practice with which FGC is often associated. The government of Senegal has since adopted Tostan's FGC model and continues to apply it in its work to end FGC in the country. As of January 2019, 5,423 formerly practicing communities have publicly abandoned all forms of FGC in Senegal and many more have done the same across West and East Africa. External evaluators have noted that the pledges made are generally respected by a large majority of community members, though some resistance to abandonment is still present in communities that have declared an end to the tradition.
Approach
Tostan states that its approach follows the philosophy of noted Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop, who emphasized that the process of development should be educational for everyone involved in the process, NGO workers and community members alike, and that it should be conducted in a way that makes the fullest possible use of existing knowledge and traditions. Tostan therefore conducts its programming in a way that attempts to respect and build on local context, believing that such an approach enables participants to more easily expand their understanding and develop greater insight into their practices and beliefs. All Tostan sessions are conducted in local languages, and facilitators typically come from the same ethnic group as the community they are serving. To date, Tostan's programs have been implemented in 22 different languages, including Wolof, Serer, Fulani, Soninké, Mandinka, Diola, Sousou, Malinké, Pulaar, Kissi, Guerze, Creole, Bambara, Hassaniya, Serehule, Bamanankan, Somali, Afar, as well as French, English, and Arabic.In order to create a space where participants feel comfortable and safe expressing their opinions freely, Tostan's approach strongly emphasizes democracy and human rights: during the CEP, for example, community members learn about these concepts through ideas that are already present in the community and are visible in their daily lives. In the same vein, Tostan takes a non-judgmental approach when broaching sensitive topics, offering community members the chance to reflect thoughtfully and meaningfully on what they believe and why without self-censoring because of a fear of criticism from outside.