Sou Digna provides job training, education, and citizenship classes to poor Afro-Brazilian women living in Salvador, Brazil. www.soudigna.org

1. Providing pathways from poverty to
opportunity for women in Salvador, Brazil
Sou Digna/ I Am Worthy
From poverty to opportunity in Salvador, Brazil
Celebrating International Women’s Day -- March 8, 2013
www.soudigna.org

2. Our story…
Sou Digna was founded in 2011 to answer one
community’s call for a way out of poverty for poor
women living in Salvador, Brazil.

3. Sou Digna means “I Am Worthy.” It expresses the aspiration of
poor Afro-Brazilian women to hold their heads high with dignity
in front of their husbands, children, and community.

4. Salvador, Brazil, is a city of over 3 million people, called the
largest African city outside of Africa. African-descent women in
Salvador face the triple discrimination of race, class, and gender,
and there are few ways to escape its relentless poverty.

5. Sou Digna serves women who work as maids, street vendors, store
clerks – or who don’t work at all – trying to improve their economic
status at the same time that they build connections with others.

6. Sou Digna invests in women and girls because they have the most
potential– as mothers, community activists, and social beings– to
be contributors to positive social change. Through women, Sou
Digna improves the quality of life for men and children.

7. Job training
Sou Digna provides training in cake-baking and
technology and supports a new baking cooperative as it
provides women with a means to earn extra income.

8. University Access
Sou Digna provides supplementary education to women wanting to
enter public universities. Through its evening test preparation
class, women are taught all basic subjects and receive mentoring
support.

9. Citizenship
Through weekly citizenship classes, women gain an understanding
about their rights, learn skills that help them navigate parenting and
community engagement, and build connections that support them
outside of Sou Digna.

10. Sou Digna partners with Bahia Street, a program that provides high
quality education to girls ages 6-14. Bahia Street gives poor girls a
pathway to university and middle class professions.

11. Sou Digna is led by women from the community being
served, women who have achieved a university education and are
leaders and activists committed to the rights of women and the
poor.

12. Our Impact
Sou Digna trained over
100 women in 2012.
Former participants
formed a baking
cooperative.
Bahia Street has
graduated hundreds of
young women, with at
least twenty now in
university. Together
they have become the
leading women’s center
in Salvador.

13. “My husband used to hold a knife to my throat to stop me
from going out. He doesn’t do that anymore.”
“My maid income is not enough to live on. With this money, I
am paying to fix our home and investing in my life.”
“This is the first diploma I ever got.
I made a cake for my birthday. It was pretty.”

14. Sou Digna is sustained through an international partnership of
supporters, donors, and volunteers. We work across cultures,
languages, and borders to accompany this community of
women on a journey from poverty to opportunity.

15. Because of Sou Digna, women in Salvador
can say, “Eu sou digna.” I am worthy.
From poverty to opportunity. Join us.
www.soudigna.org