Tostan (meaning "breakthrough" in Wolof) is a US-registered 501(c)(3) 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 (CEP), 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 (CEP), 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 (FGC). 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 (2003), The Gambia (2006), Mauritania (2007), Guinea-Bissau (2008), and Mali (2009), in addition to now-closed offices in Somalia, Sudan, and Djibouti.