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Impact · Dominican Republic

Dominican Republic, since 2009.

Community prevention. Santo Domingo partner shelters.

Country at a glance
Programs3 shelters · 2 clubs
Daughters in care412
Local staff41
Operating since2009
Country DirectorFaith Wanjiku
412
Daughters in
active care
3
Residential
shelters
2
Community
girls' clubs
96%
Twelve-month
retention rate
On the ground

Where we work in Dominican Republic.

Our Dominican Republic program is anchored in three cities spread across the country's Santo Domingo and southern Dominican Republic. Every site is staffed by Dominican social workers, counsellors, and house mothers, and partnered with local police and county authorities.

01Santo DomingoNational HQ · Intake shelter · 18 staff
02SantiagoRestoration shelter · 2 community clubs · 14 staff
03La RomanaLong-stay shelter · School partnership · 9 staff
Dominican landscape
The southern Dominican RepublicSantiago to La Romana. Highland trade routes that are also trafficking corridors. Our shelters sit at the choke points.
Local leadership

Led by Dominican staff, for Dominican Republic.

Faith Wanjiku
Country Director

Faith Wanjiku

Dominican Republic Country Director · with us since 2012

Faith trained as a clinical social worker at the University of Santo Domingo and spent seven years in county child protective services before joining the Daughter Project. She rebuilt our Santiago intake protocol, opened the La Romana long-stay shelter, and now leads forty-one staff across three sites. She lives in Santo Domingo with her husband and two daughters.

— "We do not rescue girls. We walk them home."
Our model in Dominican Republic

Three stages. One country.

Every Daughter Project country runs the same three-stage model. Here is how it shows up on the ground in Dominican Republic right now.

01

Prevention

Eight community-led girls' clubs in Santiago and La Romana. Weekly curriculum, mentorship from local women, and family-level engagement that stops exploitation before it starts.

14,200Girls equipped
02

Intervention

Twenty-four-hour shelter intake in partnership with the Dominican Republic National Police anti-trafficking unit. Trauma-informed medical, legal, and counselling care from hour one.

412Active in care
03

Restoration

Long-stay therapeutic care, schooling, vocational training, and family reunification with twelve months of follow-up. We stay until she is fully home.

87Reunified last year
Wanjiku
A daughter's story · Santiago

Wanjiku, restored 2022.

From the markets of Santiago to a classroom of her own.

Wanjiku was thirteen when a trafficker offered her family money to send her to Santo Domingo for "school work." She landed in a market stall instead, locked in at night, beaten in the day. A neighbour spotted her through a window and called our Santiago intake line.

Within six hours she was in our shelter. Within six months she was reading again. Within eighteen months she was reunified with an aunt who had been searching for her since she disappeared. Today she is fifteen, in Form Two at a county school, and wants to be a nurse.

— Faith Wanjiku, Country Director
Local partners

We do not work alone.

Every rescue in Dominican Republic is a partnership. These are the agencies, NGOs, and institutions that share the work with us on the ground.

Dominican Republic National Police ANPPCAN World Vision Dominican Republic Daystar University County of Uasin Gishu La Romana County Children's Office Santo Domingo Women's Hospital
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