History

Fundación Tropicalia founded the SNSI summer camp in 2013. During this pilot phase, we served 100 girls aged 10 to 15 and soon learned that 15% of our campers were already married, divorced, had been pregnant, or were mothers; we quickly realized that our preventive curriculum was reaching these girls too late.  In 2014, we adjusted the camper age group to 9 through 12 years old and also increased the number of participants to 250. With this increase came additional funding as we introduced a company-wide fundraiser and matching-gift program with the Cisneros Organization in the United States, working with fiscal sponsors Friends of Educa and Dominican Foundation.

In 2015 we launched the SNSI website and launched Friends of Fundación Tropicalia in partnership with our fiscal sponsor The Ocean Foundation, effectively allowing us to fundraise online.  By 2016, we began SNSI’s social media accounts and attracted new funding partners, raising our international profile.

Our volunteer program has also seen an evolution. During the first year of camp we worked with local volunteers and schoolteachers. As the camp grew, and to widen the girls’ interaction with outside resources, we began recruiting volunteers from Santo Domingo--mostly professional Dominican women who take personal vacation time to be with our girls. Their participation adds unexpected and tremendous value to SNSI.

In 2017, we reached a record of more than 300 girls in three camp sessions. In addition, we launched our Ambassador’s Network to support fundraising and awareness efforts. In November of the same year, and in commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, we organized the conference, Gender Equality in Dominican Republic: Rights and Opportunities, which received support from UN Women and the Dominican Ministry of Women.

In 2019, we began structuring our camp content around a specific theme and objective – My identity, wealth of my people. Establishing a conceptual theme to our program enabled us to increase girls’ engagement, awareness and acceptance of their value, culture, identity and ultimately their self-esteem as they move toward becoming agents of change for their communities and families.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we restructured camp in 2020  in order to accommodate the realities of social distancing and launched SNSI in a Box, delivering the magic of camp directly to our girls’ doorsteps and helping them overcome the challenges presented by extended periods of confinement and isolation. Each box explored a specific topic that’s especially relevant to our girls’ lives during the pandemic, like how to improve their biosafety, define their long term goals, and understand their rights and options for reporting abuse or violence.

Today, Soy nina, soy importante is a box, a camp, an awareness campaign. We are a multi-tiered initiative that supports at-risk girls with a simple mission: protect their childhood, guide them in making timely life choices, and educate them and their community regarding their rights in order to achieve their dreams.