Impact Report 2021

Since our founding, The Fuller Project has reported the ways in which US and global policymakers fail to listen to, protect or serve women during warfare — reporting deeply informed by our editors’ work on the ground in Afghanistan and grounded in the expertise

of local contributors. In anticipation of the US withdrawal, we began working with the women- led Afghan newsroom Rukhshana Media several months before the Taliban’s rapid return to power to document what the end of the war would mean for the women living through it.

We are sharing their firsthand accounts in our ongoing series, “Ending America’s Forever War: What is next for Afghan women?” In the 15 dispatches we have published so far, ordinary women — students, journalists, dressmakers, pharmacists — have spoken out to tell their own stories about life under the Taliban, creating an invaluable archive for our audience today and for future generations to understand this crucial time in history.

Some of these women, like Elhan Husseini (names changed to protect women’s security), tried to flee their homeland for their lives when Kabul fell, braving sewage and barbed wire in desperate attempts to get a flight to safety. “I have written this experience,” says Elhan, “to show the world that we, the people of Afghanistan, are already oppressed. Please do not crush us more.” In “What Afghanistan’s Women Stand to Lose,” Afghan journalist Zahra Nader and Fuller

Project contributing editor Amie Ferris-Rotman worked quickly to put the peril and fear for women during the fall of Kabul on record. Published with Rukhshana Media and TIME, the story was also highlighted on the cover of TIME’s print edition. It reveals how women who have stayed in the country face different perils: Nargis Omar spent years proving to her family that women can excel academically and professionally, and was working with the women of many different villages as an agricultural engineer. Now, she faces forced marriage as the second wife of a relative who joined the Taliban along with most of her family. For Afghan women, she writes, “This fall was not just the fall of a country, it was the fall of our aspirations and achievements, for which we worked for 20 years.”

We remain committed to amplifying the voices of women like these around the world, centering them in their own history and following their stories for the long run.

“The collaboration between Rukhshana Media and The Fuller Project has brought the Afghan women’s narrative to a wider audience, an audience that Rukshana wouldn’t be able to reach alone. Over the past two decades, Afghan women weren’t really telling our own stories; they were told by international correspondents and Afghan men. Working for organizations that center women’s voices is critical because they give us a platform to talk about what is really happening to us in our daily lives, and how women are being affected by politics and war

— where women define what is news and what is worth covering from our perspective.”

— Zahra Nader, Editor, Rukhshana Media, and Contributing Reporter, The Fuller Project

Though NYCHA housing has long been plagued with a lack of heat and hot water, lead, mold, leaks and pests, providers in the roughly 400 child care centers within these complexes say the city needs to pay special attention to the danger these conditions pose to children.

Our story was mentioned in POLITICO’s New York Playbook and republished by Chalkbeat, Patch and Gotham Weekly. Yvette Ho, director of the child care center at the Jacob Riis Neighborhood Settlement, told us that the day our story ran, the center was contacted by several people within building management to respond to longstanding issues — though they started potentially dangerous repairs in the child care center without warning, piercing the wall of a classroom in use with large drills. “That is exactly what I meant when I spoke about systemic issues,” she writes. “Thank you again for listening to our story and for bringing attention to our issues.”

“At @THECITYNY we’ve been documenting lead, mold, and busted elevators in NYCHA housing complexes since we launched. Now, thanks to @jessica_m_wash and @FullerProject we are able to better cover impacts for kids and those who care for them.”

— Nic Dawes, Executive Director, THE CITY

Reader support

Since we published our early investigation with the Associated Press into the devastation the pandemic brought to supply chains, Alexandra Orozco — who was laid off after four years by JCPenney in 2020, and featured in our story — says she has received an outpouring of support. Readers have reached out to tell her she has inspired them not to give up after losing their own jobs, and supported her new business selling makeup and jewelry.

The story was shared hundreds of times on social media by notable environmentalists — including Leonardo DiCaprio, who shared the story to his audience of more than nine million Twitter followers and 19 million Facebook fans.

One 23-year-old mother from Haiti was dropped off on the side of the road along the San Diego-Tijuana border three days after giving birth — just 25 minutes after she was discharged from the hospital.

Since publication, all of the mothers whose cases we reviewed have been paroled back into the US, where they can pursue their claims for asylum. The Biden administration has issued guidance to Customs and Border Patrol that “public health and humanitarian interests may weigh in favor of an exception from [Title 42] for mothers who have given birth while in CBP custody and require medical attention.”

The Fuller Project saw an urgent need for timely reporting by Indian journalists living through the surge themselves, particularly outside major cities. The resulting series, “Gasping for Breath: Women Provide a Glimpse Into India’s COVID-19 Disaster,” exclusively features the work of reporters from India and India-administered Kashmir. They documented the crisis from Tamil Nadu to Uttar Pradesh, centering the voices of the country’s most marginalized: women and transgender people, particularly those also oppressed on the basis of religion, caste and class.

Their stories drew a wide audience to The Fuller Project’s site and held as our most-read content through April and May, demonstrating the hunger for voices missing from the larger media landscape. NBC Asian America took notice of our work, asking to partner as we gathered more stories from the ground. Together, we put out a call to the South Asian diaspora in the United States for tributes to the women they knew in their home countries battling COVID-19 on the front lines — or fighting to survive themselves.

They have increasingly turned to TikTok after the platform’s popularity exploded last year, opening up about their lives and working conditions. Many of them say they are overworked, sexually harassed, discriminated against, and the pandemic has further diminished the minimal freedoms they once had.

Published in The New York Times online and in print, our story was widely shared among migrant rights and human rights groups, including The National Domestic Workers Alliance. We created a TikTok-styled explainer video for social media, our most-watched IGTV video to date, to give our readers essential context for Ms. Dama’s story while informing and engaging broad audiences beyond our normal remit, such as young readers likely to be on TikTok themselves. Several New York Times readers reached out to Brenda on TikTok after publication to learn more about her life as a foreign domestic worker. “All I saw after that story was positivity from people,” she says.

In partnership with the Guardian, Fuller Project reporter Louise Donovan profiled Hawa Bah, an FGM survivor and asylum seeker who is using her own experiences to connect the African diaspora in the UK with pilot clinics specializing in care for FGM survivors. Since publication, many NHS healthcare professionals have contacted our reporter for more information on these clinics, spreading the word through their networks.

After our story ran and was featured in the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast, dozens of readers and listeners asked how they could support Rowena, one of the women profiled

in our story, and many offered to pay for her flight home. The Philippine Embassy in Bahrain intervened, and helped Rowena leave her employer. Embassy staff moved Rowena and two other women with the same employer to the Embassy, where they were given food and shelter until flights home could be arranged. The Philippine Ambassador to Bahrain confirmed that they recovered unpaid wages from Rowena’s employer, and that our reporting “brought to light” Rowena’s circumstances and “paved the way” for the Embassy to intervene. Rowena was repatriated to the Philippines on March 5.

Fabletics immediately suspended all operations with the factory, flew a “senior leader” to Lesotho within days to conduct an investigation and promised to keep providing workers’ full pay during this period. The owners of Hippo Knitting launched an independent audit and internal investigation, placing the factory’s HR manager on administrative leave — she has since been let go.

The investigation was published in print and online in partnership with TIME, as well as in print in the Lesotho Times, the country’s most widely read newspaper. Since publication, police say they’re investigating at least three cases of sexual offense and public indecency at Hippo Knitting. “There are more allegations,” a police spokesperson told The Fuller Project, “though the victims are skeptical about reporting in fear of losing their jobs.”

At least 50 employees have now stepped forward about abuses. According to the Independent Democratic Union of Lesotho, it was our reporting that made these workers feel safe enough to speak up.

Because of our story, Hippo Knitting, Fabletics and IDUL have announced a formal plan to combat gender-based violence at the factory including career development and management opportunities for women, their representation in factory committees and trade union structures, a toll-free number workers can call for assistance and a memorandum of understanding signed with both the Ministry of Labour and Employment and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Relations. Hippo Knitting and Fabletics have also launched a corrective action plan for the factory that includes a new grievance procedure for reporting workplace violations, a new anti-intimidation and anti-retaliation policy and a new process for non-invasive searches that includes dedicated privacy screening areas.