Happy International Women’s Day
International Women’s Day is celebrated on March 8th around the world, and is a recognized holiday in many countries including Vietnam and Russia, reports CARE Canada’s website dedicated to the Day.
The importance of the “role of women in international development is the reason CARE Canada has joined in with activities around International Women’s Day,” Kieran Green, their Communications Director, told me. Over the years, CARE has “found that women play the most powerful role in fighting poverty”, Kieran explained. “A woman who is empowered is more likely to send her kids to school and make sure her family gets proper health care”. When women in developing countries become empowered economically, the rates of domestic violence go down. The effects are enormous and that’s why CARE focuses on women, and it’s also what they’re trying to help people realize on International Women’s Day this year.
Kieran also mentioned that when CARE Canada realized there was no symbol for International Women’s Day, they decided to resurrect “the old folk tradition of when you want to remember something that’s important you tie a piece of string around your finger”. It’s similar to the idea presented by the red ribbon for AIDS and the pink ribbon for breast cancer. “So for this year we’re calling on Canada and hopefully we’ll see it in the years to come spread around the world, that for International Women’s Day as a reminder of everything that women have achieved and for what they have yet to achieve, tie a string around your finger.”
CARE Canada’s International Women’s Day website has a video showing Fergie, Duchess of York, wearing a string, as well as some women in Afghanistan, Haiti and elsewhere. “String is available everywhere, and it’s cheap. It’s easy to tie a string around your finger,” Kieran added. He’s right – tying a string around my finger by myself took less than a minute. I may have a friend make it a fancy bow.
CARE Canada has a great website dedicated to International Women’s Day. Enjoy the Day, and tell your friends about it. It’s a good opportunity to celebrate the social, economic and political successes of women past and present. Yet it is also a day to think of the millions of women and girls worldwide who continue to fight for justice, equality and peace, the website reminds us.
Happy International Women’s Day!
Adapting to Climate Change
In the shadow of the climate changes that are occurring, and the lack of a binding agreement emerging from Copenhagen, some leading humanitarian groups are seeking ways that people may be able to adapt to the early stages of climate change.
Angie Dazé, Senior Climate Change Adaptation Advisor for CARE International, gave me a personal interview today. She specializes in community-based adaptations, trying to understand the effects of climate change and what the most vulnerable of our world’s people might do to survive the early stages of climate change.
Empower the Most Vulnerable People
A whole community is not affected equally by climate shock. In pastoral communities, men often manage the livestock while women are responsible for fetching water, tending the garden, and ensuring the family has food. “What we often find is that women tend to have a higher level of vulnerability because of their role in the home,” Angie told me. “In agricultural-based communities, in particular, food and water become very difficult within a changing climate. So women’s traditional roles and responsibilities become even harder,” Angie explained. Issues related to climate change vulnerability can be social or political. Although women traditionally have limited decision-making power, when humanitarian managers “empower women to have more power in decisions, they tend to make good decisions that will help the family to manage the resources in a way that will reduce their risk.” But it’s not just women. “It’s making sure that the different members of the household have the skills and the information that they need to play the role that they need to play most effectively.”
Get the Right Information
One of climate change’s biggest problems is the uncertainty of what, how and when changes are going to occur. CARE managers “help people to have a broader range of options open to them, so they’re in a position to make decisions to manage the risks. And also to ensure they have the information they need to make those decisions,” Angie told me. This information includes seasonal forecasts, what crops might be better suited to a particular climate condition, and early warnings for droughts or storms.
Find Practical Solutions
While empowering women is an important part of an overall strategy of making a community more resilient, CARE also works closely with all members of the community, and local organizations, NGO’s, and government institutions. Together, they come up with practical solutions such as different agricultural practices – when rainfall decreases, it’s essential to keep as much moisture in the soil as possible. CARE is launching a program in Africa in which they do small scale adaptations in different communities and countries to find out what works. That learning will then be applied widely, both at the community and broader levels, such as trying to influence national policy frameworks. The focus is always on giving the most vulnerable people a voice and ensuring that the potentially large sums of money that will be donated to stricken areas actually reach the people who need it. It’s also “building skills and new practices and always providing information,” Angie added.
The Future
Ultimately, the best solution is for countries to sign a binding agreement to reduce emissions and stop climate change. Adaptation is most hopeful for our current level of climate change, but if it continues to grow (as is likely after Copenhagen), livelihoods are going to become impossible and mass migrations will likely occur. If that happens, we will be facing a whole new set of social and political hot spots.
The silver lining to the recent Copenhagen conference may be the number of average people who became involved and who care about the effect that climate change is having, and will have, on our planet, its people and its animals. So please keep caring and helping – You’re needed!
Tags: adaptation, Africa, CARE, Climate Change, Copenhagen, empowering women, global warming, Humanitarian
MEDA Makes Positive Impact in Pakistan
I was excited to have a personal interview this week with Helen Loftin, Mennonite Economic Development Association’s (MEDA)’s regional project manager in Pakistan. She says the work they’re doing has linkages with the book Half the Sky, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn, which is currently enjoying some much deserved media coverage.
Results of MEDA’s programs in Afghanistan and Pakistan prove that when women have a means of income and control over their personal income, the return on investment is phenomenal for their family, community and country.
Currently, Helen is involved with three of MEDA’s ongoing programs in the embellished materials (hand embroidered fabric) sector. These initiatives give particularly marginalized women, who are traditionally homebound, important economic opportunities, linking them to markets to create an income. With homebound women, the solution was to create a woman to woman sales network. Once the women have an income, they are able to invest it – they educate their children (including their daughters), buy better shoes, buy assets for the house such as a radio, or acquire more income-generating assets such as livestock. Some women have purchased a motorcycle for their family to use for transport to and from school, and for business opportunities, even though few women use it themselves.
Helen has observed a fantastic leap of confidence in the women involved in the projects. “The glory of this job is witnessing the effect that this has on the women in terms of their carriage, the way in which they engage with other members of their groups, and ultimately in their communities,” reports Helen. They become a role model for their children and other women.
As well, as the book suggests, empowering the women lessens terrorism. The women are their children’s largest influence, and the kids are with their mothers for all of the first seven or so years of their life. “If the family itself has a business that is viable and growing and shows economic promise, that gives the family something worth holding onto and building upon,” explained Helen. The communities in which MEDA works line the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. A family with no other choice for survival might send a child or father off for $5 a day to carry anything anyone asks them to back and forth across the border. If you can build something for them to hang onto, that shows hope and gives them dignity, they will engage in that and defend it – rejecting outside influences of things they know are not right, reports Helen.
Coming from a family business herself, Helen has worked in the private sector in southern Ontario, and has an MBA. The MBA led to an internship with CARE in India that was her opportunity to test if international economic development work was a romantic ideal or a good match. Her internship, linking fledgling enterprises to interested multinationals, proved this was where she wanted to be. So, for the last 3 ½ years, she has worked with MEDA.
Part of MEDA’s success in Pakistan relies on the word spreading through the communities. MEDA links women new to the program to the marketplace in a culturally acceptable manner and most women just run with it. Although MEDA workers with western perspectives sometimes have trouble grappling with the depth of the need and the urgency to do something positive, the work is exciting and rewarding.
And while some women keep their business as a very small family venture, other women become real business people. Some are so enterprising they no longer need MEDA. They understand competition, and don’t want to share their numbers or the full story on how the business is doing. Although the humanitarian vocational workers are thrilled by the women’s success, it can be frustrating when annual program reports are due!
For more information about MEDA, or to donate, please visit their website.
Tags: CARE, empowering women, Half the Sky, Humanitarian, MEDA, Pakistan, women
Bringing Hope to Families in the Developing World
Recently, CARE Canada called. “Would you like to support our program and for $32 buy a pair of chickens for a family in the developing world?” they asked. “Your donation will be matched 3 for 1 by the Canadian Government.”
Promptly, my $32 was on its way to CARE. It inspired me to spread the word about this initiative, and at the same time crystallized what had been on my mind for months. So, welcome to this blog, where I’m excited to give a greater voice to those who are working to find or implement solutions to our planet’s problems.
Here’s the scoop on CARE Canada’s chickens program, which turns
out to be the first step of a much larger and more complex international humanitarian effort.
When people pay for chickens through phone queries or the CAREgift catalogue, the money supports programs such as the Kabul Humanitarian Assistance for Widows program in Afghanistan, Kieran Green of CARE Canada explained. Afghan widows have little means of income to support their family. The chickens provide the widows with eggs to feed their family, and then eggs and young chickens that they can sell to other people in their village. And that’s a huge step, which takes care of the basic needs of life for the women and their families.
Courtesy: CARE Canada
Then, implementing a humanitarian Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs program, CARE continues working with the women. Once feeding themselves and their family is eased in the widows’ minds, CARE provides vocational training in a commercially valuable skill such as cell phone repair, commercial baking or sewing, all of which are in demand in the Afghan jobs marketplace. Once trained, the women get CARE’s help in either starting a business or getting a job. So when you buy a pair of chickens, you “empower the women to start moving from vulnerability to independence”, Green reports.
Waves of economic and social benefits ripple from the widows into their villages. Eventually, villagers can support programs such as CARE’s Village Savings and Loans, a microfinance group.
The Kabul Widows program is currently working with approximately 1,800 Afghan widows. Since the CAREgift catalogue was launched in December 2008, supporters have purchased 420 pairs of chickens through the catalogue.
A slight correction over the original posting is needed here. CIDA matches the chicken funds three to one, and the vocational training funds one to one, so your donation is multiplied and does more good than if it was standalone. If you’d like to help, you can pay for chickens through the CAREgifts Livelihoods page on their website. If you’d like to support a vocational training program for 2,000 Afghan women, check out CARE Canada’s Afghanistan Challenge where CARE displays its interlinking attitude by partnering with Rotary International, MEDA, WUSC and the Canadian Government.
In future posts, I’ll look at some other solutions, as well as ways that we can all make a difference. I look forward to discovering where this blog goes, and welcome you to join me on the journey.
Tags: CARE Canada, CAREgift, charitable gifts, empowering women, Humanitarian, MEDA, Rotary International, WUSC
