CARE's Strategy for Women
CARE, the well-known humanitarian organization fighting global poverty, is widely acclaimed for its commitment to delivers emergency aid to survivors of war and natural disasters, the famous 'CARE packages.
In the September 2010 TV episode of Future Choices, Caring About Women, we discover a new CARE focus on working alongside poor women. CARE's change in strategy derives from their observation that, equipped with the proper resources, women have the power to help whole families and entire communities escape poverty. Women are at the heart of CARE's community-based efforts to fight global poverty.
Much of this episode was filmed at CARE's annual advocacy conference held in Washington, DC, in May.
Caring About Women may now be seen on YouTube.
CARE notes that:
Half a million women die each year from largely preventable complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. These deaths disproportionately afflict the most vulnerable women and children in the poorest countries. CARE believes it is past time to change these tragic statistics. It is time to recognize that progress against poverty will be thwarted as long as women are dying in the most productive years of their lives. It is time to honor and fulfill all human rights equally.
Mothers Matter
CARE has nurtured a vibrant advocacy effort to effect policy changes which will enhance their work in poverty reduction. Their current policy and advocacy priority centers on women's empowerment. And central to that is the need to improve maternal health care in developing world: to meet Millennium Development Goal 5 by reducing by three-quarters the maternal mortality ratio by 2015.
To this end, CARE urges us all to become vocal in our support of the Global Moms Act, which was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on May 11, 2010 by Congresswoman Lois Capps.
Global Moms Act
Global Moms Act is designed to reduce mortality and improve the health of mothers and their newborns around the world. Passage of this legislation would make an enormous difference in helping to save the lives of millions of women and children each year. It would mean that women in the far-reaches of our world would have a far better chance of carrying their planned pregnancies to term and to experience safe delivery of healthy babies. By helping women survive childbirth, we ensure healthier families, communities and nations.
CARE asks that everyone who believes that "Mothers Matter," contact our Congressional representatives to let them know that their constituents firmly believe in international women's health. There is no doubt that "Mothers Matter," and therefore we want to see the passage of the Global Moms Act this year.
When is Future Choices aired in your community?
See Local TV schedule for time and channel in each participating community in Westchester County.
CARE's roots in disaster relief
In Part 1 of the video Adotei Akwei,
CARE's Deputy Director
for Government Relations, takes us back to CARE's roots six decades ago providing disaster relief in Europe in the aftermath of World War II. He explains that as CARE broadened its mission from its famous "CARE packages" to poverty alleviation, their experience showed them that empowerment of women benefits whole communities.
CARE Across the World
In Part 2 of the video Ben Schwartz, CARE's Senior Director for Health Programs, took us on a verbal tour of Nepal and Bangladesh where CARE's strategy for improving maternal health is truly holistic. CARE's maternal health program, he explains, is not all medical nor all technical. The way CARE helps the communities improves upgrade their health systems improves equity, increase social justice, change harmful gender practices and gender norms so that the whole community benefits, not just the women.
Also in Part 1 we travel to Peru where CARE is at the forefront of a movement to safeguard women's health during pregnancy and childbirth. The extraordinary success of that program in which maternal deaths fell by more than 50% has huge implications for the entire country. As the director of the Ayacucho Regional Medical Center explains:
The mother is the pillar of the family...When we save the life a mother, we are actually saving a society. |MORE
We also visit with Goretti Nyabenda of Burundi who has worked with CARE programs to change her own life and the life of her family and community. Many of you probably first met Goretti in Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s book, Half the Sky, and perhaps you remember her photograph on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine special issue on women’s rights in August 2009. Talking about her own life story of building a better life starting with participation in a CARE-organized microfinance program, she emphasizes the liberating and empowering role played in her life by the family planning care she was permitted thanks to her improved economic condition.
Call to Action
Helene Gayle, President of CARE, pronounces in Part 3 that the death of a woman in childbirth is inexcusable when we have ample, simple, low-cost measure that could save her life. There is no reason whatsoever that in the 21st century one woman should die in childbirth around the world every minute.
Her rallying call is echoed by Katie Porter, Senior Policy Advocate for CARE, who calls every voter who cares about women to take the message to their Congressional representatives that passage of the Global Moms Act will bring the succor which women in the developing world need so badly. It will establish the message that Mothers Matter -- that every woman in every corner of the world shall enjoy safe pregnancies and deliveries. The result will be healthier mothers, children and families, who will build more vibrant communities and nations.
CARE calls the Global Moms Act the "First Comprehensive Maternal Health Legislation to Improve the Health of Women and Newborns Around the World." |MORE
Debra Cooper, Senior Field Coordinator for Policy and Advocacy in CARE's Northeast Region, brings the message home to Westchester residents urging us to contact our Representative, Nita Lowey, long a supporter of women's health rights, ensure that this important bill becomes law in 2010.
Updates on CARE's Advocacy Efforts
Updates on CARE's advocacy efforts may be obtained at any time from the New York Regional Advocacy Office:
32 W 39th Street
3rd Floor
New York, NY 10018
212-686-3110
Another important source of current information is, of course, CARE's website, www.care.org, especially "Katie's Blog."
Power to the Women Through Microfinance
CARE's strategy for empowering women through microfinance program's is referenced in Nicholas Kristof's 9/9/10 column in the New York Times: The Healers of 9/11. Kristof recounts the accomplishments of two 9/11 widows who launched education and poverty-alleviation projects for Afghan women as part of their own healing process. Their organization, Beyond the 11th, is about "to sponsor a microfinance program [in Afghanistan] through CARE...[and] to train attendants to help reduce deaths in childbirth.
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