The World as Neighborhood
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Melissa Haley O'Leary, MNO |
Making the World a Better Place,
One Neighborhood at a Time
The July 2010 episode of Future Choices spotlights the best little development organization you never heard of: World Neighbors. Melissa Haley O'Leary joins us to reveal that World Neighbors has for the last 60 years been striving to eliminate hunger, poverty and disease in the most remote villages of Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. World Neighbors partners with villages where people live on less that $1 per day, where chronic hunger and lack of health care are the life that they know.
World Neighbors, Melissa explains, is not about giving away 'stuff,' but rather it's investing in people:
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| World Neighbors works with the poorest of villagers worldwide. | ||
World Neighbors Changes the Lives of Millions of People
World Neighbors has been on the ground in Haiti since 1966 and will be with our Haitian neighbors as long as it takes for their communities to thrive on their own. Click here to learn more about World Neighbors' work in Haiti.
By helping people identify their difficulties and begin prioritizing and solving them, World Neighbors assists them through training and facilitation.
By training leaders in each village who develop skills to solve problems long after World Neighbors has left, World Neighbors achieves lasting change.
World Neighbors takes a big-picture, integrated approach to our work, focusing on the entire community rather than on one issue.
Their approach results in greater community involvement and longer-term impact.
They pride themselves in listening to the people without predetermined ideas of how they should change.
Especially since their overseas staff are always host country nationals, they understand that issues are often interrelated. By removing one obstacle, World Neighbors can help the community open many avenues of opportunity.
When is Future Choices aired in your community?
See Local TV schedule for time and channel in each participating community in Westchester County.
Where World Neighbors Works
Currently, over 500,000 people benefit from World Neighbors 70 programs in 14 countries:
- Mesoamerica/Caribbean – Guatemala, Honduras and Haiti
- Andean South America – Bolivia and Peru
- West Africa – Burkina Faso and Mali
- East Africa – Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda
- South Asia – India, Nepal
- Southeast Asia – Indonesia and Timor Leste
World Neighbors Empowers Women
World Neighbors, Melissa asserts, is not a women's rights organization, per se. However, because of the unique World Neighbors development strategy women are empowered in the community where World Neighbors has been working. A good example of the way this happens may be found in the story about the extent to which World Neighbors transformed the life of a Dalit woman and her family [see p. 23: Case Studies from South Asia].
Melissa explains in her Future Choices interview that typically a community decides to deal first with their economic straits. The frequent course of action involves establishment of a savings and credit association, the responsibility for which falls on the women's shoulders. This brings the women together for weekly meetings when inevitably they turn their attention to their health care needs and strategies for meeting these needs. In Nepal, for instance, the women's cooperative financed a clinic so that they might access obstetric and gynecological care, including family planning.
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"The World As Neighborhood" Part 2 |
"The World As Neighborhood" Part 3 |
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In Part 3 of the video Melissa speaks about WOW! -- Work of Women. This is a membership organization within World Neighbors that mobilizes women in support of a better life for their counterparts in isolated villages throughout the world. Through education, advocacy and fundraising, WOW! members enhance the work of World Neighbors.
A engaging example of WOW's educational and advocacy efforts may found in the December 2008 monograph: "Human Rights are Women’s Right."
Melissa Haley O'Leary is the Leadership Gifts Coordinator for the Eastern Region of the United States for World Neighbors, the non-profit international development organization which is spotlighted in "The World As Neighborhood," the Future Choices episode airing during month of July 2010.
She joined World Neighbors in 2007. In July of 2009, Melissa led a group of donors on a two-week journey to observe and experience World Neighbors work in Kenya and Tanzania. She references this trip in her Future Choices interview. Read MORE about Melissa.
This page last updated July 13, 2010 6:25 .