Some excerpts below, the full piece here.

On this Mother’s Day, let’s not only reach for flowers and dinners but also think of how we might make motherhood itself a bit happier.

One answer would be to confront the disease that kills more children than any other around the world. Quick, what do you think that might be? Hint: It’s not diarrheal disease (the No. 2 killer), malaria, measles or AIDS…

Many Americans doubt whether foreign aid is effective, and it’s true that helping people is harder than it looks. Yet health programs have a particularly strong record (as do education and business-related initiatives like microfinance). One result of health campaigns is that the number of children dying by their fifth birthday has been cut in half since 1960, from 20 million annually to less than 10 million.

Children with AIDS and malaria already have advocates, so anyone looking for a cause should grab pneumonia and run with it. Think of it not as a grim and depressing initiative, but as potentially a happy turnaround opportunity, for these kids’ lives can be so breathtakingly easy to save.

-Virginia Simmons

Hello ONE members,

Happy Mother’s Day!

As a mother myself, I understand the importance of making motherhood safe and keeping children alive here at home and around the world. Saving the lives of mothers and children in developing countries must be a top priority for this Congress and the Obama Administration. With 25,000 children dying everyday in poor nations, it is vital we reinvigorate America’s commitment to reducing child mortality and maternal deaths. But to do this effectively, Congress and the administration must develop a robust strategy to reshape our bilateral relationships and redefine our nation’s international assistance investments.

Every year, more than 9 million children under age five die needlessly from preventable or treatable diseases. As many as 6 million of these deaths could be prevented with simple, affordable interventions, including antibiotics, immunizations, bed nets, exclusive breastfeeding, vitamins, good nutrition and clean water.

Every year as least 536,000 women die from pregnancy related causes. Ninety-nine percent of these deaths occur in the developing world.

It is critical for the global community to go further to keep mothers and children in the world’s poorest countries alive and healthy—before, during, and after childbirth.

To renew our country’s leadership through a comprehensive global health strategy, I introduced the Newborn, Child, and Mother Survival Act of 2009 (H.R.1410), along with Congressman Dave Reichert, during International Women’s Day last month. Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, M.D., who chairs Save the Children’s Survive to 5 Campaign, has endorsed my bill. Advocacy groups, including U.S. Coalition for Child Survival, U.S. Fund for UNICEF and the Global Action for Children, have also coalesced around this policy shift to commit to proven, low-cost, highly effective techniques for life-saving interventions, establish a special task force to reduce child mortality and maternal deaths and authorize funding for appropriate health programs in 60 poor countries.

The fact that millions of children are dying every year because they are being born to poor parents in poor countries is shameful. The fact that thousands of women die needlessly from during pregnancy and childbirth is appalling. These deaths are caused from a lack of political will. Now is the time for America to lead the world and make an investment that will save lives, restore our damaged image in the world, and create hope and opportunity across the planet. Or, Congress and the American people can continue to do what we are doing as the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth and let more moms and children die.

The choice is ours.

Congresswoman Betty McCollum (MN-4) is co-founder of the e Congressional Global Health Caucus and serves on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the State Department and Foreign Operations.

Excerpts from Mark Dybul’s post, full piece here:

Some of us in the United States might be preparing to celebrate Mother’s Day with a backyard party and are worried about pesky mosquitoes after rains across the country. We should consider ourselves lucky to view mosquitoes as pests: in much of the world, mosquitoes cause malaria and malaria causes around 500 million illnesses and more than 1 million deaths each year.

Malaria is particularly devastating in Africa, where it kills a child every 30 seconds — several by the time you finish reading this posting. Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable because pregnancy reduces a woman’s immunity to malaria, making her more susceptible to infection and increasing the risk of illness, severe anemia and death. For the child, maternal malaria increases the risk of stillbirth, premature delivery and low birth weight. And 80 percent of malaria deaths are among children under 5. Malaria is a major cause of maternal and child death.

Excerpts from Sarah Brown’s post, full piece here:

I’m starting to see more and more discussion on the blogs and in women’s magazines about third wave feminism. It’s like those of us lucky enough to benefit from our mother’s efforts to urge and discover greater freedoms for women are suddenly all thinking ‘so now what?’

For me, the discussions of new feminism give us a chance to talk about one of the great insights of the old sort: that women without economic power in the end tend to be denied social, political and personal power too. So if we seriously want our century to be a women’s one, we need to think about what injustices remain for women in the developing world.

I listened recently to the group of African First Ladies gathered together for a health summit in the US and watched them work out how to build their programs and figure out how to put maternal health at the heart of what they do. They recognized readily that this is the keystone to addressing everything else. At some point we must change how we measure our existing work – our programs for international development, for education for all, for combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and polio, for economic empowerment and cultural change. We need to know how well we are doing on maternal mortality, or we won’t know how well we are doing in bringing real justice.

-Margaret McDonnell

Excerpts below, full piece here

Each May, we celebrate and honor mothers. The treasure of motherhood is something that people of every political philosophy and walk of life can agree on. But despite this veneration of motherhood, giving birth can still be dangerous, especially in places where it is difficult to access healthcare.

Every minute of every day, a woman somewhere in the world dies as a result of pregnancy or childbirth–amounting to more than half a million fatalities each year. In developing nations, a woman’s lifetime risk of dying from reproductive problems is as high as one in seven, and problems with pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of the disease burden among women.

But the problem is far from isolated to the developing world. While the average risk of a woman dying in childbirth is 1 in 8000 for industrialized countries, the risk in the United States is much higher: 1 in 4800. In fact, the U.S. ranks 41st in the world in terms of maternal mortality.

-Margaret McDonnell, US NGO Partnerships & Faith Relations Team

Check out the first post “Leading the Way to Make Mothers Day Every Day” by Secretary Donna Shalala and UNICEF Director Ann Veneman.

Excerpts below, full piece here

On this Mother’s Day, we celebrate the women around the world who gave us life. We appreciate the untold sacrifices they made so we could be healthy and happy. We recognize all that they have done outside our families to build better, safer and more prosperous communities, nations and world.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the resource-poor developing countries where women play a critical role in breaking the cycle of poverty.

Unfortunately, many women and their families in these parts of the world don’t have much to celebrate this Mother’s Day. The loss of life from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth continues at alarming rates.

Every minute a woman from these regions dies in pregnancy or childbirth. Last year, that totaled more than 536,000 women, leaving behind families devastated by a loss that in most cases could have been prevented. But the tragedy doesn’t stop there. Last year, more than 3.7 million newborns died, 75 percent within seven days of birth. They, too, would almost always survive, if there was access to basic health care services that we often take for granted here in the United States.

-Margaret McDonnell, US NGO Partnerships & Faith Relations Team

Did you know that more children drop out of school in first or second grade than in any other year in most low-income countries?

If we are to achieve Millennium Development Goal #2 to make sure all children get an education, we need to do a better job of preparing children to go to school and stay in school.

Save the Children’s 10th annual State of the World’s Mothers report, released today, focuses on the link between early childhood development and future success in school. The report finds that millions of children are not prepared to succeed in school.

We need to do more than just teach ABCs and 1-2-3s. Eighty-five percent of brain development occurs before age 3. It’s clear we need to start earlier, and be smarter, to ensure a quality education for all children.

Mothers and families today are juggling child-rearing with work and threats brought on by poverty, AIDS, displacement and more. They’re doing some wonderful things for their children every day, but they often need extra help to help their children overcome the challenges they face.

It’s not complicated. There are simple, low-cost activities to keep children safe, healthy and learning. And, these activities are virtually the same, whether families live in the mountain villages of Nepal or the cattle ranches of Uganda. For example, mothers and care givers can read to their children or if no one can read, families can tell stories and rhyme with their children; and they can name things babies see and hear.

Do these programs work? Absolutely. For example, all illustrated in this video, in Nepal, more than 95 percent of children who had early learning opportunities went on to primary school, compared to 75 percent of non-participating children. And, in the Philippines, children who participated in early childhood development programs had a 5 to 10 percent school drop out rate, compared to the national average of 50 percent.

So, why are early childhood development activities not a part of every young child’s life? Lack of political will. We need commitment and investments at all levels, beginning at home, but also on the local, national and global level, to put children on a path to school success.

Our report’s School Success Index for Developing Countries, a ranking of 100 countries on how well prepared their children are to succeed in school, shows that political will and commitment to early childhood development can make a bigger difference than a nation’s GDP. Some of the top ranking countries, such as Cuba and Armenia, are relatively poor, but these countries have made a commitment to ensure that young children reach their full potential in school.

You can help! Go here to learn about the many ways you can get involved, which includes encouraging Congress and the Obama administration to back $1 billion for basic education in developing countries.

Through my job, I travel to a lot of the poorest villages around the globe. It’s wonderful to see babies and toddlers in early learning programs singing, laughing, playing and getting smarter every day. But, it’s what you hear from mothers and families that sticks with you most.

I’m reminded of the illiterate dalit mothers in western Nepal pictured in our online photo essay who recently told us that they send their children to early childhood programs so they can learn to read and write, do well in school and be someone in life.

What greater gift can we give moms around the world this Mothers’ Day?

-Chloe O’Gara, Associate Vice President of Education and Child Development, Save the Children

I’d like to introduce you to a special woman I met in Ghana. Rose Adjei is 39 and married with two children. She was Opportunity’s first client in her community, forming a Trust Group of 26 other women living in poverty who wanted to start businesses. (Visit http://www.optinnow.org for more information on this lending methodology.) With her first loan of $25 in 1998, Rose started selling groceries on a tabletop. Today, she is the proud owner of a grocery store and a Kente products shop, and employs seven young men to weave the kente cloth. She is repaying her 14th loan from Opportunity, this one for almost $2,000. With proceeds from her business, Rose has been able to send her children to the best schools in her area.

Rose Ajdei, an Opportunity International client, at Rose’s shop in Bonwire Ghana.

I invite you to visit OptINnow to learn more about Opportunity’s women clients, their businesses and their communities. There, you also can check out the heartwarming Global Opportunity Quilt sponsored by the Women’s Opportunity Network. This Mother’s Day, I’m purchasing tribute patches on the virtual quilt to honor special women in my life and to give a hand-up to women who need it the most. I can choose from several beautiful Mother’s Day patches by artist Dawn Feller, and then write a tribute that can be read by everyone visiting the virtual quilt. Each woman I honor receives an email with a link to view the quilt plus a gift card that can be used to help another woman with a life-changing loan at OptINnow. It’s fun to visit the quilt (I must admit…I do it several times daily) to see all the wonderful messages that have been posted.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the women in the world who make a difference!

-Ruth-Anne Renaud, Vice President of Women’s Philanthropy, Opportunity International, rarenaud@opportunity.org

Global Opportunity Quilt created by the Women’s Opportunity Network and you at www.optinnow.org/quilt