Maggie Williams on Ghanaian women

Jun 21st, 2009 1:07 PM EST
By Maggie Williams

Another on-the-ground post from the delegation traveling through Ethiopia and Ghana this week, this time from Maggie Williams. Learn more about the trip here.

There have been miracle days on this trip.  Yesterday, for me, most of the miracle took place at the Tema General Hospital in Tema, Ghana.  The hospital is a dynamic, living, breathing place, where women and their children are loved and taken care of.  Mothers with HIV find hope and help for both their lives and the lives of their children. Tema identifies women with HIV, gets them into treatment and helps them deliver and care for their healthy babies.  Maybe we just caught the Tema staff on a good day, but they make this very tough work look and feel like a labor of love.

Small simple counseling, testing, and treatment rooms line the hallways. Bigger rooms are used for waiting, dispensing medicine, and perhaps more importantly, for sharing the company of other women.

But particularly seared into my brain are the pictures of the Ghanaian women who are the nurses, doctors and technicians.  These professional women are master organizers.  They are customer service savvy, heavily invested in making things work for their clients.  They understand the emotional and economic challenges these families face.  They are the kind of women who post their goals along the walls and reach them.

I feel honored to have met them.

-Maggie Williams

Women Feed the World: Talking to Women Farmers in Africa

Jun 19th, 2009 4:18 PM EST
By ONE.Partners

Ritu speaking with a market vendor in Accra, Ghana

This week, Ritu Sharma, Women Thrive’s Co-founder and President, has been in Ghana and Burkina Faso, trying to learn about what life is like for women farmers, what their governments are doing to empower them, and what U.S. assistance programs can do to help. Accompanied by a team of Women Thrive staff, Ritu has met with local women’s organizations, such as their advocacy partner, Coordinator Coalition Burkinabe pour Le Droit du la Femmes (CBDF), a coalition of 15 women’s associations that educates Burkinabe women and helps them advocate for better economic rights. She has also met with individual women farmers, Burkina Faso government officials, and U.S. development agencies working in the country.
Read Ritu’s daily diaries and conversations with women farmers.

For most women in Burkina Faso, where almost half of the population lives below the poverty line, life is a daily struggle. Typically living in rural areas, most women have little access to ongoing education or potable water. Yet because they are the majority of farmers and are responsible for child care, Burkinabe women spend much of their day performing field work, growing food and crops for their families. However, despite this often grueling work, many Burkinabe women are not allowed to own the very land they farm, because customary often law excludes women from land ownership, preventing them from investing in the tools, irrigation, and seeds that would make their families better fed and their children better off. Learn more about women’s role in agriculture.

-McKenzie Lock, Women Thrive Worldwide

Spend International Women’s Day Thriving

Mar 6th, 2009 7:08 PM EST
By Margaret McDonnell

Check out this post to learn how ONE’s partner Women Thrive Worldwide is honoring International Women’s Day (March 8th)

-Margaret McDonnell, NGO Partnerships

In honor of International Women’s Day, Women Thrive Worldwide is pleased to release its toolkit on Foreign Aid Reform!

Investing in women and girls is one of the most efficient uses of our foreign assistance dollars and best ways to make the world more peaceful and prosperous. Decades of research and experience prove that women are more likely to invest their income in food, clean water, education, and health care for their children, creating a positive cycle of change that lifts entire families, communities and nations out of poverty. Simply put, when women thrive, we all do.

This International Women’s Day, take a minute to learn more about how you can get involved to ensure that women and girls are at the center of the current efforts to reform our foreign assistance programs. Our toolkit, complete with a sample action alert, newsletter article, petition, and letter to the editor, is all that you or your organization will need to get started!

To learn more about Women Thrive Worldwide’s campaign to reform foreign assistance, please visit www.womenthrive.org/foreignassistance.

-Lorelle Curry, Women Thrive Worldwide

Grameen Foundation and International Women’s Day

Mar 4th, 2009 5:33 PM EST
By Margaret McDonnell

Check out this post to learn how ONE’s partner the Grameen Foundation is honoring International Women’s Day (March 8th)- Margaret McDonnell, NGO Partnerships.

The situation was getting bleak for Zeinab Abdel Salam Al-Kadi and her six children. The Egyptian family was struggling to support themselves after Zeinab’s husband stopped work due to his debilitating illness. Then, a lifeline came. It was a tiny $45 loan from a local microfinance organization, but enough for Zeinab to start a business crafting wooden kitchen utensils. She sold her wares at market and today, she owns a bustling workshop and raw materials. Her daughters help run the thriving business.

Zeinab is just one of millions of women who have courageously started journeys out of poverty thanks to microfinance. Microfinance provides small loans, savings and other financial services to the very poor.
Grameen Foundation (GF) supports this proven strategy against poverty by giving financing, technology and other resources to microfinance organizations worldwide that serve the poor, mostly women. GF focuses on women because they are more likely to invest their business profits in their children’s nutrition, health, and education.

To honor women’s courage, Grameen Foundation celebrates March as International Women’s Month, and invites you to celebrate with us.

Join the celebration and make a difference. Post a message to honor a woman who inspires you on StopPovertyNow.org. At the same time, you will be making a difference in the lives of very poor women.

How it works:

• Log on to StopPovertyNow.org and see a woman whose life was changed by microfinance.
• Help us bring that picture to life by choosing squares, then filling in a portion of the picture.
• Add your voice to the picture by sharing your personal message or a picture to honor a woman who inspires you, and tell us why you want to Stop Poverty Now.

Helen Yuen, Grameen Foundation

Boxer to Chair Subcommittee on Global Women’s Issues

Feb 10th, 2009 4:53 PM EST
By Chris.Scott

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times reports that Senator Barbara Boxer of California will chair the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy, and Global Women’s Issues.

Kristof speculates that “issues like trafficking and maternal mortality and sexual violence finally seem to be getting some traction.” This is the first time a subcommittee has had the specific mandate of dealing with global women’s issues.

Excerpts from Senator Boxer’s official statement below, Kristof’s full piece here

Senator Boxer said, “I am very grateful to our new Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator John Kerry, for allowing me to focus part of my efforts on the worldwide status of women.”

Boxer continued, “This new subcommittee assignment offers a tremendous opportunity to shine the light of day on a very overlooked issue. Too often, we turn our eyes away as women are persecuted, abused and treated as second-class citizens. But even the most conservative historians have noted that when women are given the freedom to live up to their full potential, society as a whole flourishes. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Congress and with Secretary Clinton to stamp out violence against women in the world.”

Boxer also said she looks forward to conducting oversight of U.S. participation at the United Nations and working to promote human rights abroad.

-Chris Scott

Gender Equality Would Increase African Food Productivity, Income

Dec 29th, 2008 11:31 AM EST
By Virginia Simmons

A recent Reuters piece examines the critical role African women play in agriculture, and how increasing gender equality in terms of land rights and micro-financing loans would increase Africa’s food production and family income.

The article highlights key leaders, like former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Rwanda’s Minister of State for Agriculture Agnes Kalibata, pushing for these changes in laws, global grants, and cultural practices.

Some excepts are below, the full article here.

“In Ghana, for example, if women and men had equal land rights and security of tenure, women’s use of fertilizer and profits per hectare would nearly double. In Burkina Faso, Kenya and Tanzania, giving women entrepreneurs the same inputs and education as men would boost business revenue by up to 20 percent. And in Ivory Coast, raising women’s income by $10 brings improvements in children’s health and nutrition that would require a $110 increase in men’s income.

…One powerful woman trying to change that is Agnes Kalibata, Rwanda’s minister of state for agriculture. She said government land reform and credit programmes specifically target struggling women farmers - many of whom are bringing up children alone after their husbands were killed in the 1994 genocide.

This has helped raise their incomes, leading to better nutrition, health and education for their children, Kalibata said. Women are also getting micro-credit loans, which they use to access markets and cooperatives or set up small businesses, such as producing specialty coffee for export.

“They are not like rocket scientists, they are women from the general population who finally feel empowered that they can come out and do some of these things,” explained Kalibata.

-Virginia Simmons

[Photo: Regina and her daughters posing at their stand in Mozambique, May 2008. Regina received a microfinance loan and now has a profitable small business that allows her to send her daughters to school and build a new home.]

Women step up in Rwanda

Oct 27th, 2008 11:42 AM EST
By Chris.Scott

After abolishing and modernizing various patriarchal laws in their country, the Washington Post reports that women have become a driving force in Rwanda’s economy and government. Rwandan women have greatly progressed from once not even being able to inherit land to now holding a third of all cabinet positions and making up 56% of Rwanda’s parliament—a near perfect reflection of Rwanda’s demographics.

Excerpts below, full article here

One lawmaker said the committee has compiled “a stack” of laws to modify or toss out altogether — including one that requires a woman to get her husband’s signature on a bank loan.

“The fact that we are so many has made it possible for men to listen to our views,” said lawmaker Espérance Mwiza. “Now that we’re a majority, we can do even more.”

The unusually high percentage of women in Rwandan government is in part a reflection of popular will in a country of 10 million that is 55 percent female.

“This was a broken society after the genocide,” said Aloisea Inyumba, Kagame’s former gender and social affairs minister, who was also a prominent official in his ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front when it was still a rebel group fighting the country’s genocidal government. “We made a decision that if Rwanda is going to survive, we have to have a change of heart as a society. Equality and reconciliation are the only options.”

-Chris Scott

Investing In Women- A New Fact Sheet

Oct 27th, 2008 9:55 AM EST
By Virginia Simmons

Last week, when Bono spoke at the California Women’s Conference, he passed along some of the startling stats (listed below) about women in Africa.

• Nearly two-thirds of adults with HIV in Africa are women young women (age 15 to 24) in South Africa accounted for around 90% of new HIV infections in 2007.
• In Africa, the likelihood of a woman dying in childbirth is 1 in 20 (compared to 1 in 2,800 in the US).
• Although up to 80% of farmers in the developing world are women, they own less than 15% of land worldwide.

You can find more facts about women in Africa, as well as inspiring facts (like the one below) about the benefits of investing in women in the developing world, in this new fact sheet.

“Investing in women is considered smart economic policy because it can often yield higher economic returns than investing in men. Providing an extra one year of education beyond the average boosts earnings by 10-20%, compared to 5-15% for males. Increasing the share of women with a secondary education by one percentage point boosts annual per capita income by 0.3% on average. A study in Kenya found that agricultural yields could be raised by as much as 20% simply by reallocating existing agricultural inputs (seeds, fertilizer, education) more equally between men and women.”

-Virginia Simmons

VIDEO: Bono Speaks at CA Women’s Conference

Oct 23rd, 2008 12:26 PM EST
By Chris.Scott

As we previously reported, Bono spoke at the 2008 California Women’s Conference last night. We’ve compiled the full footage of his speech, split into 5 parts, below. Enjoy!

PS- In his speech, Bono refers to a petition organized by the ONE Campaign to hold both presidential candidates accountable in the fight to end extreme poverty. Please sign here.

Full speech, Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

-Chris Scott

Bono to Speak Soon

Oct 22nd, 2008 8:45 PM EST
By Virginia Simmons

Bono is scheduled to speak at the 2008 Women’s Conference in a few moments. You can watch live in the webcast player below. (Webplayer is after the “read more” jump.)

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