Check out this post from our partner Women Thrive Worldwide about the importance of the GROWTH Act, which has reintroduced in the Senate this summer.
-Margaret McDonnell

People thought Alicia would never do anything more than sweep streets. After she had to drop out of school, they thought she would never go back. When she got married at 15 and had her first child, her fate was sealed in the eyes of her community – she would spend the rest of her life sweeping streets, struggling to earn enough to feed her children.

But Alicia had other plans.

The daughter of a desperately poor family in Colombia, Alicia del Socorro Meneses has spent her whole life overcoming what could easily have been crippling challenges.

When a bloody conflict unfolded in her village, she and her husband were forced to leave their home. They moved to a new city, Agua Blanca, and hand built a house from cardboard in the slums. Alicia struggled for five years, until she met a group of Catholic nuns who gave her a small micro-loan through one of their development programs. Alicia used the loan to start a small business selling food from her house. She called her business “Alicia’s Delicacies.” Soon she was making a profit. Her husband started treating her with more respect, she was able to buy her children more necessities, and her neighbors began to view her as a community leader – she was even elected for local office!


With her new success, Alicia enrolled in a university certificate program to study business development, cooperatives, and project management. Her new skills enabled her to grow her business and employ four new women. Today Alicia’s Delicacies is thriving and Alicia is working with the same nuns who helped her, to teach other women in the area how to start their own businesses.

Says Alicia, “Now I am able to train other women and I hope that they will be able to lift themselves from poverty just as I have.”

Alicia’s story is a testament to the power of micro-finance to transform women’s lives. Last year, Alicia traveled from Colombia to Washington, DC to convince lawmakers to pass the Global Resources and Opportunities for Women to Thrive Act (GROWTH), a bill now in the Senate that would give millions of women the opportunity Alicia had.

Walking through the halls of Congress with Women Thrive staff Alicia said, “I really want the U.S. Congress to pass the GROWTH Act because […] it would open the doors for women to benefit from micro-finance and invest in local organizations like mine – we are the key because we know best how to solve local women’s issues on the ground.”

Activists around the country are participating in a call-in effort to urge Congress to pass the GROWTH Act. We need your voice: Please call your Senators TODAY and ask them to support the GROWTH Act!

Here’s how to take action:

1. Call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to your Senators’ offices.

2. When an office staffer answers the phone say, “As a constituent of Senator ______, I am calling to ask the Senator to highlight his/her commitment to ending global poverty and empowering women worldwide by co-sponsoring the Global Resources and Opportunities for Women to Thrive Act, S. 1425.”

Please take action for women like Alicia: Call your Senators today!

-Mckenzie Lock, Women Thrive Worldwide

Photo caption: Alicia and a Senate staffer outside the office of former Oregon Senator Gordon Smith

The ONE Campaign, Habitat for Humanity, Opportunity International, and Women’s Edge Coalition came together to create a briefing for Hill staff at the Capitol Building today about the GROWTH Act. (S. 2069) Senators Durbin and Hutchison hosted the event, which we called: “Fighting Poverty with Common Sense: Investing in Women’s Economic Opportunity.”

The impressive turn-out led to a great joke by Susy Cheston, Senior Vice President for Policy at Opportunity International: After observing the standing -room-only crowd that had gathered in the back of the room, she remarked, “You should all receive a sticker that says, ‘I stood up for Women today!’”

Along with Susy Cheston were four other speakers, all with extensive knowledge and advice about empowering women to lift themselves, and their families, out of poverty. They were Nora O’Connell, Vice President for Global Development Policy at that Women’s Edge Coalition; Donne Cameron, Senior Director for International Programs for Habitat for Humanity; Shade Bembatoum-Young, Founder and Executive Director of African Sustainable Small Enterprise Export Development Foundation in Lagos, Nigeria; and S.K. Guha, Senior Program Specialist at UNIFEM.

The panelists discussed first-hand experiences, insight, and policy objectives relating to the GROWTH Act. The Act focuses U.S. international assistance on proven strategies to enable women to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. If passed, (more…)

One line on a property deed can be the difference between poverty and hope for a woman and her family.

I know, because for years I have worked to help women in my country, Nigeria, build businesses so they can feed their children and give them the education they deserve. But there are many things standing in these women’s way.

For example, in some places in the developing world, there is only one line for one name on property ownership forms. This one line may not seem like a big deal, but it works to systematically deny a woman property rights, blocks her from getting the credit she needs to build a business, and forces her to fight for her home if her husband dies—because that one line is for a man’s name.

The solution is as simple as adding another line so that a husband and wife may both own their family’s land.

Right now the Global Resources and Opportunities for Women to Thrive Act (GROWTH Act) is moving through Congress. This crucial bill will change the way the United States gives aid to help draw that line and give women the resources they need to provide for their families.

Send your letter now and give women the power to lift their families up out of poverty permanently.

The story of the GROWTH Act is a story of the power of ONE. Earlier this year, the bill didn’t have the congressional leadership that it needed to move forward. So ONE members started taking action.

In April, ONE members and partners teamed up to deliver hundreds of letters to Representative Ros-Lehtinen in Florida. Then in May, a Texas ONE member visiting Washington, D.C., delivered thousands of letters to Senator Hutchison. After ONE members voiced their support they both agreed to be lead sponsors of the bill.

I want to send my thanks to Senators Durbin and Hutchison and Representatives Lowey and Ros-Lehtinen for their strong support of millions of women like me in the developing world. We need champions like them, and like the members of the ONE Campaign.

Please help convince the rest of Congress to join these leaders by sending them a letter on just how important this bill is.

Sometimes even well-meaning programs do not reach women as they should because they do not take women’s needs into account. The GROWTH Act is important because it listens to women, who are our best hope for ending world poverty. Please listen to our needs and take action today.

Thank you,

Shade Bembatoum-Young,
Member, Women’s Edge Coalition
Executive Director of ASSEED
Lagos, Nigeria

ONE members from Birmingham met with Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL-7) on Tuesday to discuss important legislation that would move the U.S. closer to our commitment to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

The seven ONE activists took turns briefing Rep. Davis on three pieces of legislation: The Education for All Act, The Global Child Survival Act, and the GROWTH Act. (Rep. Davis had previously signed on as a co-sponsor for the Jubilee Act!)

Rep. Davis, commented that this legislation builds a “case for American values.” He said that there is a perception “that America is no longer interested in marginalized people around the world.”

Davis’ district consists of some of the poorest counties in the US where as much as 30-40% of the population live below the poverty line. Davis says he is sometimes asked how he can spend time on global poverty issues when the needs at home are so great. He responded that “in a strong country, addressing poverty abroad and poverty at home should not be an either/or issue but a both/and issue”

We also took the opportunity to talk with Rep. Davis about ONE Vote 08. Davis, a Harvard Law School classmate and supporter of presidential candidate Barack Obama, has been campaigning widely for Senator Obama, both on the campaign trail and on national cable news programs.

Our meeting ended with the requisite “white ONE banding” and group picture. Oh! And Rep. Davis said that he “would be happy to co-sponsor” these three important pieces of legislation. We hit the TRIFECTA!

-Elaine VanCleave, Birmingham, AL, ONE leader

[Pictured above: Mildred Sanford, Judy Donaldson, Betty Likis, Rep. Artur Davis, Nick Foster, Elaine VanCleave, Jeannette Bell, and Kelli Hepner]

Years ago, I lost my newborn son to an infection for want of a readily available antibiotic. No child should suffer this fate. Yet, every year, nearly 10 million children under the age of 5 die from completely preventable causes.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We have the power to save these children’s lives.

There is a bill in Congress right now that would provide some of the much needed money to save these children, but it’s currently at a standstill. In order to move, the bill desperately needs the political support that ONE members like you and me can bring to bear.

Please send a message to your member of Congress to support the U.S. Commitment to Global Child Survival Act and build support for this desperately needed life-saving bill.

These children die from a variety of causes, from pneumonia to malnutrition and diarrhea. For us, diarrhea is a nuisance. For a child in the developing world, it is a death sentence. In 2007 it is estimated that 1.8 million children will die from dehydration due to diarrhea. In many cases, all that it takes to re-hydrate these children to save their lives is a handful of sugar, a bottle of clean water, and a pinch of salt.

Sadly, there is one more ingredient needed to save these children: the will to do it. The Global Child Survival Act is an expression of that will. It would dramatically scale up funding for effective and affordable child and maternal health programs and it would require the government to develop a comprehensive plan for improving children’s health around the world.

Please write both your senators and representative and let them know that you want them to do their part and help move this bill forward.

Right now while Congress is in recess, some of us have been going on lobbying visits to our local congressional offices, and talking about the Global Child Survival Act. That’s been a great step forward, but we all can do more. If you send a message now, you’ll drive home the message we have been delivering in person, so that when Congress reconvenes in September, the Global Child Survival Act will be high on the list of priorities.

Thank you. I can’t tell you how much your support means to me.

Stay close,

Sammi, Seattle, WA, ONE member

Farm Bill — The House is debating the rule to consider the Farm Bill now. The Fairness Amendment will be the first amendment considered after the rule is passed.

News on other ONE priorties:

GROWTH Act — Senator Hutchison has agreed to co-sponsor the GROWTH Act bill with Senator Durbin. One of our super volunteers, hand delivered 4,672 letters from ONE members asking Sen. Hutchison to be the lead cosponsor of the bill!

Global Poverty Act – is scheduled for markup on Tuesday, July 31st — We have been working to build committee support for this bill so that it will pass through committee unopposed.

-Erin Erlenborn, ONE Government Relations Director