information and Stories about woman and female empowerment.

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Project Concern International

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Project Concern International (PCI) is an organization which seeks to to prevent disease, improve community health, and promote sustainable development worldwide. PCI was founded in 1961 by Dr. James Turpin after saving the lives of two children suffering from pneumonia while working in a Tijuana clinic. This experience inspired the young doctor to go on and forever change the lives of millions. PCI envisions a world in which resources are abundant and shared, communities are capable of providing for the basic health and well-being of its members, and children and families can achieve lives of hope, good health and self-sufficiency. PCI conducts its work through field offices in host countries where directors can live in the area and get an intimate understanding of local needs.

Working in 16 countries, PCI hopes to reach at least 5 million people per year with its services. Overtime, PCI has expanded its reach through increased funding: from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to government grants to the Starbucks foundation, PCI has a well rounded list of supporters. PCI’s ultimate goals include addressing the root causes of poverty and poor health; working with the community to leverage their assets, capabilities and goals to create community-inclusive solutions; implementing holistic solutions; cultivating long-standing relationships with community leaders, investors, and stakeholders to catalyze the impact of aid spent; and developing tools which measure the long-term success of such programs. PCI addresses poverty through programs focused on women’s empowerment & poverty, children’s health, disease prevention, food & water programs, and disaster relief & recovery. Between 2013-2016, PCI hopes to reach over 10 million people worldwide and become a leader in building community capacity, resilience and self-sufficiency.

In addition to its programs worldwide, PCI also has a series of initiatives to further promote its goals. These intiatives include: Women Empowered, Legacy, Who Cares? and SHE.

  • Women Empowered: Established in May of this year, Women Empowered is an initiative in support of women’s equality, human rights and success. PCI believes that women are the solution to poverty, poor health and vulnerability and that through WE, women can attain social and economic empowerment. WE programs are currently being implemented in Guatemala, Bolivia, Botswana, and Malawi. One such success story comes from Maweta in Zambia. After raising six children of her own, Maweta returned to parenthood to raise her grandchildren after their parents died from AIDS. Without a steady source of income, Maweta struggled to provide for her grandchildren. After attending a community orientation hosted by PCI, Maweta began mobilizing women in her community to form a self-help group. Nine months later, Maweta has learned how to read and write, perform basic accounting and save $60 by selling mangoes to her community. Maweta has since received a loan to start a small business. Maweta buys food in bulk, repackages it into smaller quantities and sells these to her village. Since starting the business, Maweta has been able to provide for her grandchildren’s basic needs and education.
  • Legacy: PCI’s Legacy Programs focus on maternal/child health and nutrition, as well as economic empowerment. As the name suggests, ‘Legacy’ for PCI means consistent and compassionate commitment to the communities involved. These programs include: Well Baby clinics, Ventanilla de Salud (VDS), Casa Materna, and the Street and Working Children Program. Ventanilla de Salud (VDS) targets at risk immigrant populations near the border, by providing basic health and community services, while these families are waiting for service at the Mexican consulate. VDS has reached more than 41,000 people with health education information and nearly 20,000 with HIV/AIDS prevention messages. However, the VDS program suffers from a lack of funding and has been scaled back by more than 25 percent.
  • Who Cares?: An online campaign which celebrates, recognizes and encourages those who are giving back to the greater good. Who Cares? provides volunteers with the opportunity to network, share stories, or just get motivated about a cause. Who Cares targets the youth and young adults because they believe that the ability of today’s youth to mobilize others is huge, yet largely untapped. In addition, Who Cares provides tools to help the youth mobilize others and make their efforts pay off.
  • SHE: SHE, which is short for Strong, Health and Empowered, is a group of ambassadors who dedicate their time to PCI’s projects across the globe. These ambassadors work within the community to promote women’s empowerment and find innovative solutions to ensure that women lead strong, healthy lives.

To learn more about PCI’s work, explore PCIglobal.org for more info.

– Kelsey Ziomek

Sources: PCI Global, The San Diego Foundation, Washington Global Health Alliance, Coronado Eagle

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5 Powerful Advocates of Female Education

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1. Malala Yousafzai works tirelessly as a young advocate for female education, despite being shot in the head last year by the Taliban for these very same efforts. She—in her bravery and brilliance– exemplifies the struggle for girls’ education everywhere.

2. Hillary Rodham Clinton, having served as the first lady and Secretary of State, is now a partner with her husband and daughter at the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. Within the organization, she has committed herself to improving access to female education and empowering women worldwide.

3. Richard Robbins directed Girl Rising, the extremely popular new documentary that tells the stories of nine struggling girls in the developing world. The film, which has met with great success, espouses the urgent global need for equal access to education.

4. Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn published “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide” in 2010, a compelling journalistic account of the developing world, and more specifically, of its disadvantaged women. The book, which spans the entire globe and a diverse set of lifestyles, seems to somehow convey a singular edict: in order to progess—particularly in the developing world– we must provide all women access to an adequate education.

5. Lawrence Chickering has worked for more than thirty years in order to improve the conditions of girls in the developing world, particularly in India, a country where 40% of women are not educated beyond the fifth grade level. His NGO, Educate Girls Globally, has significantly improved female enrollment, retention, and performance in India’s government schools, giving girls access to a variety of transformative resources.

– Anna Purcell

Sources: CBS News, Huffington Post, The Guardian

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Malala Day: July 12, 2013

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Perhaps no adolescent in the world is regarded with more widespread veneration than sixteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai, the well-known Pakistani advocate for female education who was shot by the Taliban for her convictions in October 2012. Seriously injured from the shooting, Malala was immediately flown to the United Kingdom to undergo a series of emergency operations. Miraculously, she recovered.

Just over a year later, Malala is back in school. However, her life is far from blithe—the urgency for access to education for all girls is ever present. Thus, Malala continues to ceaselessly advocate for girl’s rights, disseminating her message on the global stage.

In order to honor her prodigious efforts in the name of girls everywhere, the United Nations hosted Malala Day on July 12, 2013, her sixteenth birthday. The event—which evolved to be known as “Malala Day”—included a speech by Malala herself, pushing for female education everywhere.

Standing amongst the most powerful leaders in the world, Malala spoke confidently. She beseeched courage from the world’s women: “Let us pick up our books and pens. They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world. Education is the only solution.”

She then addressed the personal, demonstrating the unwavering nature of her principles: “The terrorists thought that they would change my aims and stop my ambitions but nothing changed in my life, except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage were born.”

In a world where 115 schools were attacked last year in Mali, 165 in Yemen, 321 in occupied Palestine, and 167 in Afghanistan, Malala’s struggle has never been more pressing.

– Anna Purcell

Sources: AlJazeera, The Guardian
Photo: National Secular Society

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Improving Access to Reproductive Health Services

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Improving access to reproductive health services in the developing world is critical to poverty alleviation. Pregnancy and childbirth-related complications are a leading cause of death of girls, aged 15 to 19, in developing countries. An estimated 7.3 million girls under age 18 give birth each year, and a great percentage of births occur in Africa. To counter this, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has announced it will partner with eight African countries to improve access to reproductive health services for millions of girls. The programs will span over the next three years, and will hopefully make a difference in lives of millions of young people.

“We are working specifically to ensure that the continent’s adolescent girls, between the ages of 15 and 19 – some 45 million of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa – get a good education, are able to decide whether and when to marry and have children, are protected from HIV, remain safe from violence, and have their fair share of opportunities to work and contribute to the economic development of their countries,” said UNFPA Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin.

UNFPA will partner with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Tunisia. The programs will deliver comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services for young people. The hope is to reach disadvantaged and impoverished girls who are most at risk for poor sexual and reproductive health, violence and exploitation.

UNFPA programs will ensure young people have access to age-appropriate sex education, whether they are in school or out, to prepare them for adult life. The programs will bring together governments, young people, the private sector and other stakeholders to access the needs of young people.

UNFPA is the lead United Nations agency that promotes sexual and reproductive health services. They are at work in 150 countries, ensuring that young people have the information, services, and supplies they need to make safe and healthy decisions.

“Over the next three years, in partnership with governments and young people themselves, we will commit to making a tangible difference in the lives of millions of young people right across the continent. It is their rights we must uphold and it is they who are our best hope for a prosperous and peaceful Africa,” said Dr. Osotimehin.

– Catherine Ulrich
Sources: UNFPA, UN News
Photo: Join Tokyo

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Women’s Disempowerment in Yemen

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In Yemen, the custom of early marriage just met a vocal challenger.

Going viral last week was a video of 11-year-old Nada al-Ahdal ranting about her parents’ decision to forcibly marry her off to a much older man. “What have the children done wrong? Why do you marry them off like that?” she asks the camera. Her powerful words have touched a delicate nerve amongst Yemenis, some of whom have upheld and continue to practice the custom of early marriange for generations. According to a 2006 joint report by the Ministry of Public Health and Population, the Pan-Arab Project for Family Health and UNICEF, this tradition is still widely practiced: 52% of Yemeni women and girls are married by the time they turn 18.

The recent video highlights Yemen’s history of early marriage laws and the government’s and society’s unwillingness to modernize conceptions of marriage. In 1994, the official age for lawful marriage stood at 15. Five years later, the law was abolished on religious grounds, eliminating a minimum age for early marriage. A brief legislative effort in 2009 to amend the situation was ultimately stalled and aborted, despite that fact that Yemen is party to multiple international treaties that require married couples to be at least 18 years old. Overall, the issue remains to be addressed, leaving countless children susceptible to premature marriage and the social and economic disadvantages that come with it.

Interviews with Yemeni girls and women reveal troubling facts. In rural areas, some girls were married off at the age of 8. Once married, women often have little power in their marriages which can also mean they have limited control over the timing and spacing of children, which increases the risk of reproductive health problems. Early marriage also diminishes the chance that wives will return to school to complete their education, putting them at a distinct social and economic disadvantage. Verbal and physical abuse against women is also prevalent in early marriages in Yemen.

In some ways, Nada al-Ahdal’s words do not just refute the practice of robbing girls of their childhood and sexual purity; they also underline the crucial “cycle of poverty and early marriage” that plagues tens of millions of women around the world. Poverty and early marriage tend to be mutually reinforcing phenomena: girls born into poverty are more likely to have mothers who ‘transmit intergenerational poverty’ and lack social assets and networks. In addition, early marriages greatly increase the chance that young girls will live in poverty. The cycle, parallel to the strong customary tradition of early marriage most prevalent in rural areas, reinforces young women’s roles as undereducated child-bearers with limited social networks.

Nada al-Ahdal eloquently defends her decision to flee from arranged marriage. But behind her words lies Yemen’s ugly reality of women’s disempowerment and its central role in the country’s greater puzzle of poverty reduction and economic growth. As one of the poorest nations on earth and a hotbed of terrorist activity, poverty in Yemen has resulted in a globally destabilizing situation. Instituting a minimum age for marriage could be a key policy for addressing women’s inequality and poverty. In doing so, Yemen would have a more solid foundation for development and more human capital to support its economy.

– Zach Crawford

Sources: BBC, Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), Human Rights Watch, Save the Children’s “Champions for Children” report, Washington Post
Photo: Washington Post

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Family Planning Education for Adolescent Girls Worldwide

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In many developing countries, young women have little hope of acquiring an education. A lack of family planning education takes away important decision making skills and opportunities, better wages, and overall say in personal choices.

With roughly 16 million adolescent girls giving birth each year, and many of those in developing countries, most of these girls will lose out on education. Of these 16 million adolescent girls, those ages 15-19 will have children at a rate of up to 120 births per 1,000 girls.

But recently, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) set out to improve reproductive health education and services, specifically for young girls and adolescents ages 15-19. By working with eight African countries – the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Tanzania, the UN organ will address female health through increased reproductive education over the next three years. They plan to create programs for young women in order to better prepare them for life as an adult woman.

The UNFPA’s education service will work towards teaching young girls the dangers of childbirth complications, pregnancy, and dangerous abortion procedures. In doing so, they hope these young girls will incorporate these lessons in their decisions related to pregnancy, marriage, and education, among other facets of life.

The purpose of the UNFPA’s work is to improve women’s health, and provide them with the ability to be independent when it comes to personal health decisions. As Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, UNFPA Executive Director, said, “What we are trying to do is to create an army of young women who would have access to comprehensive sexual education, who would be able to have access to services, who also would be able to make choices in their lives and who would have access to education … so they can develop their full potential.”

Another reproductive issue, HIV contraction, remains a pressing issue for women’s health initiatives. Pregnancy and HIV related deaths still play a large part in women’s life expectancy in many countries. With UNFPA’s current program, they look to education and services as a reinforcement for young girls to stay in school. The belief is that if girls receive reproductive education, they will stay in school. If they stay in school, they won’t marry and have their first child at such a young age. By pushing back sexual interaction to a later age, reproductive related injuries and sexually transmitted diseases will inherently decline and thus reduce deaths.

Since 2007, UNFPA has been working with low income countries to improve access to contraceptive commodities, as well as financial and technical support for these service programs. During the past six years, their efforts have increased and improved reproductive health services with a focus on distributive infrastructure to make sure contraceptives and medicines reach their destination, which, in turn, will increase general access for the public. However, in UNFPA’s new three year program, education follows these services. The hope remains that increased family planning education will lead to increased use of current services, and young women’s overall reproductive health will improve.

– Michael Carney 
Sources: Trust, UNFPA
Photo: IPS

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Top 5 Poverty Prevention Tactics

Poverty Prevention
Global poverty can seem to many to be an insurmountable task. However, much progress has already been made to lift people out of poverty. According to The Global Citizen organization, global poverty has effected 1.3 billion individuals, a number which is actually 52% lower than statistics in the 1980s.

Development practitioners recognize that global poverty can be minimized by addressing other areas including reproductive health, HIV prevention, education, women’s empowerment, and gender equality. UNFPA states that poverty is a multidimensional issue that deprives people of education, resources, services, opportunities, and economic opportunities. UNFPA states that investments to address global poverty should “…[empower] individual women and men with education, equal opportunities and the means to determine the number, timing and spacing of their children – [which] could create the conditions to allow the poor to break out of the poverty trap.”

Reproductive health and HIV prevention can both act as poverty prevention tactics. Reproductive health education, family planning resources, and widely accessible contraception can decrease fertility rates by providing families with the knowledge and tools to space out pregnancies. Furthermore, improved healthcare can reduce population growth because families recognize that they do not need to have as many children to ensure that at least 2 of them survive to adulthood.

 

HIV prevention is also an important poverty prevention tool because  helpful for when men and women know the dangers of HIV, they are able to use protection and are able to prevent the spread of the disease not only from partner to partner, but also from partners to undesired pregnancies and children. By learning how to protect oneself from HIV, individuals are able to prevent untimely deaths as well as preventing the disease to spread within a community, states The ONE organization. By lowering fertility rates through an education in reproductive health and by preventing the spread of HIV through an education in HIV prevention, communities will thrive due to a lower healthier population level.

The third poverty prevention tactic is education. Education is a very important factor in preventing global poverty, for providing an education to young boys and girls will help prevent undesired child marriage as well as early teen pregnancies which can lead to maternal death. An education helps boys and girls obtain the proper knowledge to keep themselves safe, healthy, and helps to plant the seeds of inspiration. Once obtaining an education, these individuals can create sustaining businesses which produce and return economic gains into their communities. By providing an education, individuals are able to thrive and break through the barriers of global poverty by creating strong businesses which will help the economy thrive and will lead to a stable community environment.

The fourth and fifth poverty prevention tactics are women empowerment and gender equality. Women empowerment is a positive prevention tactic because women who are encouraged to attend school and receive an education are more likely to defeat child marriage, are able to marry latter in life, and are able to have less children which lowers population rates. Women who have an education are more likely to work after receiving an education, which boosts the economy and provides a sustainable household for a family. Gender equality offers similar benefits, for if women are able to obtain an education and receive equal pay in employment, both the man and women are able to create a sustainable home for their children. By providing a sustainable environment, the child is able to attend school and is able to receive employment opportunities, continuing this positive cycle.

Through these five poverty prevention tactics, developing countries are able to defeat global poverty and are able to create sustainable economies, healthy environments, and equal opportunities.

– Grace Beal

Sources: Global Citizen, UN FPA, ONE Campaign
Photo: Ambergris Today

MDG 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women

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This is the third in a series of posts discussing the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. These are set of 8 interconnected goals agreed upon by most countries around the world based on a shared commitment to improving the political, social, and economic lives of all people. They are to be achieved by 2015 and, two years out from this deadline, it is important to celebrate all the progress we have made and to recognize the work we have left.

The third of the MDGs is to promote gender equality and embolden women. Education is the primary mode of empowerment, so the UN’s stated goal is to eliminate the gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2005 and in all levels of education by 2015. The gender disparity in education is judged by statistics such as the ratio of girls to boys in all levels of education, literacy in women as compared to men, women working outside the agricultural sector, and female governmental leaders worldwide.

The gender gap in primary school has decreased substantially in recent years. In 1999, there were 16 million more girls than boys out of primary school. Over the next ten years, this number dropped dramatically to just 4 million. However, this still leaves significantly more educated boys than girls, a phenomenon that perpetuates gender inequality later in life.

According to the World Bank, equal percentages of girls and boys complete primary school in Latin America and East Asia. However, in all other developing regions, this ideal has not yet been achieved.

The significant gender gap in youth literacy rates has been shrinking in recent years. However, girls are still considerably less likely to graduate from primary school with basic literacy skills than boys. This is a concerning trend that often leads to the disempowerment of women, and perpetuation of a discriminating patriarchal societal structure.

In many countries, women have less access to stable jobs, education, economic assets, and governmental participation. They may not be allowed to work outside the home, forcing them to rely on men for their family’s income. And even when they do enter the job market, they tend to hold lower-paying positions with less job security and benefits. This represents an unacceptable inequity that must be addressed seriously. Not only does it devalue women’s work, it also means that men tend to have more influence on how the family’s money is spend, consistently minimizing women’s authority. Through extensive work toward MDG 3, women’s role in the workplace is improving, with 40% of wage-earning jobs in the non-agricultural sector held by women as of 2011.

The number of women in government is also on the rise, thanks in part to quota systems that require a certain percentage of leaders to be female. Worldwide, just over 20% of parliament members were female as of January 2013. While this still reflects a heavy bias towards men, it also represents incredible progress. In 1995, women held a meager 10% of parliamentary seats. This percentage has been steadily increasing, and progress will continue to be made if girls’ education is made an international priority.

The education of girls affects every facet of society as children grow into adults. While we have made significant progress towards gender equality, we clearly have work to do when girls do not graduate with the same basic skills that boys do and are not consistently presented with the same opportunities in the workplace and government. Educated girls become educated women that are empowered in their personal, social, political, and work lives. They demand to be treated respectfully, and are not constrained by their gender. They are strong women that can be leaders just as well as they can be wives. They are the women this world needs.

– Katie Fullerton

Sources: UN, UNDP, World Bank, UN Stats
Sources: The Guardian

New Plan for Women’s Rights in Morocco

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A new plan was recently released to advance women’s rights in Morocco over the next four years. The plan, called “IKRAM,” will provide shelter for domestic violence victims, increase educational opportunities for girls, and increase the percentage of women in public office.

While the plan is commendable, some women’s rights activists believe it falls far short of what is necessary. Morocco reformed its family law in 2004, but many of these reforms are circumvented by conservative judges. Sex outside of marriage remains illegal.

The reform raised the legal age for marriage from 15 to 18, but according to 2010 data, courts have allowed minors to marry in 90% of cases. In 2012 the global community was shocked by the suicide of a young girl who was forced to marry her rapist by her parents and a conservative judge.

Advocates of women’s rights believe a pressing issue is amending the 475 law. The 475 law allows statutory rape charges to be dropped if the two individuals involved are married. This encourages rapists to marry their victims to avoid all charges. Conservative judges support this action as they believe it will save the girls’ honor. While there are rumors that the government will review the penal code, it is uncertain how they plan to approach it or if they will take women’s rights into consideration.

The government has set up a committee that will monitor IKRAM and ensure that its goals are met. This committee will monitor action across all ministries. The committee will also advocate legislation supporting women’s rights.

– Callie D. Coleman

Sources:Open Equal Free,New York Times,Al Monitor,All Africa
Photo: Monsite

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How to Solve Poverty

How to Solve Poverty
The following is not a definite plan for how to solve poverty. There are many causes and factors to consider that promote and sustain impoverishment, thus there are also myriad of solutions. By embracing all possibilities related to global education and technology, we can put a sizable, irreparable dent into poverty.

 

How to Solve Poverty

 

Education for women: 70% of all women in the world live in poverty, and over 32 million women are considered “missing.” Poor health conditions, famine, and social injustice contribute greatly to the problem. Women work some of the most difficult but crucial hours worldwide, yet earn pennies on the dollar for their effort. This leads to desperation and informal employment which opens the door to problems like human trafficking. When women receive education, the results are indisputable: lower fertility and infant mortality rates, less instance of sexually transmitted disease, and a greater chance of employment and contributions to local economies. The benefits of female education are much broader than male education.

Using Positive Deviance: Somewhere in every community lives a person or a family that is not poor for a reason. Finding those positive deviants in the community and letting others around them learn from their experience is becoming a very popular approach in places. Lewiston Elementary in Utah is one of 300 schools to be nationally recognized for outstanding academics, despite the fact that half of their students are poor and 10% speak English as a second language. The kids consistently exceed what is expected of them all due to how they are taught, which includes, “…small group instruction; an evidence-based reading curriculum; progress monitoring; parent involvement; and instructional coaching.” Other schools have begun to take note of Lewiston’s success.

Entertainment Education: One might not immediately see the correlation between entertainment and poverty, but when considering impoverished or uneducated children, it becomes highly apparent. Education is clearly a poverty deterrent, thus using the media to promote education in communities in ways that will entertain can have major impacts. A well known example of this is the television program Sesame Street, watched the world over by young, hungry minds. Other prosocial programs and themes have been used with great results in the developing world, ranging from simple radio programs to a project called Soul City which has been running in South Africa for years. One organization leading the way with entertainment education is Population Media Center.

– David Smith

Sources: Women and Poverty, Learning The Lessons of Sesame Street
Photo: Infosur Hoy