Empowering women in the forgotten corners of the world

Mindful Metropolis, June issue

Kathy Lane, Regional Communications Manager for CARE USA and a Chicago native, works to empower women in impoverished countries through economic opportunity, education and by fighting their social and political marginalization.

You’ve heard of “care packages”. As a college student, you may have received one, packed with goodies, from your mother while studying for final exams. You may even have sent your own care package overseas, to a soldier or to someone in need of assistance. But did you know that CARE Package is a registered trademark? Did you know that the earliest CARE Packages (“Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe,” by their initial acronym) cost $10 and were sent exclusively to Europeans in 1946 following the death, destruction and hunger wrought by the Second World War?

Since the 1940s, Atlanta-based CARE has extended its reach to fight poverty around the world. Today, CARE stands for “Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere, Inc.” and focuses particularly on empowering marginalized women in developing countries through micro-loans, education, and lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C.

Chicago native Kathy Lane has worked at CARE for three years and directs the foundation’s Windy City office, whose walls are decorated with posters of smiling — empowered — women in countries around the world: Sudan, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India (CARE currently works in 66 different countries). She spoke with Mindful Metropolis in early May, just days before a summit in our nation’s capital, during which 450 CARE activists met with their Senators and Representatives and encouraged them to stand up for marginalized women around the world.

Lane discussed CARE’s evolution, corporate giving, how poverty disproportionately affects women, the benefits of empowering them as opposed to giving handouts, her most gratifying moments with CARE, and how President Obama’s lofty words bode well for fighting poverty.

How has CARE evolved since the end of World War II?

CARE has been known historically as an emergency relief and humanitarian organization. Historically, the older generations know us for CARE Packages. Since then we’ve evolved into more a sustainable program to fight global poverty on the ground.

With decades of experience, we realized that women are disproportionately affected by global poverty. Seventy percent of people that live on $2 or less a day are women or girls. Not only are they disproportionately affected by poverty, but we also know through research in the international development field that women really are the key to overcoming poverty. They invest in their families; educated women have fewer children; educated women put their girls to school; educated women give vaccinations to their children. The domino effect is great. So we’re slowly moving this ship of emergency relief to really empower women in the world.

When did this shift within CARE come about?

The evolution from emergency relief to focusing specifically on women has been a long and gradual change — it wasn’t like one day we woke up and said we’ve been doing the wrong thing all this time. Worldwide, I don’t know. I assume that women have always been disproportionately affected by poverty.

Slowly we started asking ourselves how we were going to realign our mission. We’re going to start working on the ground in the developing world to alleviate poverty. It was a slow evolution for us, and I would say that because women have been disproportionately affected, we’ve worked disproportionately with women. Our marketing in the last three years has tried to raise awareness of our work with women.

The campaign [has sought to show] that women are powerful. She has the power to change her world. You have the power to help her do it. We always use positive imagery. Powerful, not powerless, whereas some organizations will show powerless people, with flies on their face, whatever. We want to show that they are powerful: they just don’t have the resources.

We also have a very strong advocacy team. In fact, our national conference where we lobby policy makers is next week on Capitol Hill. We also have volunteers. Our programs are in the poorest nations in the world, but there are other ways you can volunteer. You can host a dinner; you can organize a coffee hour with friends; you can show screenings (of our documentaries). There are lots of ways you can volunteer and help spread the word.

How did you learn about CARE? And what drew you to the organization?

I have a Masters Degree in Public Administration, so I wanted to work in a public or nonprofit field. My life took a detour, and I lived in Finland for several years working for Nokia. While that was a rich experience, personally, I wanted to get back to the States and into the nonprofit field after eight years.

What some corporations do is not only donate to their charities, but they also offer an executive on loan, where they give an employee to their nonprofit for a year. They pay the salary but you’re actually working on behalf of the organization. So I was able to be an executive on loan to [Nokia’s] charity of choice, which happened to be in Baltimore. I returned to the States to work for the International Youth Foundation in Baltimore on a one-year assignment. I’m originally from the Chicago area, and when I started looking for a job in Chicago in the nonprofit field, that’s when I first learned of CARE.

Speaking of Nokia, how can companies in the private sector best fight world poverty?

They generally do it through two main ways. One is by donating. Generally corporations will find a nonprofit that’s complimentary to their core business. We work with Cargill, which is a major agricultural company working around the world. We have agricultural programs. There are different synergies. The other way is through employee engagement. Corporations usually have a corporate responsibility department because they not only want to donate but they want to get their employees involved. That could mean donating, but also volunteering.

Are Scandinavian companies better at giving?

No, not really. They are socialistic countries, so the giving mentality is very different. [Scandinavians] are used to paying higher taxes, so they are used to their government taking care of these things. Actually, the United States is probably more mature when it comes to corporate giving. European countries look to the United States, because we are on the cutting edge of corporate and social responsibility. It’s a much newer practice in Europe. They’re just getting their feet wet. They’re catching up quickly, but it’s just a different mentality.

Are current events and world politics changing in which countries CARE will focus in the months and years ahead?

We are definitely a non-governmental organization. Our programs in countries are our own, but we try to work with the blessings of the local government. As political unrest arises throughout the world, of course [global poverty increases]. Wars always lead to more people going hungry, more people out of work. It’s a domino effect. We often work in conflict areas as political situations arise there. When it gets too dangerous, we pull out. When a situation arises where our top management believes that we’re putting our workers at risk in the country, we close up.

What are the benefits of working alongside women, and empowering them, as opposed to strictly offering financial support?

It’s the message: “She has the power to change the world, you have the power to help her do it.” She has the power, because we already know that if you educate them rather than just give them the money, women will have fewer children. You invest in their education; invest in helping them start their own business; invest in ensuring that they have the number of kids they want, and ensuring that those kids they have are healthy. You’re investing in a whole family, because how she raises her children will depend on how she herself was raised.

If you just give them a handout, she won’t have the education to know what to do with that. Are they going to invest in a business? In some cases they need to put food on the table, but it’s more about investing in long-term solutions than in a quick fix.

Have the individuals, corporations and foundations that fund CARE’s work been more reluctant to give during this recession?

I think that [nonprofits are experiencing that] across the board right now. Everybody’s scaling back and everybody’s been hit by this economic downturn. We have a couple donors that have given more because they realize they have the capacity to give more, and because those in the poorest places of the world are more adversely affected than those in the United States.

When you talk about tightening belts in the United States, we’re dealing with people who have no belts to tighten. They’ve already been trying to figure out who in their family is going to eat. They’ve already been trying to figure out who in their family gets medicine. It’s day-to-day survival. Some donors understand that.

We’re doing our best not to cut our programs; we’re cutting in other ways. We’re ensuring our donors, our corporate givers, our people on the ground and our beneficiaries that they will be the last to be impacted.

What are the greatest causes of global poverty (especially for women) that CARE works to solve?

One is marginalization. Women don’t enjoy the same levels of rights throughout the world. Clearly, in the developed world, women are still marginalized to a great degree. It’s a domino effect, it’s complex, and everything relates to another. If she’s marginalized, can she even work for herself? Can she leave the house during the day to tend to the fields? Can she walk her children to school? There’s a whole host of problems with having women who are not treated as full-class citizens within the countries and therefore can’t be full members of society, make money, or just support their families, work in the field, take their kids to school.

Also, what happens when her husband dies? If I’m completely dependant on my husband … and this often happens, a husband dies of HIV, or in a conflict situation — often times in the countries we’re working in, the husband’s family owns the property and the woman is literally on the streets and she can’t find a job because she’s not able to work because no one would hire a woman, especially a widowed woman. That her husband died of HIV is somehow her fault because of the stigma around HIV, not to mention marginalization, lack of economic access and basic human rights.

CARE works to avert these causes of global poverty. Our focus is on economic empowerment. We’ve developed a concept [in Africa] called the “village savings & loan”. It’s extremely popular. We bring a group of women together that otherwise probably wouldn’t be able to get a commercial loan. These women start their own bank and self-select their own leader. We teach them the basics and parameters of this bank. We start them off with a very small loan, which is repaid. And then they give loans to a group of women.

The beauty is that it’s self-monitored. It’s tied to your respect in the community. They decide [which women in the community] get these loans, and then the women pay back the village savings & loan with interest. The repayment rate on these types of loans is 98 percent. That is unheard of. The banking commercial industry is happy to reach 90 percent.

[The repayment rate] has a lot to do with women doing what they’re told. They’re taught to be good girls. You get a loan, you pay it back. But it’s also this idea of bringing it to the community and letting them self-monitor. This has been very successful.

Tell me about CARE’s lobbying work in Washington.

Our programs are independent of local governments, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try to influence local politics. We have the programming, which is apolitical. Then we have the advocacy arm, which generally works in the United States to influence how U.S. policy influences the world.

[Our experience in Washington, D.C. in early May] was phenomenal, in these economic times, [getting] 450 citizens to pay their own way, pay for their own hotel, plus $100 to attend the conference. The first day we taught people about global poverty and the issues we wanted to lobby on Capitol Hill. On the second day we had meetings set up for these 450 people to meet with their Congressmen and women. You feel so empowered. On the second day you’re literally in the House, in the Senate, you’re walking and meeting with your Representatives or Senators or their staff, lobbying on behalf of poor women and children around the world.

[Illinois Democratic] Senator [Dick] Durbin has been a phenomenal supporter of this legislation, which has very positively impacted people around the world. [Illinois Democratic Representative] Jan Schakowsky is a great friend of CARE — the Obamas, too.

Has government lobbying become any easier for CARE with Obama in the White House?

I think it’s too early to tell. We can probably make assumptions. He’s already made some pretty positive statements. In his [acceptance speech in Grant Park on Nov. 4] he mentioned the poor “huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world”. He hasn’t forgotten that he is, in so many ways, the leader of the world, and he’s not going to forget the poor people around the world. Since then he’s made several statements that indicate that he will be very supportive of foreign assistance around the world.

Having said that, Bush was a fantastic supporter. He actually donated more money to HIV/AIDS in Africa than any other president in history. We had other issues with Bush as far as condom use and [promoting] abstinence. But as far as HIV/AIDS in Africa, he was a great proponent.

Given that you work with women, is there a reproductive rights angle?

We have a very strong maternal health and reproductive rights unit. It’s part of this effort to refocus our programming to highlight three life stages: three milestones in a woman’s life that can affect how she lifts herself and her family out of poverty: one is a girl’s education; the second one is maternal health and reproductive rights; the third one is economic empowerment. Those are the three cornerstones that we’re using to beef up our programming and to raise awareness around.

What have been a couple of your most gratifying experiences while at CARE?

I had the opportunity to travel to India [Uttar Pradesh, the poorest state in the country] in late February to visit CARE programs there. I had been told to brace myself for the abject poverty — that it would be depressing. I braced myself for a difficult trip, but I was surprised. It was an inspiring trip. We got to see [CARE’S] programs and how these people’s lives are much better off. The communities are much better off. The whole level of income in the community is better off.

There was a girl’s school called “Udaan,” which in Hindi means “flight.” It’s an accelerated education program for girls who are marginalized because they’re of a lower caste or because their parents can’t afford [to send them] to school. [Girls between the ages of 10 and 14] take this accelerated learning program, and they learn five grade levels within 11 months. They live at the school, which for many is much better than their home life — a dirt hut but a very nice school. They live and work, sleep and study in this same area. They learn basic things, such as going to the bathroom and washing their hands, basic hygiene.

They go from basic skills to reading and writing, arithmetic and reciting poetry. It’s an amazing transformation. The girls have nutritious and reliable meals every day. They go from not being able to use the bathroom to being able to ask questions. They are teaching these girls that they have a voice and not to be scared, to raise their hand and have an opinion. On these trips we got to speak with these kids and see how happy and healthy they were. 85 percent after those 11 months will continue in public schools.

Another thing we do is work with local, government-run schools and train teachers to help them organize their classroom and help them with curriculum. At one school we visited, CARE worked closely with a classroom next door to a preschool that was not government-run [and not supported by CARE]. The difference between those two classrooms was breathtaking. The class where CARE provided support had cream-colored floors and bright colorful mats the kids sat on. The kids all looked clean and happy and participated. The room was full of stimulating materials and maps education materials in the corners and a chalkboard. The teachers were engaged and dynamic.

The next room was so sad. There was junk in the room, dangerous stuff like chords and iron rods that the preschoolers could get hurt on, dirt floors and a little dirty mat. The teachers were not engaged at all. The difference was striking.