Girls Creating Change

If we ever thought, even for a moment that girls were treated equally and with respect, the illusion was so clearly and brutally shattered last month with the horrific news about Malala Yousafzai, the 14 year old girl from Pakistan who was hunted down and shot by the Taliban for the sin of simply going to school.   This is clearly an extreme, but it sheds light on the fact that many girls around the world do not get to enjoy the most basic of human rights. 

As you may know, the United Nations declared October 11, 2012 as the world's first International Day of the Girl Child and Canada has led the international community in adopting this day. The example of Malala Yousafzai is one of many that show why such a day is so important.   Around the world, girls face many significant barriers when trying to get educated and make a living, such as early and forced marriage, abuse and extreme poverty.  This day helps to not only shine a light on the discrimination that girls face, but also on the amazing and inspiring work that women and girls are carrying out to change their communities and their world.

We need to seize this moment and turn our collective outrage at what happened to Malala into a call to action. We can speak out and we can support the very courageous women and girls who are fighting on the frontlines. And we can choose to invest in the women and girls who are making change happen. 

At Crossroads, we have chosen to invest in women and girls.  When we see a promising idea, we will support partners to pilot and scale up programs and then to share what they have learned with others.  One exceptional example is the Girls’ Empowerment Clubs piloted with Crossroads longtime partner, the Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA).   Launched in 2008, the Girls Empowerment Program allows 400 school-aged girls from across Swaziland to find a safe space to share their experience of abuse. They receive counselling, learn about their rights and how HIV is transmitted, and engage in discussions around sexual abuse and violence. They are also encouraged to become leaders themselves.  Initial results are promising. More girls are coming forward with their experiences of abuse and getting help. In the first year alone, teachers reported that teen pregnancy dropped by half.  And school attendance and academic performance of club members has markedly improved.  The program hopes to keep empowering girls in the years to come and ensure that they are better equipped to assert their rights and become the leaders of tomorrow.

We are also very fortunate to have the support and leadership of Cebile Manzini Henwood is Executive Director of SWAGAA as a member of our board of directors. One of the best things about my job is that I get to meet and work with some truly amazing women.  Cebile has many accomplishments and professional credentials, but more than all of that  she is a feminist survivor advocate who is passionate about women’s rights and about life and she believes that we are all here for a purpose and we only finding meaning in life when we begin to fulfill that purpose.  You can learn more about Cebile, SWAGAA and our work in Girls Empowerment through the podcast available at this address: http://www.cintl.org/podcasts

Read more about the importance of the UN Day of the Girl Child and SWAGAA’s Girls Empowerment Programs in Karen’s opinion piece, published in the Vancouver sun on October 10th, 2012. The piece also appeared in the Saskatchewan Star Phoenix the next day : 

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Smart+investments+protect+rights+girls+change+world/7369946/story.html#ixzz2AiCXuJoR

A busy spring can be a good thing

Here in Canada, spring is supposed to mark the beginning of the slow season, a time to ease off work and celebrate the return of the sun, flowers and outdoor recreational fun.

At Crossroads, we could be forgiven for failing to notice the end of winter. We've been intensely busy. Two days after the official start of spring, a group of soldiers overthrew the government of Mali while rebels seized territory in the country's north. For a moment, it looked like the country might spiral out of control. While things have cooled down in the capital, the coup and ongoing instability in the north have sowed fear in the hearts and minds of the people of Mali. Our partners have been working double-time to ensure their projects are able to continue and thrive, and we've been doing the same to ensure they are supported.

The spring has been busy for another reason: Our work to promote the rights of women and girls has picked up steam like never before. And we are proud of that. As the controversial deletion of the phrase “access to reproductive health services” from the final document produced at the recent RIO+20 summit suggests, the rights of women are still up for negotiation in most parts of the world. We must remain vigilant to protect and improve access to rights and sustainable livelihoods for women and girls. Here are some highlights from this spring's struggle:

• In Toronto, Crossroads volunteers, Pam Hillen and Sarah Giddens hosted a wonderfully successful cocktail fundraiser for Global Girl Power, raising more than $12,000 for programs to support women's rights in developing countries. I had the honour of speaking alongside Ntombi Nyoni, legal officer for Crossroads partner Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse, and two of Canada’s best-loved journalists, award-winning BBC reporter and Crossroads honorary patron Lyse Doucet and the CBC’s Anna Maria Tremonti. It was a truly wonderful evening and a joy to hear Lyse and Anna Maria talk about their experiences working together and how important it is to support girls and young women in the developing world so that they enjoy a brighter, more secure future.

• In Istanbul, women from across the world came together to learn, organize and speak out at the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) 12th International Forum. It was an incredibly inspiring event. Representatives from 12 of our partner organizations from West and Southern Africa were in attendance, along with Canadian members of our program team, providing a rare opportunity to put out heads together, forge new relationships and share ideas for elevating the status of women in our communities.

•  In Manitoba, we delivered a presentation to provincial cabinet ministers, including Premier Greg Selinger, explaining the power of grassroots solutions to transform the work of women and rural producers in Bolivia and Niger. The message was warmly received by members of the government and the Manitoba Council for International Cooperation, who expressed their intent to uphold their support for women and girls in Africa and Latin America.

• In Halifax, long-time (and outgoing) staff member Joan Campbell succeeded in attracting record support from a new friend of Crossroads. Marjorie Lindsay made an additional gift of $50,000 to support Crossroads work with women and girls. At a very young 86, Marjorie is an inspiring and passionate supporter, who strongly believes that Canadians should be supporting women and girls both at home and internationally. Thank you Marjorie! 

While the spring officially ended on June 19, the fight to break down barriers for women and girls continues. Following on the spring's successes, we will be hosting a fundraising event on September 20 in Vancouver, with Crossroads partner, Dr. Rose Mensah-Kutin, Executive Director of Abantu for Development in Ghana, who will talk about the impact of climate change on women and what women can do to influence  climate change policy. If you expect to be in Vancouver at that time, please give us a call at 1.877.967.1611 to purchase a ticket to the event, it is not one you want to miss.

In Istanbul, a call for economic justice and equality

Against the backdrop of ancient mosques, 2,400 people from across the globe – mostly women from the East and global South – gathered at the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) 12th International Forum in Istanbul, Turkey, for four days to discuss and debate how to transform economic power to advance women's rights and justice. From the opening plenary’s powerhouse of speakers to in-depth sessions designed to deepen understanding of the global economy, the message was clear – the economy is a woman's issue. Current models of economic growth have not resulted in greater freedom or equality for women. In fact, they have hurt women most. Rebecca Grynspan, United Nations Under-Secretary-General, highlighted findings from the recently released World Development Report, which this year focused on Gender and Development. She pointed out that economic growth has not resulted in increased equality, and that current economic crises are deepening inequality. These trends threaten to reverse any gains made in poverty reduction or equality over the past decade. 

While there appears to be consensus that the current economic system is not working, we heard a wide range of suggestions for alternative economic models: from the need to include 'time poverty' indicators alongside income poverty , to the need to integrate paid and unpaid work in the same indicator. There was lots of talk of the 'caring economy' and the need to measure it.  There was also an equally passionate plea from Marilyn Waring, iconic feminist, political economist and past Director of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, to not commodify all aspects of our lives or rely on the central committee approach to come up with an alternative economic model to GDP.

On the first day of the forum, Gita Sen, Adjunct Professor in Public Health at Harvard University, called on feminists to take the time to learn about how the economy functions and to better understand economic policy and its impact on our work and our lives.  "Economics is not brain surgery – it is something we can all understand,” she said. “We cannot leave economic policy to those who do not have our interests at heart. We need to learn it and use it." And so we did. From geopolitics and the global economy to grassroots solutions, an incredibly diverse group of academics, organizers, economists, bureaucrats, non-profit leaders and philanthropists immersed themselves in four days of lively debate and discussion. We examined the role of multilateral development banks and were told powerful stories by frontline activists of successful local organizing. We heard about alternatives that empower women and increase their access to resources, such as lending circles for widows in Indonesia that present an alternative to microcredit, and indigenous organizing against land grabs in Guatemala.

We also heard about the impact of the financial crisis on funding – Official Development Assistance and European and U.S. foundation assets are all down. And according to AWID's latest FundHer Report, although everyone seems to be talking about women and girls – governments and corporations alike –  there is very little funding actually going to women and girls. Very little of what is being allocated is core funding. Organizations are more precarious than ever. The median annual income of the 740 women's organizations that responded to the FundHer survey was a paltry $20,000 U.S., and the 2010 combined income of these 740 organizations amounted to 106 million U.S. – one third of Greenpeace's annual budget. Musimbi Kanyoro, President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, suggested that women collectively take up the call "Nothing about us without us" and that we begin to hold corporations and leaders to account. If they talk about women and girls, then they need to fund women and girls.

Some bright spots were reported. The Dutch government continues to be a model, having invested over 200 million euros in direct funding for women's organizations. Individual giving is up too. The Women Moving Millions Campaign, chaired by a Canadian, has had 150 women pledge at least $1 million to women's organizations.

The conference ended with a spectacular march down the main pedestrian shopping street in Istanbul , a perfect place to highlight the many challenges and contradictions facing women today. In a country with a growing economy, where only 25 per cent of women work outside the home, women and men from across the globe came together and, surrounded by police, laughed and danced and chanted, and demanded economic justice and equality for women.

I was fortunate to attend the conference along with a dozen Crossroads partners, an inspiring group of women from West and Southern Africa who are involved in grassroots economic development initiatives. In a day of debriefing following the conference, partners reported that they felt full, empowered and inspired and that there was a lot more work ahead of us. Indeed!