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!

Why giving is good

 

Holiday catalogues galore spilled out of my paper this past weekend. I was struck by just how much stuff was on offer. Gift ideas for my sisters, my nieces, my sweetheart, my aunt and her cat! Trouble is that there is very little on offer that any of them really need and although there is a lot my nieces would say they want, they are at the age where I wouldn’t select a hairpin on their behalf. And while the kitchen implements are tempting in their holiday red, none of us have room for another appliance.

And the cat well…

So how to celebrate this season of giving? Is it by giving up? Or by giving in to the holiday hype?

I’m advocating all of the above. I plan to celebrate giving and giving up.

This year I am following Lawrence Hill’s lead. The three-time Crossroader and acclaimed writer (The Book of Negroes) started his holiday shopping by giving back to Crossroads. And so did I. I encourage you to consider making Crossroads’ Gift that keeps on giving a new part of your holiday tradition.

I have learned a lot about the power of giving at Crossroads.

Crossroads volunteers rarely talk about what they gave up to volunteer overseas. Instead they speak about what they got — how the experience changed the way they see themselves in the world and how the skills and lessons they learned changed their own lives.

The act of giving enriches them to be sure, but more than that, it enriches all of us by increasing understanding and by reducing the disparity between North and South.

Which brings me to giving up. For most volunteers the reality of working in the developing world is shocking at first. How am I supposed to build a database when there is only electricity for a few hours a day? ....Build a web site with dial up? ...I have to get permission from who before we can introduce a workshop? Crossroaders quickly learn to slow down, to seek advice, to listen well and to get creative to compensate for gross inequities and a dearth of resources. And for many, with the support of their host families and their local colleagues, they also get a glimpse of the richness of community life where relationships with people come first.

Crossroaders know it is not easy to know how to help. Many Canadians feel the same way. Just six per cent of donations made by Canadians support international development causes*. Not for lack of compassion witness the hundreds of millions of dollars raised to support victims of the Tsunami or the earthquake in Haiti. But long-term development and strategies to address the root causes of extreme poverty are often too nuanced for a fundraising pitch — hence the proliferation of goats as gifts and pictures of children in need. How can we be sure that these donations will actually make a difference in the lives of people on other side of the globe?

That is why at Crossroads we work with local partners to develop joint projects that advance their goals. We don’t set up offices or stand-alone projects overseas. Instead we invest in the people and organizations that are driving change in their own communities.

As for the hype, I am glad there is at least one time of the year to remind us that we're here for something other than ourselves. This holiday season I will be making time to be with friends and family and honouring those who inspire me half way round the world.

PS: Click here for a few goat-free shopping ideas that celebrate gifts that keep on giving.

*Highlights from 2007 Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating Caring Canadians Involved Canadians 2009.

Words into Action

Zimbabwean Women set example in fight for global equality

Recently I read Electing to Rape: Sexual Terror in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe a report from AIDS Free World, another optimistic and ambitious initiative co-founded by former UN Envoy Stephen Lewis.  

Page after page, women recounted their harrowing experiences of rape and brutality.  I felt like I had been punched in the gut.  Women with even the most distant connections to political opposition parties were targeted.  I had to put it down.

Of course, this was not the first time I had heard stories of the terror women withstood in Zimbabwe. In November 2008, Crossroads’ women’s rights partners gathered for a meeting in Cape Town.  For Zimbabwean women it was a respite. They spoke sombrely of the violence being waged against women and openly about fears for their own safety, even as they worked tirelessly to support individual women and to advocate for an end to the violence in their country.

So when I learned that CCI partner, the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe, had been awarded the Canadian Council for International Cooperation’s (CCIC) Betty Plewes Award (recognizing their work in advancing women’s rights), my heart sang.  

Canadian Crossroads International accepted the awared on behalf of the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe and all of its members at CCIC’s annual meeting in Ottawa May 27 as the National Coordinator Netsai Mushonga was unable to secure a visa to come to Canada. READ MORE

We can learn a great deal from these brave women.  In the face of brutal oppression and an economic crisis, the likes of which we have never seen, they continue to work and to raise their voices.

And of course it is not just women in Zimbabwe who are targeted.  In many countries where we work — Swaziland, Senegal — violence against women remains pervasive and debilitating.  Around the globe, the systematic use of violence against women in an increasingly militarized world is on the rise.

That is why it is vital for those of us in the North to speak out.  Not just in defence of colleagues and friends in the South, but in defence of all women.

At the widely quoted panel discussion Where is Canada’s Leadership on Women’s Rights (held May 3 on Parliament Hill with women’s rights leaders and parliamentarians of all political stripes) long time women’s rights proponent Senator Nancy Ruth offered sage advice to women’s rights advocates:  “Shut the f*#! up” or risk a backlash. 

Her advice, while a tad dramatic, was tactical and made with the best of intentions. But it was panelist Lydia Alpizar, Executive Director of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, simple response that stuck with me:  “I know of very few rights that have been won by keeping silent,” she said.  Alpizar warned Canadians that the apparent closing of democratic space to openly debate issues and advocate for rights in this country could also have serious repercussions for communities in the South, still struggling to define those spaces.

As has Alpizar noted “there are no magic bullets to achieve gender equality and women’s rights.”  Interventions such as gender mainstreaming, micro-finance and quotas for women in political systems are good ideas for which women have fought.  But “none of these either individually or together will necessarily empower women.”

So then what works?  What should be our role? 

The answer lies not just in what programs we initiate or support, but in how we do it. Our role is not to prescribe solutions to women in the South, but rather to work with them, to invest in them, to advocate for their rights and ours.  From the grassroots, as illustrated by the members of the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe to national and international organizations, women and women’s groups are the driving forces in the fight for equality.  They are developing and implementing strategies to enable women to: live free from violence; increase their economic autonomy; assert their sexual and reproductive rights; and participate as equals in broad range of political spaces where decisions that affect their lives and communities are made.

Immediately following the discussion on Parliament Hill, our own government faced a barrage of criticism when it was revealed that more than 14 feminist organizations, including our colleagues at Match International, had recently lost federal funding and would be forced to close. Speaking in the House of Commons in defence of government cuts, the Hon. John Baird said “Mr. Speaker, let me be very clear. This government is giving a record amount of funding to support women’s groups. We do have one big criteria, we want less talk and more action.”

In my experience working in women’s rights in Canada and internationally for nearly 20 years, the latter is not achieved without the former.  Rights come first, programs to mitigate the impact of inequity follow. It is difficult to isolate the women’s organizations who deliver quality services, from those who demanded them in the first place.

The Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe is case in point. “During the violence we began realizing that we had to do much more in terms of peace building and in terms of intervening in the politics of the country,” Mushonga said in an interview from Zimbabwe. Women are particularly well positioned to forward positive social change, she said. While some men are still in “the fighting mood” women are invested in development and peace. Rather than leaving the public agenda to the men, women are staking out space to have their say.

While governments may be slow to recognize this critical relationship, it is meaningful to have a Canadian award that recognizes it.

How to help

Canadians outpouring of support to Haiti challenges our thinking on how to avert disaster for the world’s poor.

When new broke of the massive earthquake in Haiti, Canadians across the country asked themselves, How can we help?

The response was swift and impressive. As of January 25, Canadians donated than $80-million in support of relief and reconstruction. Within 24 hours the government had committed $5 million in aid and within 48 hours, more than $80 million was promised with an additional commitment to match all individual donations. Rescue teams, the disaster assistance response team (DART) and military personal were also dispatched. Less than two weeks after the quake hit, Canada convened a meeting of foreign ministers and key multilateral players in Montreal, to prepare for a spring leaders conference on the reconstruction of Haiti.

Canada’s longstanding relationship with Haiti — they are our second largest aid recipient after Afghanistan — eased our ability to help. Montreal has one of the biggest concentrations of Haitian Diaspora. Many Canadian relief and development organizations have worked there for decades. We know the country and its people.

We can be proud of the Canadian response. Canadians care. But increasingly Canadians are also asking, really, how can we help?

As a January Globe and Mail editorial noted, “With millions of dollars pledged and more than 10,000 NGOs operating in Haiti there is no shortage of good intentions.” Newspaper editorialists and ordinary Canadians are striving to make sense of what disasters of this magnitude can teach us about development for the future.

We know that in natural disasters, it is the poor and disenfranchised who suffer most brutally. Among the poor it is most often women and children who bear the brunt.

This disaster is all the more acute, because of the chronic and desperate poverty in which most Haitians live. As Peter Hallward in the Guardian UK noted poverty and powerlessness account for the full scale horror in Haiti. Earning less than $2 per day, ordinary Haitians have no ability to arm themselves against disaster with defences like earthquake resistant homes.

Haitian poverty, like poverty in countries where CCI works in West Africa, Southern Africa and South America, is no accident. It is the result decades of exploitation and oppression by wealthier nations. A history that continues to present day with global trade rules that favour rich nations and their producers while devastating national economies of developing countries; crippling debt obligations that siphon off resources that could be used to build sound infrastructure and services and impose conditionalities that force governments to curtail essential investments in public services like heath and education.

While it is critical that we support agencies on the ground striving to meet immediate urgent needs, we also need to look at how are our official development assistance and foreign policy, now and in years to come, can build and strengthen local resilience.

An important way to mitigate disasters like the Haitian earthquake is to invest in the resilience of people and their institutions. Reconstruction efforts need to support an independent and sovereign government that ensures basic human rights are met and that citizens are empowered to demand their rights.

The situation in Haiti and other fragile states will undoubtedly be discussed by G8 and G20 leaders when they meet in Canada later this year. Canadian civil society organizations, including Canadian Crossroads International, are hard at work trying to meet with government leaders to ensure past commitments are met, to renew and strengthen poverty-reduction strategies, with special emphasis on investment in programs for women and children. We are seeking government commitments to provide assistance to low-income countries coping with the effects of climate change and to instigate meaningful global financial reform to help all countries recover from the economic crisis. On Tuesday it seemed that the message was getting through. In an editorial, January 26, the Prime Minister acknowledged “it should not take a natural disaster to turn our attention to the less fortunate and that the world's poor have been hit hardest by the global economic downturn and in these difficult times we must address their pressing needs.” He stated that as president of the G8 in 2010, Canada will champion a major initiative to improve the health of women and children in the world's poorest regions.

Canada's commitment to playing a lead role in a pair of major new international aid projects is most welcome, but it has some Canadians asking where is the money? Currently Canada is giving only 0.32% of our national income in development aid. That's less than half of the point seven per cent (0.7%) we keep promising to give. In upcoming international summits and in Canada’s own upcoming budget announcement there is an opportunity to make good on past commitments and outline our vision for the future. Add your voice to these efforts and let our parliamentarians know that Canadians care deeply about these issues and believe that Canada can and should play a leadership role in developing and implementing the kinds of policies that will strengthen human rights and relieve the suffering of billions living in poverty.  http://www.makepovertyhistory.ca/en/set-agenda-action-g8

A Cause for the Century

A Cause for the Century


If the world invests in women and girls, women and girls will take care of the world, so said American activist Jane Roberts. The connection between women’s human rights, gender equality and social and economic development is well documented.

At Crossroads we’ve seen this first hand — from West African women who have moved from subsistence to making a living wage through CCI supported cooperatives producing shea butter, soap and textiles, to members of CCI supported Bolivian communal banks where women like Martha Ali reflect “my children study with what I earn.” The investment is modest, but the difference made in lives of women and their families is almost incalculable. Five years ago, Canadian Crossroads International focused its resources in part to strengthen women’s rights. It became clear that to achieve our goals, from building local economies, reducing poverty and to fighting AIDS a common thread linked our strategies — the empowerment of women.
Now after years of talking about of gender equality, some are calling the fight for the rights of women and girls, the cause of the century.

On September 14, 2009 the United Nations passed a resolution to establish a powerful new UN agency to advance the rights of women. A week later Plan International released a report that makes a convincing case that investment in girls will break the cycle of intergenerational poverty and failure to do so could cost the world poorest countries billions in economic growth.

Yet, over the last decade, funding for women’s organizations has decreased in quality and quantity. The Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), which tracks funding for women’s rights, attributes this to a global trend of “gender mainstreaming” which has resulted in diluting specific objectives on women’s equality amid broader development objectives.

In Canada too, it is increasingly evident that despite our strong policy guidelines, both the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and many Canadian Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) working internationally have reduced commitments to gender equality programming over the last decade. A number of organizations, Canadian Crossroads International among them, analyzed CIDA’s recent evaluation of its policy on gender equality between 1998 and 2005 in a report entitled Strengthening Canada’s International Leadership in the Promotion of Gender Equality. While the organizations were impressed with the rigour of the evaluation, and in fact whole heartedly support the policy, it is clear that increased investment — both in the way of funds for women gender equality specific programming and in political will — is required.

And the timing might be right. Globally, momentum is growing. In 2008 the Dutch government launched the MDG3 Fund in part to make up for a dramatic decrease in funding for women’s programs. That same year NIKE foundation launched the influential girl effect campaign backed up by more than $100-million in financial support for girls programs. This year, Spain kick started UNIFEM’s Fund for Gender Equality with $65-million in funding. And last week, Canada’s Belinda Stronach announced that the Belinda Stronach Foundation, with the Clinton Global Initiative, will bring together leading national and international organizations with a goal of elevating the advancement of girls and women to the G8's agenda.

The case for support is strong. According to the World Bank, when 10 percent more girls go to secondary school, the country’s economy grows by three per cent according to the World Bank. And when a girl earns income, she reinvests 90 per cent in her family.

This is a bandwagon worth boarding. Already many Canadian and International organizations are redirecting resources to invest in women and girls. Canada should do the same. As host of the G20 and the G8 in June 2010 Canada has unprecedented opportunity to reassert itself as a leader in human rights. The lives of more than 500-million girls and young women depend on it.

Learn more about how your gift to Canadian Crossroads International’s women’s right projects can make a world of difference.