March 2021 Newsletter
Posted on March 11, 2021.
Welcome to the March 2021 issue of the Global Washington newsletter.
IN THIS ISSUE
Letter from our Executive Director
Just over two weeks ago, the first COVID-19 vaccines were received in Ghana, marking the start of a rollout in low- and middle-income countries. While this is incredibly hopeful, there is still worry that the vaccine will not have an equitable distribution globally. And, that the pandemic will continue for years to come if we do not mobilize for a quick worldwide vaccination campaign.
Below is our issue brief, which provides a good overview of this topic and discusses how Global Washington members are working to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 prevention and treatment options in low- and middle-income countries. Also, stay tuned for in-depth member stories on this issue later in the month, as well a virtual event on March 24 with speakers from VillageReach, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Medical Teams International, and the International Rescue Committee.
In addition to vaccine equity, we have also posted two Action Alerts on situations that are unfolding in Ethiopia and Myanmar, to which many of our members are responding. Both stem from underlying political crises that are driving widespread suffering and human rights violations.
Lastly, I am excited to share a report we published on our 2020 Goalmakers initiative, including key insights and cross-cutting themes that emerged from the series of events that we held last year on the Sustainable Development Goals. These are themes we will continue to build on this year and in the years ahead.
Kristen Dailey
Executive Director
Back to Top
Issue Brief
Global Community Takes a Shot at COVID-19 Vaccine Equity
By Joanne Lu
A nurse vaccinates a baby at a clinic in Accra, Ghana. Photo by Kate Holt, MCSP. Flickr. (CC BY-NC 2.0).
On February 24, Ghana became the first country outside India to receive COVID-19 vaccine doses as part of a global initiative, called COVAX, to provide equitable access to the vaccines, particularly in low-income countries.
“This is a historic step towards our goal to ensure equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines globally, in what will be the largest vaccine procurement and supply operation in history,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a press release.
Since then, more than 16 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been shipped to 27 countries through the COVAX initiative, according to a March 18 update from the WHO. In Africa, 25 million vaccines have been sent to 38 countries through COVAX, bilateral deals and donations, and 30 of those countries have started vaccination campaigns.
While these developments are certainly cause for celebration, they come as some of the world’s richest countries have purchased a surplus of more than 1.2 billion excess doses, according to The ONE Campaign. Canada, for example, has secured enough vaccines to immunize its population five times over. For comparison, nearly 7 million doses have now been administered in Africa, while the U.S. surpassed that number in just four days.
Meanwhile, the majority of low- and middle-income countries have had to “watch and wait,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote in the Guardian. In mid-February, the UN reported that 2.5 billion people in 130 countries still had not received a single vaccine dose.
Even Ghana – which opted to administer its 600,000 AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines to 600,000 people as their first dose, instead of to 300,000 people as their two recommended doses – still has to trust that its government or COVAX will come through in time with enough vaccines to give people their second doses. With Ghana’s government planning to vaccinate 20 million people by the end of October (meaning 40 million doses), the shipment on February 24, though “historic,” was still a just small step that should have happened much, much sooner.
The rush by wealthy countries to secure first access to vaccines has been dubbed “vaccine nationalism,” which the WHO and others have condemned.
“Even as they speak the language of equitable access, some countries and companies continue to prioritize bilateral deals, going around COVAX, driving up prices and attempting to jump to the front of the queue,” Dr. Tedros said in January. “This is wrong.”
Additionally, experts warn that vaccine nationalism will slow recovery – both from the virus and its economic effects.
“[Vaccine nationalism] is a problem morally. It’s a problem in terms of public health, because we need to vaccinate more widely in order to tackle issues like the barriers. And it’s bad news in terms of the economic impact as well,” Mark Suzman, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said in February.
The Gates Foundation helped set up the COVAX Facility and has also funded vaccine, therapeutics and diagnostics research and development. Suzman says that some of the modeling supported by the Gates Foundation shows that there’s going to be “much longer, lingering economic damage” if vaccinations are concentrated in wealthy countries and not distributed evenly.
According to the World Economic Forum, high-income countries and regions, including the U.S., the U.K., and the European Union, could lose around $119 billion per year, until a global recovery is secured.
“A me-first approach might serve short-term political interests, but it is self-defeating and will lead to a protracted recovery, with trade and travel continuing to suffer,” wrote Dr. Tedros in the Guardian. “The threat is clear: As long as the virus is spreading anywhere, it has more opportunities to mutate and potentially undermine the efficacy of vaccines everywhere. We could end up back at square one.”
According to the WHO, there’s a lot that countries and companies can do to promote equitable vaccine access, including dose sharing, technology transfer, voluntary licensing, and waiving intellectual property rights. Oxfam has called for a “People’s Vaccine,” one that is “mass-produced, fairly distributed, and made available to every individual, rich and poor alike.” A People’s Vaccine, the organization says, would “unlock the production of billions more doses in the shortest amount of time and ensure access for everyone, everywhere across the globe.”
Meanwhile, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has stepped up to serve as the coordinating center for vaccine clinical trials of the COVID-19 Prevention Network (CoVPN) to continue developing vaccines, even though there are a few options on the market already.
“We need multiple successful vaccines to protect the entire global population from COVID-19,” said Dr. Larry Corey, former president and director of Fred Hutch, who will co-lead the CoVPN’s vaccine testing pipeline.
While vaccine development and manufacturing continues to ramp up, organizations like Americares are also working hard to support “vaccine readiness.” Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, says that a country’s vaccine readiness can be assessed on four fronts: awareness of evidence-based information; acceptance of the new vaccine; accessibility to the vaccine, especially in the hardest to reach places; and availability of infrastructure to store and deliver vaccines. In particular, Americares is tackling misinformation head-on, with weekly Q&A videos about COVID-19 vaccines and other resources.
Mercy Corps’ CEO Tjada D’Oyen McKenna says that important lessons about building public trust can be drawn from past Ebola outbreaks. In Liberia, for example, Mercy Corps helped train more than 15,000 community messengers to help combat misinformation in their own communities, reaching more than 2.4 million people. (That’s over 56 percent of the population.)
Mercy Corps is especially concerned about the vaccine reaching people in conflict zones, where the pandemic tends to take a back seat to other basic needs that feel more pressing, suspicion and misinformation thrive, and violence has destroyed infrastructure for vaccine delivery and threatens the safety of health workers. In late February, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution demanding “vaccine ceasefires” in conflict zones.
Similarly, organizations like Medical Teams International are advocating for migrants and refugees to be included in vaccination campaigns in countries like Colombia. Closer to home, Medical Teams International is getting together equipment, like freezers, to distribute vaccines in Washington state.
Of course, effectively executing the largest global vaccine rollout in history requires working closely with local leaders. CARE’s comprehensive two-year vaccine initiative will support national, regional, and local governments with logistics, public education and strategies to ensure fast and fair vaccine distribution.
VillageReach also participates daily in Ministry of Health-led response efforts, including vaccine planning. Recently, Mozambique received its first shipment of vaccines. VillageReach will support the Mozambique Ministry of Health with the supply chain planning and logistics, as well as training vaccinators. With its organizational mission of reaching the last mile, VillageReach knows all too well the importance of working with community health workers, like vaccinators, to reach even the most remote places.
PATH – which supports the Serum Institute of India, manufacturers of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines that are being shipped through the COVAX Facility – also recognizes the critical role of vaccinators. That’s why even before the COVID-19 pandemic, PATH’s Living Labs Initiative was working with frontline health workers to understand the day-to-day challenges that prevented them from achieving their immunization targets and professional goals. Now, insights from these health workers are helping to optimize labeling for COVID-19 vaccines, informing local adaptations to WHO’s training guidance for health workers, and supporting the ministries of health in Kenya and Zambia as they develop vaccine plans.
“We know from experience that when we listen to health workers, they identify challenges—and solutions—that no one else sees,” says Dr. Joseph Kayaya, lead product manager with PATH’s Living Labs Initiative.
In Africa, the experience and expertise of health workers is on full display right now as vaccination campaigns there have covered a lot of ground quickly – despite receiving late shipments of limited doses.
“This is due to the continent’s vast experience in mass vaccination campaigns and the determination of its leaders and people to effectively curb COVID-19.” said WHO Regional Director for Africa Dr. Matshidiso Moeti in a press release. “Compared with countries in other regions that accessed vaccines much earlier, the initial rollout phase in some African countries has reached a far higher number of people.”
Although the vaccine rollout so far has been slow and uneven, the fact that it’s happening is an encouraging sign that recovery is on the horizon. Tracking the pandemic from its beginning was the data-visualization company Tableau. Now, it’s turned its attention to tracking global progress toward recovery, helping to inform individual behavior, business decisions, and government policy. The company’s new Global Tracker pulls information daily from multiple sources to allow people to see and interact with data on things like localized disease spread, testing and vaccination, and social policy indicators, both in the U.S and globally.
Through private and public sector cooperation, a massive global vaccination campaign that reaches every person is possible. But it will require setting aside the business-as-usual notion of vaccine nationalism in order to put all of us first. As Dr. Tedros said: “While the virus has taken advantage of our interconnectedness, we can also turn the tables by using it to spread life-saving vaccines further and faster than ever before.”
The following GlobalWA members are working toward global equity on COVID-19 treatment and prevention.
Americares
As COVID-19 infected millions around the world and forced families into isolation, Americares launched into action, responding in more than 30 countries with critically needed protective gear and training for frontline health workers. Since launching its response last February, the health-focused relief and development organization has dedicated every resource to ensure health workers stay safe and can continue their lifesaving work. Americares response also included telehealth consultations to ensure patients continued to receive care during community lockdowns and medical facility closures, launched public education campaigns to combat misinformation and made water system improvements to help slow the spread of the virus. The “Americares COVID-19 2020 Special Report” details its global response to the crisis.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
In their 2020 Goalkeepers report, Bill and Melinda Gates reflected on how COVID-19 has impeded progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals, and what the world needs to do to come together to end the pandemic. For one thing, the foundation believes a shared global response is critical: “Together, we can ensure a safe and effective vaccine is distributed equitably and affordably for every last person on earth—not just those with ability to pay. The virus does not adhere to borders, and neither can the vaccine. A global response must also aim to build more resilient health systems that protect the world’s most vulnerable and prevent future disease outbreaks.” To date, the foundation has committed about $1.75 billion to support the global response to COVID-19, including funding the development and procurement of new tests, treatments, and vaccines, and supporting interventions to alleviate the social and economic effects of the pandemic globally. The focus for 2021 is to ensure equitable, timely, and scaled delivery of proven interventions.
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Fred Hutch is part of the global scientific community racing to stop the COVID-19 pandemic. Scientists from across the organization have been tackling all aspects of the disease and the virus that causes it – including researching how it spreads, how it affects people’s bodies, and developing potential therapies and vaccines. In July 2020, Fred Hutch became the coordinating center for vaccine clinical trials of the COVID-19 Prevention Network, leading operations across at least five large-scale efficacy trials with over 100 clinical trial sites in the U.S. and abroad. Three months later Fred Hutch opened the COVID-19 Clinical Research Center, one of the first stand-alone facilities in the nation designed to test novel interventions to treat and prevent COVID-19, from Phase 1 through 3 clinical trials for COVID-19-positive participants and, in the future, participants with other infectious diseases.
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) builds on decades of research and advocacy to shed light on the immediate and long-term impacts of Covid-19 on human rights. The pandemic has exposed the frailties in our social system. While billionaires grew richer by $1.9 trillion in 2020, hundreds of millions of job losses were concentrated in low-wage industries. These losses disproportionately affected women and people of color, pushing many into poverty. HRW reported on the devastating impacts of Covid-19 on historically marginalized communities and the most vulnerable members of our population in the U.S. HRW also called on the U.S. Congress to safeguard frontline meatpacking workers and spoke out on the inaccessibility of online vaccine registration systems for the elderly. The organization has also continued to sound the alarm on rising domestic violence rates, and advocated for protecting tenants’ rights to adequate housing and financial relief. In 2021, HRW remains steadfast in its commitment to build a rights-respecting future and defend human rights for all.
International Rescue Committee
Over the past year, the IRC scaled up its response to the coronavirus pandemic in over 40 countries, providing essential health care services to refugees, sharing vital information about hygiene, handwashing, and self-isolation, training health workers on how to keep themselves safe, and providing protective equipment to aid workers. Through partnerships with organizations like COVAX, the IRC is helping countries prepare for the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. The IRC is also working with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance to advocate for equitable access to vaccines—including for populations affected by crisis. As vaccines become available, the IRC will help administer them through the network of health facilities it supports around the world. The IRC also helps refugee and immigrant communities impacted by COVID-19 in the United States, including in Washington state, through health services, remote learning support for K-12 students, distribution of food and masks, emergency financial assistance, and more.
Lynden
Lynden International is a global freight logistics provider, headquartered in Washington state, with developed services to multiply the capacity of organizations doing global health and humanitarian work. Before the coronavirus pandemic, Lynden participated in epidemic response measures for Ebola and Zika outbreaks and continued to work to build health system resilience with government, foundation, and NGO stakeholder clients worldwide. To combat the spread of COVID-19 Lynden has worked with these same organizations to deploy personal protective equipment (PPE), sanitizing supplies, and test kits globally to lower- and middle-income countries, as well as native communities and remote locations in the United States since March 2020. While COVID-19 vaccines were in development, Lynden worked with logistics partners to enhance cold chain capabilities in Africa, and it began vaccine distribution to underserved communities in Alaska and offshore locations in the U.S. Lynden is also expediting deployment of cold chain containers in which vaccines are transported and collaborating with organizations supporting the UN COVAX facility and African Union efforts to distribute vaccines equitably.
Medical Teams International
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Medical Teams International President & CEO Martha Newsome has placed a high priority on global equity in treatment and prevention. For example, when the first cases were identified in the world’s largest refugee camp in Kutupalong, Bangladesh, in May 2020, Medical Teams responded by opening the camp’s first isolation and treatment center in partnership with Food for the Hungry and UNHCR. Medical Teams’ strategy of educating and equipping community health workers has empowered them to share best practices in prevention throughout impacted communities in Uganda, Guatemala, Colombia, Lebanon, and Bangladesh. In the Pacific Northwest over the past year, Medical Teams’ staff and skilled volunteers have tested nearly 30,000 people. Globally, Medical Teams has conducted more than 1.91 million screenings. These numbers represent vulnerable populations without access to traditional healthcare, such as refugees, migrant farm workers, and individuals and families lacking housing.
Mercy Corps
As higher-income countries continue to secure agreements for COVID-19 vaccines above and beyond what’s needed for their populations, millions of people are standing at the back of the line. Mercy Corps is advocating for equitable vaccine access for lower-income and conflict-affected countries unlikely to have widespread access to vaccines before 2023, as well as often overlooked and hard-to-reach populations, like refugees and internally displaced people, who are at risk of being left out of vaccination efforts. In Colombia, Mercy Corps is partnering with El Espectador, a national Colombian newspaper, on a nationwide campaign to build empathy, understanding and support for Venezuelans in Colombia, and to advocate for vaccine equity for migrants. Mercy Corps is also working to combat misinformation and build vaccine acceptance through information campaigns launched during COVID.
OutRight Action International
In the wake of COVID-19, OutRight Action International launched a research project to document the immediate and severe impact of the pandemic on LGBTIQ people globally. Its findings were based on interviews with advocates in 38 countries, and featured on BBC Newshour among other news outlets. OutRight also launched a Global LGBTIQ Emergency Fund to support grassroots LGBTIQ organizations on the frontlines of providing emergency assistance to LGBTIQ people experiencing loss of income and food, lack of access to HIV medication and healthcare, increased domestic violence, and even scapegoating by religious and government leaders. Moreover, LGBTIQ people often are not reached or left behind by government or traditional relief efforts, and many grassroots LGBTIQ organizations are on the brink of survival – threatening to set the movement for equality and human rights back by years. To date, OutRight’s Emergency Fund has raised more than $1.65 million from 300+ companies, foundations and individuals and has issued 125 grants in 65 countries, reaching more than 50,000 people. OutRight will be issuing a second call for applications and additional grants this spring and throughout 2021, as funding is available.
Oxfam America
Oxfam America is advocating for a People’s Vaccine, a COVID-19 vaccine that is patent-free, mass-produced, fairly distributed, and made available free of charge to every individual across the globe. Within this work, Oxfam America is leading a coalition of partners to pressure the Biden Administration to ensure the technology and know-how to make COVID-19 vaccines is shared with the world. This coalition wrote a public letter calling on President Biden to champion a People’s Vaccine, which was signed by more than 200 leaders from the fields of public health, medicine, global development, and racial justice, as well as faith leaders, economists, Nobel laureates, former members of Congress, and artists. Oxfam America is leading other efforts, taking both public and insider approaches, to pressure the Biden Administration to push for a People’s Vaccine, which have included meetings with Administration officials and a grassroots petition to President Biden. Watch Oxfam America’s video about the People’s Vaccine here.
PATH
PATH has been closely involved with the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, a global public-private-philanthropic collaboration to accelerate the development, production, and equitable rollout of COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines. COVAX is the vaccines pillar of the ACT Accelerator and PATH has been mobilizing its staff, networks, and partnerships to anticipate and address specific country needs. Through PATH’s expertise in vaccine financing, procurement, and partnerships, it is assisting the COVAX Facility with program design and operationalization. PATH is also leveraging its manufacturing expertise to evaluate production capacity and offering strategies for scale-up. In addition, PATH has been providing technical assistance to support COVID-19 vaccine trial-site readiness in Africa and Asia.
Save the Children
Save the Children responded to COVID-19 across 87 countries, including the United States, reaching 29.5 million coronavirus-affected people. Its teams launched and sustained an emergency response to contain the spread, protect communities, and support children and families. As vaccines are developed and rolled out, Save the Children is pressing leaders around the world and working with its partners to ensure the most vulnerable people will have access and are prioritized, as well as health workers, community leaders and teachers, who are critical to keeping children safe and learning. Find out more in a recently published report: A Chance to Get it Right: Achieving equity in COVID-19 vaccine access. Save the Children has been adapting and expanding how it delivers world-class programs and advocates for children, as well as launching new and innovative initiatives to prevent, mitigate and respond to the pandemic’s devastating impacts. More information on Save the Children’s overall response and impact can be found in its COVID-19: One Year On Global Impact Report.
Splash
Splash is a non-profit organization that delivers child-focused water, sanitation, hygiene (WASH), and menstrual health solutions in some of the world’s largest, low-resource cities. Its vision is for children in urban poverty to thrive and reach their full potential. Through Project WISE (WASH in Schools for Everyone), Splash plans to reach 100% of government schools in two major growth cities: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Kolkata, India by 2023, serving one million kids. As schools re-open globally, Splash is especially focused on increasing handwashing with soap, the first line of defense against COVID-19. It does this through behavior change programs for teachers and students, as well as through patented handwashing stations designed just for kids. Through Splash Social Enterprises, the organization has launched a new project to design handwashing stations for a broader array of institutions (such as health care facilities and rural schools), helping provide access to handwashing for people of all ages in low- and middle-income markets.
Tableau Foundation
Software company Tableau’s free, publicly-accessible COVID-19 Data Resource Hub includes real-time data on case reports from Johns Hopkins University, the WHO and the CDC, as well as a curated gallery of visualizations from national news and health organizations. The foundation has also ramped up its Community Grants Program, expanding the number of grantees and streamlining the application guidelines. Tableau has created two other giving campaigns for employees: one to support frontline health workers, and another, the COVID-19 Response Fund, to meet the needs of community organizations and non-profits serving at-risk communities that are disproportionately impacted by the disease and its repercussions.
VillageReach
In the early months of the pandemic, VillageReach joined like-minded collaborators to form the COVID-19 Action Fund for Africa, a group of 30 organizations focused on getting personal protective equipment (PPE) to community health workers in Africa. Many African countries were shut out of the PPE market, making frontline health workers and their patients extremely vulnerable. More than 57 million pieces of PPE have been secured for 18 countries since August 2020. Fast forward to today and 80 days have passed since the first health worker in Washington state was vaccinated. COVID-19 vaccines arrived recently in Africa, but the number of available doses does not match the need. And as U.S. leaders announce vaccine availability for every adult by May, VillageReach continues to advocate for health workers in Africa – they need vaccines NOW.
World Vision
World Vision is responding to the devastating impact of COVID-19 in more than 70 countries. The organization is using its global reach and grassroots connections to encourage vaccine acceptance and uptake. This means ensuring that communities are accurately informed of the nature and purpose of each COVID-19 vaccine, that leaders and champions are equipped to support their constituencies, that public health decision makers understand vaccine acceptance barriers and the science of reducing vaccine hesitancy. World Vision is using mobile phones to enable health workers, in even the most remote areas, to access vital voice message trainings on COVID-19. Its networks to combat the spread and impact of COVID-19 include 300K faith leaders, 181K community health workers, government and private sector partners, as well as World Vision’s own humanitarian and development experts. Globally, World Vision participates in COVAX1 in an advisory role, providing guidance on community engagement and participating in a working group on demand-side preparedness.
Back to Top
Organization Profile
How Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Became a Global Leader in Testing COVID-19 Vaccines
By Joanne Lu
The global path of COVID-19. Image courtesy of Fred Hutch.
When COVID-19 first made landfall in the U.S. last year, it made its grand entrance in Snohomish County, Washington, and eventually turned Seattle into the country’s “coronavirus capital” for some months. So, in a way, it’s only fitting that the institution at the center of the vaccine development campaign to end the pandemic is based in Seattle, as well.
On the face of it, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center may sound like an unlikely candidate to coordinate COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials. But “Fred Hutch” or “the Hutch” as it’s known, was actually an obvious choice, after having worked for more than 20 years on a vaccine to end another pandemic: HIV/AIDS.
Fred Hutch was founded in 1975 as a center dedicated to studying cancer – and that work continues. But it soon became renowned for its work on other diseases, too, especially HIV (which also causes a type of cancer called Kaposi sarcoma).
Fred Hutch in Seattle. Photo courtesy of Fred Hutch.
It was through HIV research that the center’s former president and director, Dr. Larry Corey, became friends and colleagues with Dr. Anthony Fauci in the 1980s. In fact, it was Fauci who encouraged Corey in 1998 to co-found what became the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), the world’s largest publicly funded international collaboration conducting clinical trials of HIV vaccines. The HVTN is headquartered at Fred Hutch and supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is headed by Fauci.
So, when COVID-19 hit, it was no surprise that Fauci tapped Corey, along with the global network and expertise of Fred Hutch and the HVTN, to coordinate vaccine trials through a newly-formed clinical trials network: the COVID-19 Prevention Network (CoVPN). The plan was to “harmonize” trials of various vaccines so they could be compared to each other by asking a common set of questions, setting a common set of goals, and measuring success with a common set of tests, carried out by independent laboratories. And it needed to be done as quickly as possible.
CoVPN manages more than 100 clinical trial sites in the U.S. and around the world, including in Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. So far it has tested, and is still evaluating, vaccines from Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, and Sanofi.
“Our large network, which is very connected across different disciplines, was a really obvious choice to move forward these COVID-19 vaccines,” says Dr. Michele Andrasik, a senior staff scientist in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division of Fred Hutch and director of Social & Behavioral Sciences and Community Engagement at HVTN and CoVPN.
Dr. Michele Andrasik, a senior staff scientist in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division of Fred Hutch and director of Social & Behavioral Sciences and Community Engagement at HVTN and CoVPN. Photo courtesy of Fred Hutch
The HVTN’s three core areas — operations/leadership, statistical, and laboratory — are all housed at Fred Hutch. Additionally, with clinical trial sites spread across the country and around the world, the Hutch had all the mechanisms and processes in place to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines could get through trials safely, effectively, and relatively quickly.
“We’ve been incredibly successful at shepherding through HIV vaccine trials, so for us, it was a seamless shift,” says Andrasik of taking on the responsibilities of the CoVPN.
“It’s always been our opinion that vaccines are what is going to get us out of this,” says Andrasik, but testing and developing vaccines that work is only the first step. Vaccinating people – enough people – is the goal.
Doing so requires building people’s confidence in vaccines. So, Fred Hutch did what it has always done. Its external relations team reached out to community partners in Washington and around the world – in Asia, in the Pacific Islands, in Indigenous communities, in the Latin American diaspora, in the Black diaspora – to learn how the disease was impacting their communities. They asked leaders what their communities needed to know about the vaccines and what was needed to not only enroll people in vaccine trials, but to increase the number of people getting vaccinated.
According to Dr. Stephaun Wallace, a Fred Hutch staff scientist and HVTN and CoVPN’s director of external relations, skepticism about the trial process or of the vaccines usually falls into four main categories: questions about the benefits, safety and side effects; concerns about the speed with which the vaccines have been developed and whether they work on people “like me;” distrust in the political and economic motivations of the governments and companies involved; and belief in misinformation or conspiracy theories.
Dr. Stephaun Wallace, a Fred Hutch staff scientist and HVTN and CoVPN’s director of external relations. Photo courtesy of Fred Hutch.
Fred Hutch is working especially hard to ensure representation of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities in vaccine trials, because diversity is important for finding a vaccine that works in all kinds of people, and it is necessary for building vaccine confidence. People are more likely to take a vaccine that they know worked on someone who looks like them, says Andrasik.
Again, community engagement is key to increasing BIPOC representation in trials. Fred Hutch’s clinical trial sites have always been in the communities where they work, says Andrasik, and the people who work at those sites are members of the community themselves. Wallace says the team works hard to acknowledge community concerns, provide accurate information, and ensure the ethical conduct of research.
Vaccine confidence isn’t as great of an issue outside of North America and Western Europe, says Andrasik. Instead, the challenge in many low- and middle-income countries is just getting the vaccines there. Besides an inequitable global supply of vaccines, inconsistent pricing is also part of the problem, as well as inadequate public health infrastructure that limits the types of vaccines that are viable in areas without sufficient cold storage capacity, according to Raquel Sanchez, the managing director of Global Oncology at Fred Hutch.
Raquel Sanchez, the managing director of Global Oncology at Fred Hutch. Photo by Robert Hood / Fred Hutch News Service.
Andrasik says Fred Hutch’s approach is to let global partners take the lead. “They’ll let you know what they need in terms of support,” she says, but ensuring that the trials go through as quickly as possible – without bypassing any safety procedures – is one way they’re helping low- and middle-income countries get vaccines sooner.
As vaccines are now being rolled out, community engagement is still key. According to Andrasik, some of the most successful places in the country that are distributing vaccines are doing so in collaboration with faith-based organizations, community organizations, and long-standing institutions that have earned the trust of the communities they’re in. Locally, Fred Hutch is working with the Washington Department of Health and Seattle and King County Public Health to further that effort.
But it’s always a learning process. For example, early on, Seattle – and other cities – thought that mass vaccination sites in BIPOC communities were the answer to administering vaccines equitably. Instead, it quickly became clear that the people who were accessing the sites were not the people who lived in those communities. Instead, it was mostly people who had the ability to chase down appointments, as they worked from home on their computers, who then drove into BIPOC communities to get their vaccinations.
In response, Andrasik says there has been a “massive effort” by the city, local, and state government to deploy pop-up and mobile sites that go directly into BIPOC communities. In some situations, unique URLs have been created for community-based organizations to give to their clients in order to ensure that vaccination appointments are actually being filled by BIPOC individuals.
Although there’s still a lot of work to do to ensure equity as we move closer to ending this pandemic, Andrasik is optimistic: “This is by far the greatest and most concerted effort toward equity that I’ve ever seen in my life, and it’s really amazing to be a part of it.”
Back to Top
Goalmaker
New Head of PATH, Nikolaj Gilbert, Brings Flexibility and Partnership Prowess to Global Health
By Andie Long
Photo courtesy of PATH.
Nikolaj Gilbert joined PATH, a global public health organization headquartered in Seattle, in January of 2020 – just as the first cases of COVID-19 began appearing globally and shortly before the first U.S. cases were reported in Washington state. With little more than a year on the job, having immigrated to the United States from Denmark with his family and onboarded to PATH almost entirely virtually, the new CEO already has a strong vision for the future, one that challenges it to be an even better global partner.
PATH works locally, with national and sub-national health organizations around the world, as well as globally with partners like the World Health Organization, developing vaccines, devices, and tools that can reach people who would otherwise not have access. This expertise has been essential in light of the global pandemic, as many of the hardest hit communities navigate COVID-19 on top of other major health threats. Doing this well requires a strong set of institutional values that drive all of PATH’s work – and Gilbert is the right leader for the job.
In early June when a renewed push for racial justice in the U.S. reached a fever pitch, Gilbert said that PATH accelerated its efforts to ensure the organization held its staff and leaders accountable to its values and for the first time, publicly acknowledged racism as a public health issue. In a statement, PATH said that “…while racism has a uniquely devastating role in the history of the United States, it is a global crisis, marginalizing people and communities everywhere.”
Gilbert has been a staunch advocate for vaccine equity and a multilateral approach to pandemic response. In an article for Devex in October, he called out nationalist policies that have undermined global strategy and fractured the cooperation needed to end the COVID-19 pandemic, warning, “No country will reap the full benefits of a COVID-19 vaccine by only considering the needs of its own population.” More recently, he has used his voice to draw attention to the financing and market challenges of delivering medical oxygen to health care facilities in low- and middle-income countries.
Throughout the pandemic, PATH has worked closely with Gavi/COVAX, the vaccine arm of a global public-private-philanthropic collaboration that was formed to stop the disease in its tracks. And throughout Africa and much of Southeast Asia, PATH has been coordinating with countries to refine their plans for an equitable rollout that prioritizes those who are most vulnerable.
REDEFINING WORK / LIFE BALANCE
Gilbert’s values transcend PATH’s offices. With remote work widespread during the pandemic, many of us have become accustomed to seeing our colleagues occasionally interrupted by their children, pets or even their partners during video calls. This real life incursion has served to remind us of our shared humanity.
Gilbert’s daughters range in age from six to 13. The girls are not yet fluent in English, so the move has been particularly challenging for them, he says, especially as Seattle schools shifted to all-remote learning.
What we all need to remember, he says, is “It’s okay to have your kids jumping on your lap in a meeting.” They’re as much a part of your life as your work is.
Just then, Gilbert’s six-year-old can be heard in the background yelling “Daddy!” He hesitates a split second before saying, “I need to tell her I’m in a call, and I’ll be back.”
After the short interlude, Gilbert is back on camera, his wry smile acknowledging the perfect illustration of what we were just discussing.
In terms of balancing work and home life, Gilbert insists there are ways organizations like his can support employees who have children, without people having to compromise their careers. For him, it’s about demonstrating flexibility in how you evaluate people on their contributions to the organization.
“It’s not always about being physically somewhere for a number of hours,” he says. “It’s what you bring.”
COLLECTIVE LEADERSHIP
Gilbert brings to PATH a strong belief in what he calls collective leadership. “I’m not very hierarchical,” he says. “I seek advice from people who have the knowledge, regardless of where they sit in the organization.”
Reflecting this vision, PATH has recently undergone a reshuffling in its organizational structure, having named four new executives representing PATH’s country teams and “reduced the layers” between top executive levels and the rest of the organization. This new model intentionally addresses the dynamics between PATH’s U.S.-based headquarters and its country-based programs, making sure the country teams have “the power and influence to do what is best and make those decisions.”
The new five-year organizational strategy PATH will be launching this summer focuses on strengthening health systems globally, as well as moving toward a more country-driven model.
Gilbert says he is glad he didn’t have a strategy already in place coming into PATH “because what’s happened in the last year has changed everything.”
The process of setting a new strategy at PATH took nine months, and encompassed organizational-wide surveys together with partners, donor, and staff interviews. “It has been a challenge,” he admits, “but it has also been extremely rewarding and brought us together as an organization.”
PARTNERSHIPS DONE RIGHT
While most organizations find partnerships difficult to build and even more challenging to maintain, PATH’s whole mission depends on navigating public-private partnerships to improve global health. Whether it’s finding the right partners to advance a health innovation, or launch a product, or build the capacity of local manufacturers, Gilbert says, “This organization is pretty darned good at partnerships.”
Having previously served as director of partnerships at the United Nations Office of Project Services, Gilbert brings a wealth of insight on what it takes to manage complex partnerships successfully. One key he says is to forge “fewer partnerships, but more quality partnerships.”
All parties need to be honest and transparent, he says, about what they expect, as well as how the partnership will advance the “greater good” and the needs of both organizations. “There’s no doubt in my mind that partnerships are the way forward,” Gilbert says.
And what better place to be building partnerships than in Washington state?
“It’s amazing to be in an environment where there’s so much focus on critical issues and global health,” Gilbert says. “There are so many like-minded partners and stakeholders here, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and many corporate and philanthropic donors, that want to help.”
“The mentality for partnerships here … I feel that when people talk about entering partnerships, it’s really something that they see the benefit of. Maybe here there is this history and legacy of how these partnerships have transformed and led to many innovations in different areas.”
While Gilbert knew Washington state was home to many important global health organizations, he says he didn’t realize until he moved here the “amazing energy” of those local stakeholders and how well they connect and work together to scale up solutions. “That’s quite remarkable and the innovation capacity and passion in this part of the world has surprised me and stunned me to be honest.”
Back to Top
From Our Blog
Vaccines Touch Down Across Africa: Now the Work Begins
By Emily Bancroft, President, VillageReach
I never thought I’d be so excited by pictures of boxes being unloaded from airplanes. When I saw the photos come streaming across social media this week, I breathed a deep sigh of relief. The pallets being wheeled onto the tarmac meant that COVID-19 vaccines had arrived in Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi and many other African countries. As government officials and partners began to unpack the containers, we all knew the hard work was just beginning.
Malawi officials receive COVAX delivery at Kamuza International Airport. | Photo Credit: Hope Ngwira
Over the last year, as the scientific community quickly mobilized to develop, test and produce multiple effective vaccines, the focus for VillageReach has been protecting health workers and communities against the virus. As an organization dedicated to the delivery of vaccines, medicines, supplies and information, COVID-19 vaccine delivery has been constantly on our minds. We participated in the Country Readiness and Delivery working group of the vaccine pillar of the Access to COVID Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) to help link global-level plans with country efforts. Read more.
Back to Top
Action Alert
Aid Organizations Respond to Instability and Violence in Myanmar
The fragile democracy of Myanmar, which held for a decade, was upended at the beginning of February 2021 when the military staged a coup to prevent newly elected members of parliament from being confirmed. The military’s favored party lost the November elections in a landslide to the National League for Democracy, the governing party of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
In response to the coup, millions of Myanmar’s citizens and residents took to the streets to protest, many banging on pots and pans to “drive the ‘military regime’ out of the country.” The demonstrations soon evolved into a nationwide strike of civil service workers, with nurses and doctors the first to refuse to work. They were followed quickly by teachers, as well as bank tellers and other private sector employees. All this after a grueling year of lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, today the country has nearly ground to a halt. Read more.
Back to Top
Action Alert
Millions at Risk from Evolving Crisis in Northern Ethiopia’s Tigray Region
(UPDATED March 4, 2021)
Credit: Joost Bastmeijer for Medical Teams International.
According to the latest report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), at least 4.5 million people in the Tigray region of Ethiopia are in dire need of assistance, with those in rural areas the hardest to reach. Food is scarce and the lack of water, sanitation, and hygiene services has increased the risk of deadly disease outbreaks. What’s more, people in the region have few functional health facilities to turn to. Read more.
Back to Top
Welcome New Members
Please welcome our newest Global Washington members. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with their work and consider opportunities for support and collaboration!
Nia Tero
Indigenous peoples sustain many of the healthiest ecosystems on Earth: areas rich in biodiversity and systems essential to our global climate, fresh water, and food security. Nia Tero exists to ensure that Indigenous peoples have the economic power and cultural independence to steward, support, and protect their livelihoods and territories they call home. These places are vital to us all. Niatero.org
Opportunity International
Opportunity International provides financial solutions and training to empower people living in poverty to transform their lives, their children’s futures and their communities. Opportunity.org
Water Mission
Water Mission is a Christian engineering nonprofit that builds safe water, sanitation, and hygiene solutions in developing countries and disaster areas. Watermission.org
Back to Top
Member Events
March 17: Ethiopia in Theory, Theory as Memoir
March 18: Using Talking Books for agriculture extension, disaster relief, and civic engagement // Amplio
March 26: Maximize Life Gala // The Max Foundation
Back to Top
Career Center
Director of Strategic Partnerships // Ashesi University Foundation
Associate Consultant // Gorman Consulting
Senior Technology Officer // Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)
Digital Communications Officer // Agros International
Global People & Culture Manager // Splash
Grant Writer // Snow Leopard Trust
Check out the GlobalWA Job Board for the latest openings.
Back to Top
GlobalWA Events
March 24: From Global to Local: Informing Seattle’s Pandemic Response – Virtual Program
Back to Top
Vaccines Touch Down Across Africa: Now the Work Begins
By Emily Bancroft, President, VillageReach
I never thought I’d be so excited by pictures of boxes being unloaded from airplanes. When I saw the photos come streaming across social media this week, I breathed a deep sigh of relief. The pallets being wheeled onto the tarmac meant that COVID-19 vaccines had arrived in Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi and many other African countries. As government officials and partners began to unpack the containers, we all knew the hard work was just beginning.
Malawi officials receive COVAX delivery at Kamuza International Airport. | Photo Credit: Hope Ngwira
Over the last year, as the scientific community quickly mobilized to develop, test and produce multiple effective vaccines, the focus for VillageReach has been protecting health workers and communities against the virus. As an organization dedicated to the delivery of vaccines, medicines, supplies and information, COVID-19 vaccine delivery has been constantly on our minds. We participated in the Country Readiness and Delivery working group of the vaccine pillar of the Access to COVID Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) to help link global-level plans with country efforts.
Continue Reading
February 2021 Newsletter
Posted on February 11, 2021.
Welcome to the February 2021 issue of the Global Washington newsletter.
IN THIS ISSUE
Letter from our Executive Director
We were inspired last February when the former President of Ireland Mary Robinson visited Seattle to talk about her foundation and the importance of centering human rights when it comes to a robust and ethical climate change response.
We learned that climate change has a greater impact on people living in low- and middle-income countries with few monetary resources, poor health conditions, insecure land rights, and fragile infrastructure.
The climate impacts we are already seeing include severe droughts, growing food insecurity, wider disease transmission, and rising seas that threaten the very existence of many coastal cities and island nations.
As is often the case, those who are most affected by a crisis have a great deal of insight and knowledge to create effective solutions. While Indigenous communities are often at greater risk from environmental degradation and climate effects, their long history of living from and caring for the land provides a unique perspective and an integrated set of solutions that can make sustainability a reality and help turn the tide on the climate crisis.
In this month’s newsletter you will meet James Mulbah, a project manager for Earthworm Foundation, who having grown up in war-torn Liberia, decided to dedicate his career to conflict resolution and environmental rights. You will also learn about how Landesa approaches climate change and sustainable land management through first helping individuals and communities secure their land rights, particularly women and Indigenous groups.
Climate justice was also the theme of our Women of the World January celebration, where we featured incredible women from Nigeria, Palau, Suriname, Nepal and the U.S. A summary of this event provides an overview of the topic in this newsletter.
To continue the conversation, please join me on February 25 for a virtual event about climate justice, co-hosted by the Posner Center for International Development. Global Washington is committed to promoting the work of our members as it relates to Sustainable Development Goal 13 — Climate Action. I am hopeful that the global community will make significant progress toward climate justice in 2021 and beyond.
Kristen Dailey
Executive Director
Back to Top
Issue Brief
Centering Indigenous Knowledge and Experience Infuses Discussion of Climate Justice at Annual Seattle Philanthropy Event
By Joanne Lu
“Everything is connected, and there’s no longer any such thing as solving for only one challenge.”
That was the emerging theme of Global Washington’s annual Women of the World event, as expressed by Martha Kongsgaard, a prominent Seattle philanthropist and co-founder of the Kongsgaard-Goldman Foundation.
The topic of the January 28 event was climate justice, inspired by the former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, who defined the effort as “[linking] human rights and development to achieve a human-centered approach, safeguarding the rights of the most vulnerable people and sharing the burdens and benefits of climate change and its impacts equitably and fairly.” In other words, said Kongsgaard, “it’s managing the ecosystem with people and equity at the center.”
For example, the Seattle Foundation’s Climate Justice Impact Strategy is a comprehensive initiative to ensure that communities of color and low-income communities are leading and shaping efforts to reduce the disproportionate effects of climate change they experience, explained Norma Fuentes, managing director of the foundation’s philanthropic services. But the event didn’t just address climate justice in our region. Speakers from four other countries – Nepal, Nigeria, Palau and Suriname – shared what climate justice looks like in their communities, as well.
Video image of speaker Jupta Iteowaki, an Indigenous woman from the Wayana tribe in Suriname and president of Mulokot Foundation, during Global Washington’s virtual 2021 “Women of the World” event.
Unlike the events of years’ past, the discussion was held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which Yifat Susskind, executive director of the international women’s rights organization MADRE, described as one of the compounded threats that have “rocked us all” over the past year. However, far from affecting everyone equally, the pandemic, economic breakdown, and climate crisis have deepened existing inequalities.
The irony is that many of the people who are hurt most by these crises are actually essential to solving them. Yet, they have not only been left out of the conversation, but also often harmed by so-called solutions that aren’t human-centered.
For example, the threat of climate change is perhaps felt more immediately and existentially by Indigenous communities than any other, as rising sea levels threaten to swallow their homes, wildfires consume their forests, droughts diminish their water sources, and seasonal changes endanger their food security and livelihoods. According to Jupta Iteowaki, an Indigenous woman from the Wayana tribe in Suriname and president of Mulokot Foundation, the crisis is creating profound negative mental health impacts on Indigenous communities.
At the same time, even though Indigenous people only make up about five percent of the global population, they protect 80 percent of biodiversity, says Susskind.
“Most of what remains of nature is in the hands of Indigenous peoples,” says Margarita Mora, managing director of partnerships for Nia Tero, an organization working to secure Indigenous guardianship of vital ecosystems. “These are the areas with the highest cultural value to humanity. These are the areas with the highest diversity of plants, and animals, the largest carbon stocks worldwide and areas that are key for freshwater cycles.”
As Kongsgaard noted, the environment has traditionally been siloed from other social justice issues like human rights and development. The result, according to Mora, is that conservation efforts forced Indigenous people out of their territories, fenced in protected areas, changed their way of life and manipulated many communities. Conservationists, she says, have failed for the last century to recognize Indigenous people’s rights, knowledge systems, and contributions to humanity.
Video image of speaker Martha Kongsgaard, a prominent Seattle philanthropist and co-founder of the Kongsgaard-Goldman Foundation, during Global Washington’s virtual 2021 “Women of the World” event.
“It was not good for people. It was not good for nature,” says Mora.
Additionally, there is the gender layer. In many societies, including Indigenous ones, women are the caregivers and protectors of not only their families but also their lands, according to Kamala Thapa, a longtime advocate for Indigenous women’s rights in Nepal. This means that for Indigenous women and girls, the climate crisis exacerbates loss of livelihoods, gender-based violence, and school drop-out rates; deepens poverty; increases early childhood marriages; impacts reproductive rights and health; and forcibly displaces communities. In sum, Thapa says, “it affects nearly every aspect of life.”
There is no singular solution to the problem, but at the heart of all solutions should be the rights and welfare of those who are most at risk, says Thapa. This includes protecting Indigenous sovereignty and their right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent, whereby they can give or withhold consent to a project that may affect them or their territories. For some communities, it’s even letting them know that they have rights – says Habiba Ali, founder, managing director and CEO of Sosai Renewable Energies in Nigeria – and that their problems are due to an issue (climate change) bigger than them.
Video image of speaker Habiba Ali, founder, managing director and CEO of Sosai Renewable Energies in Nigeria, during Global Washington’s virtual 2021 “Women of the World” event.
Several of the speakers also highlighted the importance of learning from Indigenous women and communities, whose long history with the land has resulted in deep knowledge of how to preserve it. This includes ensuring the effective participation of Indigenous communities in the planning and decision-making process for climate actions, says Itoewaki. It also means conscientiously developing equitable partnerships with those who are most affected by climate change, genuinely listening to their needs, and making sure the impacts of climate policies – including funds – actually reach them, says Madelsar Ngiraingas, a Palauan conservationist who is currently the Micronesia community partnerships manager for OneReef. Additionally, she says, it’s important to make sure that our desire for measurable data doesn’t put an undue burden on communities like hers that are battling the climate crisis every day.
Image shared by speaker Margarita Mora, managing director of partnerships for Nia Tero, during Global Washington’s virtual 2021 “Women of the World” event.
“A lot of grants require indicators, measures and all these very technical aspects,” says Ngiraingas. “We need to recognize that in many spaces – Indigenous spaces – these types of expectations are insurmountable. Hold people accountable in ways that make sense.”
Beyond rights advocacy and knowledge sharing, there are also many technical solutions to the climate crisis, like the ones Sosai Renewable Energies is scaling up in Nigeria. Some are low-tech, like reforesting areas and introducing new livelihood opportunities like fisheries. Others are high-tech, like solar solutions to power homes, distributing cookstoves that use 70 percent less wood and thereby reduce smoke and indoor air pollution, and deploying solar food dryers to create less food waste and ensure food security. According to Ali, Sosai has impacted more than 750,000 people so far and is responsible for removing more than 200,000 tons of carbon dioxide every year from the atmosphere. And they’re doing so primarily by reaching out to women.
For those who don’t feel like they’re on the front lines of the climate crisis, there’s still plenty to contribute. “Try to use renewable energy, try to eat less meat, don’t waste food,” says Iteowaki. “And please speak up for us. If we’re not able to share our stories, please share them for us.”
At the end of the day, says Mora, we all should be asking ourselves a question that Indigenous people have been asking for thousands of years: “What kind of ancestor will I be? And what kind of ancestor will we collectively be?”
The answer, she says, will determine whether we continue to exploit our planet and fellow humans or build a sustainable, equitable, and just future for all.
Image credit: Nia Tero.
Read more about how Global Washington members are taking action on climate change.
Agros
In Central America, Agros has seen that climate change, agriculture, and poverty are deeply intertwined. Current farming methods do not meet the world’s growing demand for food, do not generate enough income for those growing the food, and contribute a third of all greenhouse emissions worldwide. Those living in poverty are disproportionately affected. To address these issues, Agros launched a Climate Smart Agriculture Initiative in 2020. The goal was to increase farmers’ ability to adapt to changing climate conditions, mitigate contributions to climate change, and increase farmer productivity. Agros invested in modern production systems that significantly increase the number of harvests and increase the yield of each harvest—meaning more income and more food is generated on less land with fewer emissions. Highlights of the program include: reducing the use of chemical fertilizers by 40%; reducing the use of pesticides by up to 75%; reducing costs by up to 32% while increasing yields by 18%; and building a hydroponics module that decreases water use by 50%. This initiative was facilitated in part by a special partnership with the travel author Rick Steves. In 2021 Agros will renew the partnership, expanding its climate smart work from agriculture to the entirety of village operations.
Amazon
In 2019 Amazon co-founded the Climate Pledge with Global Optimism, and became its first signatory. The Climate Pledge is a cross-sector community of companies, organizations, individuals, and partners, working together to crack the climate crisis and solve the challenges of decarbonizing the economy. Bringing together those that are prepared to run the furthest and fastest, The Climate Pledge calls on signatories to reach net zero-carbon emissions by 2040—10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement.
Earthworm
Earthworm Foundation is a non-profit organization driven by the desire to positively impact the relationship between people and nature. With most of our staff operating directly on the ground where the issues are, we work with our member companies and partners to make value chains an engine to drive positive economic, environmental and social impact. We are tackling one of the main drivers of climate change by working collaboratively with companies, communities and other stakeholders to eliminate deforestation from global supply chains of commodities like palm oil, cocoa, and pulp and paper. At the same time, we are helping farming communities become more resilient in the face of climate change through our Rurality program, which promotes smallholder farming practices and crop diversification with the goals of ensuring that farmer households have more secure livelihoods and access to a variety of food crops for their own consumption. Ultimately, much of our work around the world is aimed at preserving the climate that allows life on Earth to thrive.
EverVillage
EverVillage is a place that believes in a green recovery – a place of environmental and social resilience, where women and youth are designing the future, and water is the key to it all. EverVillage combines art and science to develop innovative, green infrastructure solutions that last – through community-based planning, placemaking, capacity-building, and an inside-out approach. The organization focuses on long-term water resilience and resource management with rural, Indigenous, and refugee communities – and those most impacted by the intersections of climate change, social injustice, poverty, and now the COVID-19 pandemic. In joining the global community as it re-examines the status of the SDGs in this critical time of recovery, EverVillage’s current climate justice work is focused on the UN initiative, Leave No One Behind. By bridging the digital divide and making voices heard and counted, EverVillage supports data-informed decision making for a sustainable water future for all and believes: “We are One Global Village.”
FSC Investments & Partnerships
FSC Investments & Partnerships (FSC I&P) is the Seattle-based unit of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) International, a global leader in responsible forest management. FSC promotes the environmentally responsible, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world’s forests, and is widely recognized as the gold standard in responsible forest management. Since 2019, FSC International and the FSC Indigenous Foundation have developed and launched a programmatic effort that centers Indigenous Peoples in the continued management of their territories for the protection of the world’s forests, biodiversity, and carbon stocks. The FSC Indigenous Foundation is an Indigenous-led entity within the global FSC network. Dr. Francisco Souza, Managing Director for the FSC Indigenous Foundation, said: “As a member of the Apurinã Indigenous community of the Brazilian Amazon, I have seen firsthand the destruction of the forests around my community and violence against our rights and traditional practices of managing and protecting nature. At the same time, I have seen the benefits, for the forests, for mother nature, and for the brothers and sisters in the region, which arise when we are supported to manage our own lands based on our visions, traditions, and rights. Around the world, Indigenous communities are the best stewards and guardians of the forests where we live. We are global providers of environmental health and wellbeing to the planet.”
Heifer International
Heifer International is on a mission to end global hunger and poverty in a sustainable way. For over 75 years, the organization has invested alongside more than 36 million farmers and business owners around the world, supporting them to build businesses that deliver living incomes and protect the environment. Heifer International works with smallholder farmers using a tried and tested community development model, providing farming inputs and technical assistance that enable them to grow their businesses using locally available resources. Expert teams and partners provide training in climate smart agriculture techniques so farmers can increase their resilience to climate change, improve production, restore soil health and reduce deforestation. Many of the communities Heifer works with are among the most vulnerable to climate change. Heifer International works with them to manage grazing and protect areas of important biodiversity, enabling farmers to make a living income and restore resources for future generations. Heifer International and Heifer Impact Capital also invest alongside farmers in clean, green energy solutions, like solar power and solar drying systems for continued business growth. Heifer International believes local farmers hold the key to feeding the world while cooling the planet and it works with them to make their businesses sustainable in every sense of the word.
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch conducts on-the-ground research to document the impact of climate change and climate-harming activities and to advocate for positive change locally, nationally, and internationally. Human Rights Watch disseminates its findings through a global media network and 11 million social media followers. It uses its findings and media exposure to urge governments and corporations to implement rights-respecting environmental policies and practices, with a focus on the disadvantaged populations that are suffering harms most acutely. In coalition with other environmental and human rights groups, Human Rights Watch successfully advocated for the inclusion of human rights language in the landmark2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. In the coming year, Human Rights Watch’s work on climate change will focus on two of today’s most urgent issues: protecting environmental defenders struggling to preserve forests, land, and water, plus safeguarding communities vulnerable to climate events. Human Rights Watch will expose violence and intimidation against Indigenous peoples, community activists, and others and promote protections to keep them—and our planet—safe. The organization will also document climate change consequences, from droughts fueling child malnutrition in Colombia, to rising temperatures depleting Indigenous food sources in Canada, and extreme heat debilitating pregnant outdoor workers in the United States. Human Rights Watch moves governments to respond with policies that help vulnerable populations not only cope but thrive.
The Hunger Project
The Hunger Project is working to end hunger and poverty by pioneering sustainable, grassroots, women-centered strategies and advocating for their widespread adoption in countries throughout the world. The Hunger Project’s work starts with a mindset shift that allows women and girls to gain agency — or voice in the decisions that affect their lives — as well as skills, time, income, and leadership. When women and girls gain agency, there are a whole host of outcomes, including women claiming their reproductive rights and girls enrolling in secondary school. Project Drawdown revealed that educating girls and family planning together form the most promising solution to drawing down carbon from the atmosphere and reversing global warming. Beyond that, women and girls with agency drive local climate justice in many forms — planting trees, building water catchment systems, developing agroforestry from native plants, keeping their schoolmates enrolled in school, advocating that indigenous values be reflected in local development plans. Women and girls with agency, income, time, skills and leadership are not just a side benefit to the work of climate justice — they are central actors in its achievement.
Future of Fish
Future of Fish works to ensure sustainable livelihoods for fishing communities and long-term health of wild fish populations, which billions of people depend upon as a critical source of protein. Climate change is already wreaking havoc for coastal communities in developing countries, with rising seas damaging dockside infrastructure and warming waters driving away traditional fish stocks. The result is loss of income, food, and in many cases, cultural heritage. Future of Fish collaborates with small-scale fishers to design better systems, practices, and technologies that help fishers continue supporting their communities in a time of unstable climate impacts. Climate justice is only possible when front-line communities have the resources they need to survive and thrive. Future of Fish works closely with fishers, seafood supply chains, and the local community and governments to co-design interventions that build environmentally sustainable, climate resilient, and economically viable fisheries. With support from global and regional partners, Future of Fish helps address food security and achieve long-term social and environmental impact for coastal fishing communities around the world.
Landesa
Landesa champions and works to secure land rights for millions of rural women and men experiencing poverty, to promote social justice and provide opportunity. When rural and indigenous communities are equipped with secure land rights that are gender-equal and socially inclusive, they are better able to make investments – in sustainable land management and farming techniques like terracing, improved irrigation, and agroforestry – that conserve soil and water and build resilience to climate change. Beyond a role in climate adaptation, there is evidence that secure land rights can help advance efforts on climate mitigation, particularly through preservation of forests and land restoration practices. At the country level, Landesa’s climate change work includes improving community forestry management in Myanmar’s mangrove forests; better management and protection of wetlands in Liberia, including recommendations to improve use and access rights for women; and researching the link between youth land rights and uptake of climate-smart agriculture techniques in Tanzania. Landesa’s advocacy efforts include recommendations to integrate land tenure, particularly for women, in global frameworks on climate change, including the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Mercy Corps
The climate crisis is creating unprecedented challenges for millions of people already burdened by poverty and oppression. Mercy Corps’ climate resilience work tackles the human impacts of climate change—particularly disappearing livelihoods, rising food insecurity, increasing disaster, and escalating violence—by empowering communities to adapt, innovate and thrive. Mercy Corps tackles the root causes of instability, empowering people to survive crisis and transform their communities. In the Commune Arcahaie region of Haiti, where farmers’ incomes are dropping and hunger is on the rise as time-honored agricultural practices become less effective in the face of climate disruptions like erosion and flooding, Mercy Corps’ Credit for Conservation program gives farmers the incentive and funding they need to shift toward more sustainable agricultural practices. Participating farmers who implemented improved land management practices not only conserved and restored their natural resources but they had up to a 113% increase in crop yield and a 12% increase in income. In Kenya, where climate change is bringing worsening drought, flooding, deforestation, and soil erosion, Mercy Corps is making sure climate funds reach the communities that need them most by working with community groups to unlock funds from the national level. Mercy Corps has already helped two regions access funds, helping 138,000 people become more prepared for future climate disruptions.
Microsoft
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. This includes working with enterprise customers as well as non-profits and NGOs around the world to scale the impact of their work. Microsoft is empowering first responder organizations to meet critical global needs, humanitarian organizations to drive greater impact, and displaced people to rebuild their lives with a mix of technology, cash grants, employee donations and staff time. This mission-driven work is evident in its environmental work, which began in 2012 as a carbon neutral company. In responding to the urgency of climate change, Microsoft has made three public commitments at the beginning of 2020: 1) to become carbon negative by 2030; 2) to responsibility for removing its historical carbon emissions by 2050; and 3) to invest $1 billion over the next four years into new technologies and expanded access to capital for those working around the world to solve climate change. In September of 2020, Microsoft made another commitment: to become “water positive” by 2030 – reducing its water use intensity (water consumed per megawatt of energy expended for operations) and replenishing water in regions where the company operates that are water-stressed. By 2030 Microsoft intends to replenish more water than it consumes on a global basis.
National Wildlife Federation
As the U.S. confronts the cascading impacts of a changing climate, advancing environmental justice must be central to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, boosting resilience, and revitalizing communities. Low-income and communities of color are disproportionately impacted by the effects of a changing climate—and the National Wildlife Federation has a responsibility to empower frontline communities to enact transformative change by providing resources and tools. To achieve this vision, for both people and wildlife, NWF is working to ensure that equity and the principles of environmental justice are institutionalized into its climate work. One way is through Revitalizing Vulnerable Communities Institute, which is empowering communities to implement holistic solutions to environmental and economic issues. The Federation is also undertaking a Climate and Communities Project that works to help communities heavily dependent on fossil fuels feel more prepared for, and engaged with, national climate policies. Here in the Pacific Northwest, the National Wildlife Federation is engaged in climate change issues unfolding in the Columbia River basin and the Snake River. Hotter water temperatures are pushing cold water fish—including salmon—toward extinction, greatly impacting the inland and coastal Native American communities, and as well as rural fishing communities that depend on them.
Nia Tero
Nia Tero works in areas where Indigenous peoples sustain large-scale ecosystems within their collective territories. The organization supports existing and potential systems of governance that can secure successful guardianship of these territories. Nia Tero’s relationships with Indigenous peoples and local communities revolve around shared commitments for guardianship. These commitments are put in practice through agreements that lay out mutual obligations to secure the well-being of peoples and places and to provide durable, long-term financial and technical support. Each agreement follows an explicit process of planning, guided by humility and a principle that all participants are equals. Nia Tero believes Indigenous peoples uphold many of the planet’s healthiest ecosystems, rich in biodiversity, and systems essential to the security of global food production, fresh water, and ultimately, the Earth’s climate. And the peoples who call these places home are the best guardians of their cultures’ vital birthplaces, and that supporting the rights and livelihoods of Indigenous peoples, and following their leadership, is critical to the health of our planet as a whole.
Oxfam America
Oxfam America believes that the injustice of climate change is also the injustice of inequality – those who have done the least to contribute to global emissions are the hardest hit. Climate justice requires that we rapidly shift towards low-emissions economies that leave no one behind, and promote resilient development by building capacities and leadership of communities & women on the frontlines. The climate crisis is already impacting the world – wildfires in Australia, locusts in Africa, and communities in the global south are often the hardest hit with extreme weather events like droughts and floods taking a heavy toll. Oxfam’s vision and value add in the fight for climate justice centers these communities, rather than focusing only on wildlife preservation or more narrowly on environmental impacts. Through its work, Oxfam is committed to reducing climate change by tackling the structural drivers of the crisis often rooted in unequal economic models, which requires holding governments and big business accountable. Oxfam works with a range of partners to help communities adapt and become more resilient, and it is committed to elevating the voices and leadership of communities – especially women who are on the frontlines. Oxfam also believes that policy and advocacy have key roles to play to advance climate justice. Oxfam works to defend the Paris agreement and engage the U.S. government to push for a robust global framework to tackle the climate crisis. Oxfam engages food and beverage companies to tackle the hidden emissions in their supply chains; advocates with international finance institutions to channel more investment towards pro-poor clean energy; works toward greater transparency in the oil and gas sector; and encourages governments to invest in the rights and livelihoods of small famers, especially women farmers.
Remote Energy
Remote Energy (RE) believes that access to reliable sources of sustainable energy is a fundamental requirement for the advancement of education, healthcare, economic opportunity and quality of life. It is also a critical step in mitigating the effects of climate change. The climate crises has fostered significant growth in the solar energy industry worldwide, and has fueled the fast growing need for a trained solar workforce. RE has responded by developing and implementing regionally appropriate, customized technical capacity building programs and developing hands-on, practical learning opportunities for solar technicians and instructors in marginalized communities worldwide. RE’s scalable programs, methodology and mentorship opportunities provide the knowledge, technical skills and support network for inspiring people and communities to move towards energy independence and sustainable development. RE is also committed to gender equality and supports the belief that women’s talents and leadership are vital to maintain a diverse, sustainable PV industry and critical in the fight against climate change. RE’s Women’s Program is designed to develop women decision-makers, end-users, technicians, and educators and offers customized, women’s-only courses and mentoring opportunities with professional female instructors.
Save the Children
The climate crisis is a child’s rights crisis; which is magnifying inequality, poverty, and displacement. Hotter temperatures, air pollution and violent storms are leading to immediate, life-threatening dangers. For Save the Children, climate change adaptation means advancing measures in programming, policy and advocacy, which reduce vulnerabilities and increase resilience of children and their communities. As a global leader in protecting children and families in emergencies and natural disasters, Save the Children’s key strengths is in reaching the most vulnerable communities that are hardest hit by climate change. Deeply engaged with communities in over 100 countries, Save the Children manages a global portfolio of more than 100 resilience projects. It is uniquely positioned to help amplify children’s voices by advocating for climate justice and addressing the impacts of climate change on children and their families. In September 2020, Sultan Latif joined Save the Children as director of the Humanitarian Climate Crisis Unit, a linchpin of the organization’s commitment to safeguard a better future for children. A partner in the Children in a Changing Climate (CCC) coalition, Save the Children is also currently the only non-environmental NGO in the world accredited by the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the world’s largest global fund dedicated to helping fight climate change.
Seattle Aquarium
The Seattle Aquarium has a responsibility to foster inclusive conversations and is committed to advancing equity and environmental justice throughout its work. Environmental burdens and benefits are not equitably distributed, and for too long the people most impacted have been marginalized and unable to lend their expertise to ensure their needs are met. Meanwhile, climate change is having far-reaching and numerous effects on the ocean and coastal communities. Through diverse partnerships and coalitions, the Aquarium works to co-generate innovative solutions to help ocean ecosystems and coastal communities become more resilient to the effects of climate change. The Aquarium seeks to partner with organizations leading climate and environmental justice efforts to create a pathway for all communities to benefit from environmental policy. The Aquarium advocates for policies that incorporate environmental justice—related to climate resilience, plastic pollution, clean air and water—with a particular focus on ocean-climate solutions that provide jobs and lift up overburdened communities to better advance a just future. The ocean has mitigated some effects of climate change, but it is becoming increasingly clear that we must act now—we need to protect the ocean and its ability to help provide solutions for a brighter, more equitable future.
Seattle Foundation
Seattle Foundation ignites powerful, rewarding philanthropy to make Greater Seattle a stronger, more vibrant community for all. As a community foundation, it works to advance equity, shared prosperity, and belonging throughout the region while strengthening the impact of the philanthropists it serves. Founded in 1946 and with more than $1.1 billion in assets, the Foundation pursues its mission with a combination of deep community insight, civic leadership, philanthropic advising and judicious financial stewardship. The Climate Justice Impact Strategy is Seattle Foundation’s comprehensive approach to ensuring that communities of color and low-income communities are leading and shaping efforts to reduce the effects of climate change, which they experience disproportionately. To reduce the risks of climate change, Seattle Foundation addresses its root causes, identifies and adapts to its impacts, and strengthens community resiliency to those impacts. Justice and equity are at the core of this approach, which uses community-based research while building diverse coalitions and increasing the capacity of nonprofits to advance local solutions to this global challenge.
Snow Leopard Trust
The Snow Leopard Trust (SLT) seeks climate justice through its mission to protect snow leopards in partnership with local communities that share the cat’s habitat. For four decades, SLT has worked to empower herding families across Asia to take action for their local ecosystems and secure a prosperous future for both humans and wildlife. With programs and staff in five countries in Asia and support from around the world, SLT coordinates programs that promote sustainable development, green livelihoods, and climate-smart planning, including environmental education camps, livestock insurance and vaccination programs, ranger trainings, and a handicraft program called Snow Leopard Enterprises. Using approaches from both natural and social sciences, SLT researchers endeavor to understand the complex dynamics between people, predators, and the environment. SLT has been a key partner in the Global Snow Leopard & Ecosystem Protection Program (GSLEP) and rallied the governments of 12 countries to support programs that link conservation with sustainable development. As humankind expands its reach to the most remote areas of snow leopard habitat, SLT strives for climate justice through community involvement and multilateral partnerships.
Tableau Foundation
Tableau Foundation works with organizations that are using data to effectively advocate for climate action—by illustrating the scope of the climate crisis, making evident which communities and populations are most at risk, and guiding policy and action. Headwaters Economics is one of Tableau’s partners for climate action. The organization focuses on building the data-driven case for protecting public lands and taking action to protect vulnerable populations from climate change. Another partner, Grist, is a non-profit publication dedicated to covering the climate crisis and solutions to it.
Tearfund USA
In 1992, Tearfund became the first large international development NGO to focus on the climate crisis after seeing how it affected the organization’s partners across the globe. The rate and impact of environmental degradation are hitting people living in poverty the hardest – the very people who have done the least to cause it. To combat this issue, Tearfund supports communities with programs related to waste management, renewable energy, climate-smart agriculture, and climate resilience. Through Tearfund’s training and equipping programs, vulnerable communities are able to produce enough food for everybody using environmentally responsible farming methods. This way they become part of a sustainable future. Tearfund also calls on governments and companies to change harmful practices that contribute to climate problems. Currently, Tearfund is working in more than 24 countries to address the challenges caused by the climate crisis, furthering its efforts in advocacy, campaigning, and supporting environmental sustainability programs.
Vital Voices Global Partnership
Vital Voices Global Partnership invests in women leaders who are solving the world’s greatest challenges – from gender-based violence to the climate crisis, economic inequities, and more. The organization considers itself a “venture catalyst,” identifying those with a daring vision for change and partnering with them to make that vision a reality. Vital Voices scales and accelerates impact through long-term investments to expand skills, connections, capacity and visibility. Recognizing that women and girls are the most adversely and disproportionately impacted by climate change, health crises, and environmental destruction, Vital Voices works with women leaders on the frontlines of change who are creating visionary solutions, and equips them with networking opportunities, leadership development and amplification they need to scale their work on a global level. Over the last 24 years, Vital Voices has built a network of 18,000 change makers across 182 countries, each of whom are daring to reimagine a more equitable world for all.
World Vision
World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the root causes of poverty and injustice. World Vision works directly with communities to identify context-specific solutions with a focus on food security, clean energy, natural resource management and climate change adaptation and mitigation. Projects include interventions like reforestation, agro-forestry, climate-smart agriculture, clean energy and access to carbon-offset markets. World Vision is also a world leader in promoting Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) in rural communities, a process that naturally regenerates trees on farmland and forest areas to improve agricultural productivity and reduce the incidence of droughts, floods and landslides. A number of communities in Ethiopia have also benefited from a Clean Stoves Project, which reduces the health risks associated with smoky open fire stoves, and reduces the need to cut down trees. Finally, World Vision has worked with communities in South East Asia and the Pacific region to better prepare them for tropical storms and other natural disasters, which are becoming increasingly frequent and violent as a result of climate change.
Back to Top
Organization Profile
Landesa: Finding ‘Elegant Solutions’ to Complex Problems
By Amber Cortes
Wetland areas in Liberia are a source of food for rural and periurban communities. Photo credit: Tyler Roush/Landesa.
Like the air you breathe, you may not spend a lot of time thinking about the land you live on.
But for many communities and individuals in low- and middle-income countries, land is life—”their entire world is access to land and natural resources, both from an income front and for food security,” says Rachel McMonagle, the climate change and land tenure specialist at Landesa, an organization working to secure land rights for people experiencing poverty, discrimination and economic inequality around the world.
When it comes to conversations about climate change, human rights and sustainable development, McMonagle says, people don’t seem to recognize the vital role of land in climate resilience, and how it can be a powerful tool for good.
“I think there’s a disconnect, especially for a lot of people in the U.S., that we just take property rights and rights to natural resources for granted,” she continues.
For the Global North, land rights are pretty much a settled issue. But even though at least half the world’s land and natural resources (some say as much as 65%) are managed by local communities and Indigenous people, they only have formal legal ownership of 10 percent of that land.
This imbalance, McMonagle says, opens up the door for corporate interests or outside land grabs from logging and mining companies, or other ‘outside actors’ coming in who may be disrupting centuries of sustainable land management due to this lack of legal land rights.
As a global nonprofit with over five decades of experience, Landesa’s impact spans different geographies, land uses and communities, working with farmers, forest communities, and pastoralists to secure land tenure—because land ownership leads to greater financial and food security, and can open up opportunities in health care, education and political power within communities.
Land ownership also encourages more investments in the land itself—investments with long-term environmental benefits such as agricultural practices like terracing the land, tree planting, or investing in sustainable infrastructure development.
“And so Landesa is really focused on those win-win solutions that benefit both communities and the environment at the same time,” McMonagle says.
One example is in Myanmar, where Landesa has been working with the forest department to allow communities to secure forest certificates and create sustainable land management plans, so that entire communities can own the land collectively, and reforest areas through mangrove restoration.
U Pho Toke and his 14-year-old son lost their jobs in Thailand, and returned to their mangrove village in Tanintharyi, Myanmar, which has been certified as a 150 acre community forest. With this new certification, they receive free mangrove saplings from the forestry department for replanting, and a sense of security so that they will invest in their land. Photo courtesy of Landesa.
Mangroves provide a host of climate mitigation and adaptation benefits. They sequester four times as much carbon as tropical rainforests, protect inland farmland from storm surges, help with saltwater intrusion and also provide fish habitat to strengthen local livelihoods.
“It’s just a lot of benefits through one activity,” McMonagle explains. “I don’t want to call it a simple solution—but maybe it’s an elegant solution.”
Reports have also shown that when women and Indigenous groups are able to secure land rights, it can lead to climate mitigation and resilience efforts such as restoring forests and natural reservoirs, resource-sharing and carbon sequestration.
It also puts communities in a position where they can become drivers of local sustainable development and safeguards of the land by launching campaigns and lawsuits against corporate land grabs.
And the cascading effects of women in particular owning land, McMonagle says, can shift gender roles, financial equity, and social norms in a community towards the direction of greater gender equality.
Another example—in India, Landesa has been working on securing women’s land rights for more than a decade, in part by focusing on inheritance laws and helping implement homesteading initiatives in areas where there’s a gap between national and regional statutes.
Women like Indira and her family were able to turn their initial allocation of land into a thriving business, finding stable income while stewarding the land itself. Her family is among the more than 40 million people enjoying stronger land rights through Landesa’s work in India.
Indira and her family pose with their land title. Photo credit: Tyler Roush/Landesa.
It makes sense that when people own the land they manage, they become better stewards of their environment, says McMonagle, “since their livelihoods and well-being are so closely tied to these natural resources.”
If you’ve ever signed a lease or purchased property you may have an inkling of how complicated land ownership can be. So just imagine navigating land rights in other countries and cultures, with their own sets of laws and customs. It often makes for a “messy web of factors” to reckon with, according to McMonagle.
Like the differences between national statutory laws and local customary laws (for example, in Zambia, statutory law provides for the sharing of property between husband and wife, but customary law denies women any rights to family property). Or sometimes sweeping national reforms get passed, but without the capacity for local implementation.
“Land reform is super challenging, and requires tremendous political will,” McMonagle says.
Add to that the social norms and gender roles just within a specific community—and, as McMonagle puts it (and many in the global development world realize), “If you know one community, you know…one community!”
Which is why research is such a core part of what Landesa does, interfacing with government officials, local civil society organizations, lawyers, and communities, taking into account unique legal frameworks, national and regional policies, as well as customs and cultural norms.
“A lot of our research is trying to translate realities on the ground back to policy proposals,” McMonagle explains. “So, it’s kind of a two-way street on translating how things are working up and down the chain.”
COVID-19 has, of course, complicated matters even more—reversing the previous migrations of populations fleeing climate disasters in rural areas for the city, to people leaving crowded urban areas to go back to family farms and villages. Already it has set off the second-largest mass migration in India’s history.
But, McMonagle says, land rights can actually play a powerful role in both adapting to climate change and preventing future pandemics—in ways you might not even think of.
For example, land tenure could play a role in establishing different natural areas or migration corridors to enforce the separation between animal populations that might be carrying pathogens and keep interactions with people at a minimum.
Just like in many sectors of global development, COVID-19 has wrought havoc on everyone’s lives and modes of being. But it also brings opportunities to change the iniquities and failings of the systems that are supposed to support us.
“By strengthening land rights for rural communities,” McMonagle says, “we can achieve sustainable development priorities and reduce the risk of facing this degree of suffering ever again.”
Back to Top
Goalmaker
James Mulbah, Project Manager, Earthworm Foundation
By Amber Cortes
Photo credit: Earthworm Foundation.
Being a child in a war-torn environment makes you grow up fast. James Mulbah was only six years old when the first Liberian Civil War began—a conflict that would kill around 250,000 people and create economic devastation in the country for years.
“As a child I witnessed human rights abuses, destruction of properties, and lack of business services,” he explains. “I also saved myself— my survival depended on it.”
The hardship that Mulbah and his family endured included walking—179 kilometers (110 miles)—from Monrovia to Gbarnga Bong county.
The experience started a lifelong path and commitment to justice that led Mulbah to become a project manager in West Africa for the Earthworm Foundation (formerly known as The Forest Trust), an organization that works with both businesses and communities to solve social and environmental challenges.
With “God and all the good spirits” on his side, Mulbah made it to a small village called Giziwolo in a neighboring county. There, where villagers grew their own food and used the local river for drinking and fishing, Mulbah learned about the respect for the environment inherent in the village’s culture.
“The environment was seen as a sacred place, organized around certain fundamental laws and principles. I saw the sacredness in all things that the environment provided. Life was so enjoyable and peaceful in the village. Food was in abundance, and there were no shortages of water.”
A few years later, Mulbah’s mother, who could not yet join him in the village due to the war, passed away from lack of medical care. Mulbah considered the tragic circumstances of her death a consequence of the civil war, and begin to draw connections about the human costs of conflict.
Mulbah knew that in order to work for peace, he needed to get a formal education. So, he left the village for Monrovia. There, he shared a small apartment with other family members as he worked and saved towards school. Eventually, he made it, “even though I did not have a school uniform, or books!” he exclaims.
But despite the obstacles Mulbah succeeded, eventually earning a scholarship and establishing a junior youth empowerment program while at the University of Liberia.
The program allowed Mulbah to travel throughout rural areas, and he started observing similar issues in communities that had been impacted by mining and logging: “ranging from water pollution, to health and safety issues, to land disputes,” he says.
And Mulbah was in for another rude awakening when he went back to visit Giziwolo, the idyllic village of his childhood.
“The village was empty. And the house that I once lived in when I was there was broken down. And there’s a logging company – they had constructed roads over the beautiful river we had there,” Mulbah says. “And people from the village, they relocated to the city.”
He was shocked at what he saw.
“All those memories were lost, and I couldn’t do anything to get them back.”
The experience only strengthened Mulbah’s determination to learn about conflict resolution—especially when it came to environmental rights.
As his professional career began, he joined other recent university graduates from across Central and West Africa for in-depth training in conflict resolution and stakeholder engagement at Earthworm Foundation’s Centre of Social Excellence (CSE) in Cameroon. With these skills, Mulbah started working in the field to solve land disputes between communities and between communities and companies.
He then got his master’s degree in sustainable peace from The University of Peace, a United Nations mandated university, just as the UN member states were broadening their approach to peace and security to include the concept of ‘sustainable peace’—addressing the root causes of conflict, and achieving lasting, long-term peace in hand with sustainable development, equitable economic opportunity, and human rights protection for all.
Mulbah brings what he learned about conflict resolution and climate mitigation, along with a super-specific set of data science tools (like ArcGIS, geographic mapping software) to his work at the Earthworm Foundation.
After the civil war, the Liberian government attempted an economic revitalization plan, which granted a number of concessions to foreign investors, particularly in the palm oil sector. And after nearly three years, the major palm oil producers allegedly engaged in land grabbing, human rights abuses, and persistent deforestation.
So, palm oil producers in Liberia asked the Earthworm Foundation for help addressing some of the critical issues that were raised against them.
Mulbah and his team proposed that the companies put a sustainability team in place and created an action plan for the company to set up a governing structure for local communities to have a say.
They conducted assessments and participatory mapping with members of the community to resolve historical boundary disputes and other grievances. Using the 2018 Land Rights Act in Liberia as a legal basis, they finally were able to formalize land use agreements between palm oil companies and neighboring communities.
Over the years, Mulbah’s been grateful to be able to do things like convince supply chain actors that responsible sourcing is essential to the future of their business and the environment—”to preserve those areas which we consider as high conservation value areas—sacred places.”
But his favorite part of the job is being able to sit down and talk with farmers, share-croppers, and other community members.
“Just being with them reminds me of when I was in Giziwolo, sitting around and talking on the farm.”
Mulbah is optimistic about meeting the UN’s SDG goals for 2030. For instance, all around him there’s evidence that the world is waking up to the urgency of climate change, he says.
“NGOs and civil society organizations are aggressively pushing governments for even more action to address climate change and biodiversity loss.”
“You see corporations being held responsible for what’s happening to our planet,” he says. “Companies are looking for how to solve their sustainability issues. There’s a large pool of talent inside these companies willing to contribute to fighting the current environmental and social crisis.”
“You see traditional investors seeking to understand and mitigate the socio-environmental impact of their investments, in turn pushing companies to act more responsibly,” he continues. “And we have new technologies of all kinds of scalability potential.”
James Mulbah facilitating a land rights meeting in Liberia. Photo provided by James Mulbah/Earthworm Foundation.
Mulbah’s optimism comes from a place of deep respect for the land, and the village that is so close to his heart.
“Land is not owned. I learned that when I was in Giziwolo. I didn’t own land; but I survived from the land,” he says.
“We’re all just caretakers of the land. The better we care for it, the better it will care for us.”
Back to Top
From Our Blog
Agros: Tackling Poverty and Climate Change through Agriculture
By Alberto Solano, Guillermo Jiménez, and Sierra Golden
Hipólito ‘Polo’ Chavarria of San José, Nicaragua, shows off coffee beans he grew using more environmentally friendly farming practices. Photo courtesy of Agros International
Travel writer and documentarian Rick Steves calls climate change, conflict, and corruption “the three Cs of extreme poverty.” Agros has long tackled conflict and corruption as causes of poverty by giving marginalized families in rural Latin America the opportunity to own land and transform themselves from day laborers into successful agribusiness owners. In 2020 we added a climate smart agriculture program to our work as a top new initiative. Read more
Back to Top
Welcome New Members
Please welcome our newest Global Washington members. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with their work and consider opportunities for support and collaboration!
Alliance for Children Everywhere
For over fifty years, Alliance for Children Everywhere (ACE) has responded to the needs of orphaned and vulnerable children through family-based care.
Chandler Foundation
Chandler Foundation imagines a world in which nations are well-governed, principled businesses drive economic growth, and all people have the opportunity to flourish. Through patient, long-term, system-changing investments in trusted partners, we can help build thriving economies that work for everyone.
Diversity Travel
Diversity Travel is the leading travel management company for the charity, non-profit and NGO communities, providing expert advice and first-class services.
EverVillage
EverVillage is a place that believes in a green recovery – a place where communities drive nature-based solutions, youth design sustainable systems, and water is managed holistically. EverVillage’s intersectional work is focused within rural, Indigenous, and refugee communities that face issues like climate change, environmental injustice, and poverty.
GoodCitizens
GoodCitizen provides executive search and leadership advisory services to mission-driven organizations. Its purpose is impact. The pressing challenges in our communities and around the world – and the best ideas for addressing them – converge on questions of leadership.
Tostan
Tostan pursues its vision of “Dignity for All” in West African communities through sustainable development and social transformation based on human rights. Since 1991, Tostan has shared its Community Empowerment Program (CEP) with more than 3,000 communities in ten African countries. The CEP is recognized for changing harmful practices, empowering women and girls, and improving well-being in resource-poor communities.
Voices of Children’s Faith in Northern Uganda (VOCFINU)
VOCFINU is a non-profit focused on strengthening and transforming the lives of the most vulnerable adolescent girls, who have been caught in poverty and human trafficking.
Women’s Link Worldwide
Women’s Link Worldwide is an international non-profit organization that uses the power of the law to promote social change that advances the human rights of women and girls, especially those facing multiple inequalities.
Back to Top
Member Events
February 15: Sex in the Sea Valentine’s Date Night // Future of Fish
January 22-March 17: Protest, Race and Citizenship across African Worlds (winter 2021 lecture series) // UW and the Henry M. Jackson Foundation
February 23 & March 4: Virtual information sessions held for Global Leadership Forum 2021 Senior-level Leader Cohort, launching April 22-23. Cohorts of globally-oriented social purpose leaders meet monthly for 6-7 months and explore leadership and organizational development topics with real-time application and peer support. For more info contact: team@glfglobal.org.
March 26: Maximize Life Gala // The Max Foundation
Back to Top
Career Center
Program and Operations Coordinator // Pronto International
Senior Engagement Officer, Digital Square, Center of Digital and Data Excellence // PATH
Grants Manager // Snow Leopard Trust
Check out the GlobalWA Job Board for the latest openings.
Back to Top
GlobalWA Events
February 25: Climate Justice and Indigenous Rights
Back to Top
Agros: Tackling Poverty and Climate Change through Agriculture
Posted on February 8, 2021.
By Alberto Solano, Guillermo Jiménez, and Sierra Golden
Hipólito ‘Polo’ Chavarria of San José, Nicaragua, shows off coffee beans he grew using more environmentally friendly farming practices. Photo courtesy of Agros International
Travel writer and documentarian Rick Steves calls climate change, conflict, and corruption “the three Cs of extreme poverty.” Agros has long tackled conflict and corruption as causes of poverty by giving marginalized families in rural Latin America the opportunity to own land and transform themselves from day laborers into successful agribusiness owners. In 2020 we added a climate smart agriculture program to our work as a top new initiative. Continue Reading
PRESS RELEASE: Oxfam Reaction to Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Submission for FDA Approval
Posted on February 5, 2021.
In response to Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)’s submission of their COVID-19 vaccine for emergency approval from the US Food & Drug Administration, Niko Lusiani, Senior Advisor with Oxfam America, made the following statement:
“Scientists have yet again delivered hope in the war against the coronavirus. As a single-dose and lower-cost vaccine, the JNJ vaccine could deliver the necessary boost the world needs to save lives and rebuild our economy.
“Now it’s time for executives and policy makers to deliver a people’s vaccine that is mass produced around the world to ensure access to the greatest number of people in the shortest amount of time. JNJ can only produce the vaccine for less than 13 percent of the global population by the end of the year. Continue Reading
January 2021 Newsletter
Posted on January 21, 2021.
Welcome to the January 2021 issue of the Global Washington newsletter.
Letter from our Executive Director
In the weeks and months to come, Global Washington members will be instrumental to the needed recovery and rebuilding for a better future. Looking ahead, we are excited to announce our draft 2021 editorial calendar, which lays out the topics we plan to cover this year. These topics were touched on at the Goalmakers events and the National Forum in 2020, and we plan to go deeper still in exploring solutions with our members this year.
Our first campaign in February will focus on Climate Justice, which “links human rights and development to achieve a human-centered approach, safeguarding the rights of the most vulnerable people and sharing the burdens and benefits of climate change and its impacts equitably and fairly” as defined by former President of Ireland Mary Robinson. We look forward to spotlighting the work of Global Washington members in low- and middle-income countries for Climate Justice.
Check out our 2021 editorial calendar and stay tuned for featured articles and associated events.
Also, below you’ll find a look back at the issue campaigns we championed with our members in 2020. While the COVID-19 pandemic shaped a great deal of the discussion, the Sustainable Development Goals formed the backbone of our collective response. These 17 interconnected and indivisible global goals continue to be a critical framework for setting the world back on a better course over the next decade.
You can also explore all of our past events, issue briefs, and videos on our website.
Kristen Dailey
Executive Director
Back to Top
Recap of 2020 Issue Campaigns
World Concern staff assess damage and assist survivors in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Photo credit: World Concern.
January 12, 2020 was the ten-year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake. For January’s campaign, we created a retrospective on what makes a disaster response successful, and how to lay the foundation for both immediate and long-term recovery. The associated event, Future-Proofing Global Emergency Response Systems, included speakers from the Global Emergency Response Coalition, a lifesaving humanitarian alliance made up of eight leading U.S.-based international aid organizations, five of which are GlobalWA members.
Women in Fiji creating traditional crafts. Photo credit: Rise Beyond the Reef
This topic examined the ways in which those who are already struggling with poverty, oppression and instability are affected by climate change, and how to ensure that climate justice remains at the center of the response. As part of this campaign, GlobalWA and Seattle Foundation hosted the former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, who presented on her foundation’s work for global climate justice.
Vital Voices staff and Global Freedom Exchange Fellows from countries across Africa gathered in Cape Town at a women-owned, women-run social enterprise, called Khayelitsha Cookie Company. Photo courtesy of Vital Voices Global Partnership.
In honor of International Women’s Day (March 8, 2020), we leveraged this campaign to highlight effective strategies to stop gender-based violence around the world. We also hosted a public event on the topic with speakers from Seattle International Foundation, OutRight Action International, and CARE.
Photo by Water1st International at Hassan Al Banna Academy in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The April campaign dove into World Water Day (March 22, 2020) and examined how a data-informed approach can improve sustainable clean water access globally.
May 2020: Impacts of COVID-19
Augusto Cardona, an Agros partner in Nuevo Amanecer, Honduras, stands in front of his empty field in 2015. He later planted it with corn. Credit: Cesar Velasquez, Agros International
In May we took a look at the impact the pandemic was already having on two specific areas: global food systems, and refugees and other displaced people. Associated events on these topics included Food Security and COVID-19 in the Global South, as well as Refugees, Internally Displaced People, and COVID-19.
In June, our campaign explored the impact of COVID-19 on patients with cancer and other non-communicable diseases. GlobalWA members employed a number of strategies to address the spread of the pandemic and at the same time keep other health priorities on track. Together with the Washington Global Health Alliance we hosted a roundtable on how cancer care and research has adapted to the new realities of the pandemic.
Women from a community in Quezon City, Philippines follow social distancing rules as they wait to enter a market. Flyers from IDEALS and Oxfam share essential tips on how to cope with COVID-19 and quarantine. Credit: Ideals.
The July campaign explored the economic impacts of COVID-19, including its effect on people’s livelihoods, the informal business sector, and access to financing.
Even with schools closed around the world, learning continues. Girl Rising partner Metis Collective developed a Home Learning Guide for students in Kenya. Photo by Metis Collective.
Our August campaign, coinciding with International Youth Day (August 12, 2020) examined successful strategies for distance learning and ensuring that students’ most urgent needs could still be met during global lockdowns related to the pandemic. The associated event, Education and COVID-19 in the Global South, included speakers from Girl Rising, Rwanda Girls Initiative, and Sahar Education for Afghan Girls.
Ana, a former resident of La Alianza in Guatemala, successfully reintegrated with her family and is now practicing traditional weaving to earn income. Photo: Covenant House.
The September campaign took a close look at the innate rights of children around the world and how securing and defending those rights, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, ensures that they are able to survive and thrive. A related event focused on the rise of child labor globally amid the pandemic and included speakers from ChildFund International, Human Rights Watch, and Amplio.
Back to Top
Great Transitions: Doubling Down on the Sustainable Development Goals
Posted on December 7, 2020.
The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the world’s extraordinary fragility and highlighted trenchant societal inequalities. Managing the pandemic has been hard enough and doing so while addressing other urgent stresses – like climate change, discrimination and violence – has added to the difficulty. The challenge is further heightened in the face of what may soon become recurrent interlocking patterns of environmental, economic, and social disruption.
What should be done to move forward? How can the world find a way out of this difficult situation?
These were the questions tackled by participants in 17 Rooms 2020, a yearly convening of leading experts and practitioners brought together by the Brookings Institution and The Rockefeller Foundation to channel ideas and energy into actions for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A clear consensus from this year’s convening was that the SDGs are more relevant than ever, and should be used as a “North Star” to guide action out of the Covid-19 crisis.
Read more and download the report by the 17 Rooms Secretariat.
PRESS RELEASE: Adara Development appoints Madeline Vaughan as new CEO
Posted on December 3, 2020.
Adara Development is delighted to announce the appointment of Madeline Vaughan as its new CEO, effective 1 January 2020.
Madeline joined Adara eight years ago and has been an integral member of the organisation’s Global Leadership Team. Most recently, Madeline was Senior Programmes Director working across Adara’s maternal, newborn and child health and remote community development programmes.
Continue Reading
SDG17 (Rethinking) Partnerships for the Goals
Posted on December 2, 2020.
By Corrina Grace, Partners Asia Social Innovator
Therese Caouette, center, poses with teachers from a village school in Chin State, while on a bike trip with Partners Asia in western Myanmar. A longtime Seattle resident, Caouette plays a critical role in shaping Partners Asia and advocating for trust-based philanthropy. Photo credit: Tim Schottman/Partners Asia.
It could be argued that SDG17 (Partnerships for the Goals) is the most important of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The complex and interdependent nature of the challenges we face in the world will not be solved by any one individual, organization, or government alone. There is not a single solution that can be scaled or a transformative public policy to be implemented that can get us to where we need to be. As the voices of the People’s Climate Movement have been crying out for years: “To change everything, it takes everyone.” Achieving the Global Goals and meeting the ambitious 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda will require strong partnerships and collective actions that bridge across traditional boundaries such as race, religion, class, gender, and geography. It also required recognition that not all partnerships have been created equally. Continue Reading
Tackling SDG10 Means Shifting Power and Profits
Posted on November 30, 2020.
By Irit Tamir, Director of Oxfam America’s Private Sector Department
An apparel worker in Dhaka wears a face covering and maintains social distance from other workers as garment factories reopened amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Photo: UN Women/Fahad Abdullah Kaizer via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
COVID-19 has laid bare the deep inequalities our economic model has fostered and thus is a major threat in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 10 (reducing inequalities). Business has a role to play in achieving SDG 10—but a recent Oxfam report highlights how big corporations are exacerbating rather than reducing inequality.
While the global pandemic saw devastating jobs losses of 400 million, nearly have a billion people are expected to be further pushed into poverty. But not everyone is losing out – billionaires have seen their incomes rise as shares in big corporations saw their profits jump. Power, Profits and the Pandemic: From corporate extraction for the few to an economy that works for all found five ways in which corporations are exacerbating inequality.
Continue reading this article on our Goalmakers Blog.
