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Hasin Jain, WaterAid director in Bangladesh. Photo courtesy of WaterAid.
Story reprinted with permission of WaterAid
As director in Bangladesh, Hasin Jain oversees WaterAid’s largest and longest-running country program. With the death toll and the number of COVID-19 cases in the country climbing, she answers questions about the situation on the ground and WaterAid’s response.
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Former Vice President Nick Archer Appointed to Lead Organization
World Concern has named Nick Archer to lead the organization as President.
April 16, 2020 (SEATTLE) – World Concern, a Christian humanitarian aid and development organization with a 65-year history headquartered in Seattle, Wash., has named Nick Archer as its president. Archer has served with World Concern for 22 years, the past three years in the role of Vice President. He has been Acting President since January 2020.
CRISTA Ministries CEO and former World Concern President, Jacinta Tegman says Archer has her full support and confidence.
“For the past 15 months, we have been prayerfully seeking a new president. Today, I’m thrilled to share with you that God has shown us who that leader is—and he was right in our midst,” said Tegman. “During my time as president, Nick and I developed an amazing partnership, and I could not be more excited and blessed to hand the reins of leadership to Nick. There is no one I trust more to lead World Concern into the bright future that is ahead for this organization.” Continue Reading
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Community radio, digital tools, and community mobilization approaches to COVID-19 response
by Danielle Henry
This story originally appeared on Amplio.org on March 27, 2020.
USAID’s Afya Timiza project uses the Amplio Talking Book train and support community health volunteers in Samburu County.
In March, the World Bank’s Community-Driven Development team consulted Amplio senior program manager Ryan Forbes Morris on ideas and communication strategies for a COVID-19 response in remote regions where there may not be internet. Here are some considerations Morris recommends to strengthen outreach, prevent the spread of infection, and address emerging public health issues that may impact vulnerable populations in rural areas.
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Welcome to the April 2020 issue of the Global Washington newsletter.
Right now, all of us are grappling with new challenges and strong emotions as we seek clarity and ways to push forward. Our routines have been upended, systems we depend on have been stretched to their limits, and we wonder whether we will ever get back to normal.
This new coronavirus has flipped the global development community on its head. Usually, we are the ones responding to emergencies in the Global South from a position of abundance, with the intellectual and financial resources from the U.S. Instead, several non-profit and for-profit organizations in the GlobalWA community are in need of urgent support ourselves.
In response, Global Washington will continue to bring you information and insights on how to strengthen your work and connect to one another. Check out our COVID-19 resources page for more and be sure to keep an eye out for upcoming virtual webinars, such as contingency planning and the CARES Act. GlobalWA will also promote the work of our members who are responding to the pandemic.
As with many contagious diseases, good hygiene is of the utmost importance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet many people around the world do not have reliable access to clean water. This month, GlobalWA is spotlighting organizations that focus exclusively on ensuring that communities in the Global South have clean water to drink and use every day.
In the newsletter below, you’ll read about our April Goalmaker , Om Prasad Gautam, a senior WASH manager at WaterAid and an expert in behavior change. You will also learn how our member Splash took a page from multinational corporations’ playbook to bring clean water to kids in urban centers, and then partnered with data visualization experts at Tableau to map the progress, showing governments how they can do the same.
We are committed to creating community for the global development sector and we are here for you. If there are other resources or webinars you would like to see, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
All my best,
Kristen Dailey
Executive Director
Photo by Water1st International at Hassan Al Banna Academy in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
By Joanne Lu
It’s been a long time since those of us in the West have been so acutely aware of our need for clean water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, health officials are constantly reminding us to wash our hands – and to do it right, with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, scrubbing between our fingers and under our nails. That’s the best way to remove viral particles from our hands to keep them from transmitting the virus to ourselves and others, they say. But for 2.2 billion people in resource-strapped contexts – whether refugee camps, urban slums or remote rural areas – access to clean water is still an issue, making the prospect of hand-washing several times a day much harder.
Some countries and organizations have stepped up with innovative immediate solutions. In West Africa, for example, some countries have reinstituted the public handwashing stations they used during the Ebola outbreak, consisting of two buckets – one with a spigot and filled with chlorine and water; the other one placed underneath the spigot to catch wastewater. More than a dozen countries have also submitted requests for a device that PATH developed that makes chlorine out of just water, salt and a car battery.
Immediate access is what matters most in the current crisis, but access to WASH services is of utmost importance even when we’re not facing a global pandemic. It improves every aspect of a community’s well-being – their health, income, education, safety, women’s empowerment – and can prevent future disease outbreaks. But just installing WASH facilities is not enough, otherwise we’d probably be close to achieving “clean water and sanitation for all” (Sustainable Development Goal 6) already. Instead, what researchers, sector leaders and organizations are recognizing is that robust data tracking and transparency is critical for ensuring that WASH projects are successful, sustainable and inclusive.
We’ve discussed before how as many as 30 to 50 percent of WASH projects fail after just two to five years, usually because of lack of maintenance, a broken part that can’t be replaced locally, or because the solution just wasn’t practical in the local context. Water1st was founded for this very reason – because too many WASH projects fail. Instead, Water1st decided that rigorous monitoring and evaluation, including lots of field visits, had to be baked into their organizational DNA to ensure that their projects would remain functional, now and over the long-term. They’re also constantly checking whether their projects are not only producing the intended benefits, but in fact the best possible outcomes. This means that Water1st’s projects, including piped water systems with a kitchen tap and shower for each household, toilets and hygiene education, are not the cheapest up front, but they are often solutions last.
“A robust and regular monitoring system [ensures] issues are addressed early rather than towards the end of a project,” World Vision says of their own approach to WASH interventions, because corrections can only be made if we understand when and why projects fail. That’s why World Vision works closely with communities and stakeholders to track, document and respond to “every change throughout a project cycle,” good and bad. The data are then measured against standard global indicators to evaluate each project. And the evidence and lessons learned are preserved and shared to help World Vision and others improve moving forward.
Data are not only critical for fixing faulty WASH systems, but also for better planning and decision-making to achieve SDG 6. Such planning creates a clearer picture of just how much more needs to be invested in urban and rural WASH systems. Data visualization through platforms like Tableau helps organizations like Splash literally see on a map where there are gaps in WASH service provision and how much they need to scale up year on year in order to reach their goals. Sometimes data reveal that the gap is not a lack of facilities, but of usage. That’s how Splash determined that behavioral nudges were needed – like mirrors above school handwashing stations that entice kids to spend time at the sinks, washing their hands while checking themselves out.
But organizations like WaterAid have learned that not all data are equal. In order to be truly useful, data must be accurate, timely, and as complete as possible. When WaterAid switched from organizing its data in Excel spreadsheets to a mobile online platform called mWater in 2014, the organization was able to streamline its efforts in data collection, reduce errors and inconsistencies (like double-counting and incorrect spellings of names for communities and institutions), build a large multi-year database, and conduct much more meaningful analyses. Data also could be disaggregated by gender, location, donor, partners, projects or funding, and their partners in the field could monitor and track progress at the community, sub-district and district levels.
Open and mobile data also empowers citizens to obtain the WASH services they need. In Zimbabwe, for example, UNICEF helped the government implement a real-time monitoring system. Instead of waiting for government field monitors to make their rounds before a deficiency is reported, people in rural communities can now just send an SMS directly to the government whenever a WASH service needs to be fixed. (Similarly, companies and organizations are stepping up with mobile reporting platforms for COVID-19 to help trace where the virus is spreading, so we can better contain it.) When organizations improve data tracking and analysis now, they can pass those tools along to governments and help ensure success in the long-run, when those governments take over responsibility for large-scale WASH services.
When large amounts of data can be used and shared in meaningful ways, it also holds providers accountable. Data transparency not only ensures that reported results are real, but it also builds trust from donors, whose contributions are critical for achieving clean water and sanitation for all. As Water 1st puts it: “We follow up. We routinely visit our projects to evaluate our work, to hold our partners accountable, and to share and exchange knowledge. We make sure each project is providing the intended benefits and generating the best possible outcomes. You can be confident that your donation is spent wisely and is making a real difference in the lives of the people we serve.”
Data tracking and transparency can seem like a risky proposition if it means being open and honest about failures. But it is also absolutely critical if we want to ensure that every person, household and community has access to the WASH services they need – especially in times like these, when proper hygiene is the best way to stop a global pandemic.
***
The following GlobalWA members are working to provide clean water to vulnerable communities around the world:
Agros
Agros International’s mission is to break the cycle of poverty and create paths to prosperity for farming families in rural Latin America. Founded in 1984, Agros advances a holistic socioeconomic development model of economic and social development through four key opportunity areas: land ownership, market-led agriculture, financial empowerment, and health & well-being. Its model recognizes the importance of water as an essential element of personal, public, and environmental health. Agros collaborates with government offices and other NGOs in rural areas and trains community leaders amongst the families it serves in order to create WASH initiatives, protect water resources, and implement environmentally friendly irrigation programs. Agros focuses on a landscape approach that includes reforesting campaigns and water management protocols to secure long-term availability of clean water. To date, 100% of the families living in an Agros village have access to clean water, basic sanitation services, and preventive health education. Additionally, families are learning to use environmentally friendly farming techniques and equipment to reduce water usage, securing its availability for future generations.
Friendly Water for the World
Founded in 2010, Friendly Water for the World is a dynamic, rapidly growing, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Olympia, WA. Its mission is to expand global access to low-cost clean water technologies and information about health and sanitation through knowledge-sharing, training, applied research, community-building, peacemaking, and efforts at sustainability. The organization empowers communities abroad to take care of their own clean water needs, even as it empowers people in the U.S. to make a real difference. Friendly Water for the World currently works in 15 countries, and has assisted more than 190 marginalized and oppressed rural communities – including widows with HIV, people with albinism, survivors of war-time rape, victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, indigenous tribes, and unemployed youth – ensure their own safe drinking water while becoming employed in the process.
Hands for Peacemaking Foundation
Many villages that populate the mountainous areas of NW Guatemala are continually faced with a daily struggle to obtain water for survival. Since most village locations were based on available land, and not by the availability of natural resources, they often lack basic water resources. Many water sources have dried up due to the over-harvesting of trees to be used for firewood – an example of the domino effect that one resource has on another. Hands for Peacemaking Foundation (HFPF) has partnered with villages to install water storage tanks. These simple but effective means to collect water during the rainy season are coupled with water filters to meet the basic needs. The resulting water system doesn’t replace a well or spring, but it does provide emergency water that can mean life or death for villagers. HFPF has included the introduction of forest management in its training and education of villages after the installation of catchment systems. To date, the organization has installed 459 water catchment systems and 327 water filters in 19 villages.
The Hunger Project
The Hunger Project’s holistic approach in Africa, South Asia and Latin America empowers women and men living in rural villages to become the agents of their own development and sustainably overcome hunger and poverty. Through its WASH programs, The Hunger Project empowers rural communities to ensure they have access to clean water and improved sanitation, the capacity to develop new water sources, and the information to implement water conservation techniques. Since 2011, nearly 871,000 people have participated in The Hunger Project’s WASH skill or awareness building activities and the organization has trained over 20,000 local leaders in building community skills and awareness around water and sanitation.
Mercy Corps
Mercy Corps helps people around the world get clean water by providing water during emergencies, building wells to reduce long treks (often made by vulnerable girls and women), repairing damaged water infrastructure and helping construct reservoirs to ensure communities have access to clean water in the future. In Zimbabwe, Mercy Corps restored a community’s water infrastructure to provide clean and safe water for over 43,000 people. In turn, this also significantly reduced the distance girls had to travel to collect drinking water for their families. During emergencies, access to clean water plays a vital role in preventing disease outbreaks and other water-borne illnesses. In response to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where three quarters of the population lack access to clean water, Mercy Corps has provided over 600,000 displaced people with safe drinking water to help keep their families healthy and prevent disease. In 2018, Mercy Corps connected more than 3 million people to clean water and hygiene and sanitation facilities during emergencies across the globe.
Path from Poverty
In Kenya, with unclean water sources often miles from villages, woman and girls are forced to spend hours each day simply finding and transporting water. It is not safe for women and girls to fetch water in the very early hours of the morning. The daily average for a Kenya woman is 4-6 hours of walking for clean water. The typical container used for water collection in Africa, the jerry can, weighs over 40 pounds when it’s completely full. With much of one’s day already consumed by meeting basic needs, there isn’t time for much else. The hours lost to gathering water are often the difference between the time to do a trade and earn a living and not. Path From Poverty works to end this daily hardship and is putting a stop to girls lives being at risk by providing clean, safe water at the homes of women and their families. Empowering women, teaching them to work together, start a micro enterprise, and pool resources, Path From Poverty is changing lives and giving back the time lost fetching water so girls can go to school, women can earn much-needed income, and they can be safe from rape and abduction.
Splash
Splash is a nonprofit organization that designs child-focused water, sanitation, hygiene (WASH), and menstrual health solutions with governments in some of the world’s biggest, low-resource cities. Through Project WISE (WASH-in-Schools for Everyone), Splash aims to reach every school in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Kolkata, India, with WASH infrastructure, behavior change programs, and strengthened menstrual health services, benefiting one million children by 2023. Splash’s approach to WASH includes high-quality water filtration systems, durable drinking and hand washing stations, improved toilets, teacher training, and hygiene education to ensure that kids learn healthy habits. Their focus on hygiene, through handwashing with soap, is critical to stopping the spread of disease. To date, Splash has completed over 2,000 projects at child-serving institutions, including schools, hospitals, shelters and orphanages. Splash has reached nearly 600,000 children in eight countries (China, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam).
Water1st International
Water1st is unwavering in its commitment to projects that provide households, schools, clinics and community centers with enough water to drink, cook, wash hands, flush toilets, bathe, clean clothes, wash dishes, and sanitize household surfaces. There has never been a better time to justify an investment in high-quality infrastructure for clean water and toilets for the world’s most vulnerable people. The return on this investment will impact us all for generations to come. Water1st’s country programs in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Honduras are busy at work, building new water systems and providing outreach to communities about how to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. In Ethiopia and Honduras, the 2020 goal of Water1st is to connect 675 more households to piped water systems. In Bangladesh, the organization is providing support to 35,000 people, building new water systems and providing support to households to prevent the spread of coronavirus. More information about Water1st’s COVID-19 response can be found here.
WaterAid
WaterAid is working to make clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene normal for everyone, everywhere within a generation. As the leading international clean water nonprofit, WaterAid works in 28 countries to change the lives of the poorest and most marginalized people. In the face of the COVID-19 threat, WaterAid is scaling its efforts to improve handwashing and hygiene education in every country where it works. Since 1981, WaterAid has reached 26.4 million people with clean water and 26.3 million people with decent toilets.
World Vision
World Vision (WV) believes that every child deserves clean water. WV is focused with partners on providing children, their families, and communities with quality, sustainable access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene services. In the last 4 years, WV reached 16.1 million people with clean water because of a unique community engagement model and global footprint. In response to COVID-19, WV is scaling up its water and health efforts in 17 initial priority countries, aiming to reach 22.6 million people, half of them children, over the next 6 months with protective and hygiene items. This includes scaling up hand washing stations in health clinics and working with more than 250,000 community health workers to help reach communities to teach critical behaviors to prevent the spread of infectious disease. In 2019 alone, WV reached 4.3 million people with hand washing behavior change education and facilitated the building of nearly half a million hand washing facilities. WV is concerned that the COVID-19 outbreak could disproportionately affect women and girls. This is one of the reasons WV is focused on equipping and empowering women and girls in every aspect of our work so they can reach their full potential.
By Joanne Lu
Photo courtesy of Splash.
What do Big Macs, orphanages and clean water have in common? More than you’d think, it turns out.
In 2003, Eric Stowe was working in orphanages in China and around the world, when he decided to ask the caregivers and administrators, “What can I do for a child living in an institution that would have both an immediate and long-term health impact?” He got a lot of answers, but the two most consistent ones were better training for caregivers and clean water. In institutions where three children are sharing a crib and 150 kids are living together, a case of diarrhea spreads like wildfire without clean water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). Stowe had no idea how to train caregivers, but providing clean water seemed “totally approachable and achievable.” After all, it made no sense to him that just down the road from these orphanages, the hotel where he was staying had clean water, as did McDonald’s, Starbucks and Burger King.
So, he decided to just ask those companies: How do you do it? How do sustainable filtration and maintenance systems service so many people? Those conversations led to a partnership around 2004 with Antunes, the company that supplies all the water filtration systems for McDonald’s globally. These systems are built for very high-volume food service and produce high quality water with very low technical service. “Today, if you went into any orphanage in China and went into their kitchen, you’d find the exact same filtration system that you’d find in McDonald’s,” says Stowe, “and it’s still working 12 years later, maintained once a year for about five minutes.”
Stowe’s mission to provide clean water to every orphanage in China was the early genesis of what would later evolve into Splash – but you’d hardly know it given the approach and scale of Splash today. Stowe started Splash in 2007 with the idea that in any one city where there’s a single orphanage, there are potentially hundreds of other institutions that regularly interact with the poorest urban kids. Why only focus on orphanages? Starting with orphanages and hospitals in China, Cambodia, Nepal and Ethiopia, Splash later expanded to feeding centers, street shelters and rescue homes – and eventually schools – in eight countries.
But then they began to hone in on how they can be really excellent, instead of just good. Without abandoning existing projects, Splash is now focusing its growth on just two cities: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and Kolkata, India. The organization’s goal is to reach 100 percent of the schools in those cities – about 1 million kids – by 2023.
Photo courtesy of Splash.
“Everywhere we work, nestled in the greatest pockets of poverty are schools,” says Stowe. Through these schools, Splash helps kids adopt practices every day that keep them safer and healthier. Often, the kids take those practices home and teach their parents, and one day, they’ll likely teach their own kids.
What started off as just a mission to provide clean drinking water quickly is now, by necessity, a package of services that also includes handwashing education, safe sanitation, and menstrual hygiene. Key to Splash’s approach is “human-centered design.” For example, handwashing stations, which are always orange, and drinking water stations, which are always blue, are kept separate to reduce the risk of water re-contamination. The handwashing stations are also too shallow for kids to stick their heads under the tap for a drink, and bubblers (water fountain spouts) are always on the right side of a drink station, because kids traditionally wipe their bums with their left hands. Additionally, Splash found that by simply installing $5 mirrors near the handwashing stations, there was a double-digit increase in users – primarily by girls pretending to be interviewed and boys checking out their fledgling moustaches!
Splash also works with teachers, parents, janitors and student groups to reinforce their messaging throughout the day. Stowe talks about how one little girl, who was appointed the “Minister of Health” for her school, pulled a boy out of the lunch line because he didn’t wash his hands first.
All those interventions and programming occur at one school. It’s complex when it’s just one school, Stowe says, but it’s downright unwieldy when you’re trying to do 100 percent coverage of all the schools in Addis and Kolkata. Splash began its drive in these two cities last year, but the longer-term goal is to use the success of Addis Ababa and Kolkata to show governments how they themselves can replicate the same model in other cities. But, in order to do that, Splash needs to be able to literally show government partners how it’s done.
Enter Tableau. Stowe says that when he told the interactive data visualization software company about his vision, the people at Tableau told him, “Listen, this is a really big, audacious project. If your goal is for replication, you’re going to have to prove out a lot of things, and you’re going to have to make the data navigable.” And Tableau was up for the challenge. So far, the company has committed about 1 million dollars to the project, including a five-year grant for $750,000 ($150,000/year), Tableau software licenses, training, and support from their Zen Masters, a group of experts who are nominated by the Tableau community and to share knowledge and provide guidance.
Photo courtesy of Splash.
Splash has been committed to data transparency from its inception, but it lacked the tools to use its data in a meaningful way. Stowe says that prior to the partnership with Tableau, Splash didn’t have a single map that could show every single plotted school where they work. They have that now – an interactive map that shows Splash’s footprints across Addis Ababa and Kolkata and how many kids are being reached by each of those footprints. They can also see exactly how much they need to grow over the next five years in order to reach 100 percent coverage.
In time, Splash and Tableau hope to be able to show not just outputs but outcomes – to see not just where Splash has implemented programs, but how those areas have changed as a result of the programs. The Tableau dashboards will also eventually be able to help with project workflows and planning and, of course, make it easier to share all this data with governments so they can see for themselves what’s working and what’s not. “This is huge,” says Stowe. “My ability to tell the government what we’re doing is exponentially easier through [Tableau] than through any kind of spreadsheet or conversation.”
Screenshots of Tableau dashboard created using data from Splash projects. View larger image.
For now, Splash is focused on getting all the Tableau tools they need for Addis Ababa and Kolkata up and running, but eventually, they also hope the platform will capture their past successes – like getting into every orphanage in China across 1,100 cities – and failures as well.
“Absolutely, seeing the amount of work ahead can feel overwhelming,” says Stowe, “but to me there’s nothing negative about that. It should be nerve-wracking, like any meaningful work is.”
The added challenge right now is how to stay on track amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shut down schools in both cities indefinitely. However, Stowe says there is a positive: “There’s going to be an entirely new and dynamic conversation around handwashing that we’ve not been able to do on our own before. I think you’re going to see kids washing their hands far more, and that is a really good thing.”
By Penny Carothers
Dr. Om Prasad Gautam, Senior WASH Manager, WaterAid
Dr. Om Prasad Gautam was a handwashing champion before any of us had heard of the novel coronavirus and COVID-19. And while he’s pleased to see governments everywhere encouraging handwashing as a primary defense against the disease, he doesn’t believe that what you could call the coronavirus effect will increase handwashing worldwide once the crisis is over.
That’s because Dr. Om has seen and studied disease outbreaks and the role of handwashing. At first, there is an uptick in handwashing, but inevitably that upward trend plummets once the threat retreats. Understanding this phenomenon is central to his work on behavior change. Knowledge and fear, though heady motivators in the face of a pandemic, do not lead to the kind of long-term behavioral change we need to combat the next pandemic, not to mention the everyday epidemic of diarrheal diseases in low- and middle-income countries.
This problem—how to get people to make positive changes in their lives that become sustainable, or habit—is a primary focus of Dr. Om’s research and life’s work. Before the specter of coronavirus exposed our vulnerabilities, he had been working to crack the code on behavior change, specifically with hygiene. The consequences of a lack of clean water and sanitation are well-known, but Gautam wants to shift that perspective slightly, because studies show that it’s not just a lack of water and sanitation, or taps and toilets, that cause disease. It’s a lack of hygiene practice.
“In water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), without behavior change the services we offer are not going to be used or sustained. Handwashing with soap can reduce diarrheal diseases by 48%, but the problem is that only 19% of people actually wash their hands and 60% of households globally have handwashing facilities. We’re not finding the right motivation for people to change their behavior.”
For the past five years Dr. Om has led WaterAid’s behavior change and global hygiene programming as WaterAid’s Senior WASH Manager. WaterAid is “determined to make clean water, reliable toilets and good hygiene, handwashing in particular, normal for everyone, everywhere within a generation.” To support this goal, Dr. Om’s day-to-day work includes both internal and external commitments. He supports country offices through coordination, capacity building, and global guidance, standards, and frameworks. He also represents WaterAid in academic, private, and sector partnerships and global forums. All of these relationships are essential to such a considerable goal.
Om drinking water from gravity flow system tap, supported by WaterAid, through a local partner, NEWAH, in Udayapur District in Nepal, July 2009.
Caption: Om drinking water from gravity flow system tap, supported by WaterAid, through a local partner, NEWAH, in Udayapur District in Nepal, July 2009.
When Gautam joined WaterAid, the 40-year-old organization was launching a new global strategy. “It was perfect timing for me to bring some of the transformative shifts to the organization,” he explains. “My goal is to make sure [WaterAid] country programs implement robust, effective, evidence-based behavior-change programming that results [in] sustained behavioral outcomes.”
From Health to WASH
Gautam started his career working on child health, food safety, immunization, and HIV/AIDS projects at the World Health Organization and with Nepal’s Ministry of Health. This focus shifted slightly while studying for his Masters of Public Health at BRAC University. After spending time in a local cholera hospital, where he was exposed to the destructive result of a lack of clean water and sanitation, he was moved to work in WASH. Gautam began working with WaterAid Nepal and in 2009 he responded to the largest cholera outbreak in Nepal’s history in the Jajarkot region, where 30,000 people were infected and hundreds died. Considered one of the fathers of modern epidemiology, Dr. John Snow tracked and helped put a stop to an outbreak of cholera in London in the 1840s. More than 150 years later, Om wondered why people were still dying from this preventable disease.
Two years later, Om followed that question to its logical conclusion, as a Ph.D. candidate at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. With many years of field experience, he was looking to study transformative interventions shown to have lasting and significant impact. “I like evidence,” Gautam says. “We need evidence. As human beings working in public health, in the WASH sector, in charity, we don’t have the luxury to waste time, to test the failure of programming all the time. If programs aren’t evidence-based, they’re not going to be long-lasting.”
Behavior-Centered Design
In working toward his Ph.D. and beyond, Dr. Om’s intention was to integrate science into development practice and to contribute to practice-informed science. He studied food safety and hygiene behavior change at the London School with Valerie Curtis, one of the pioneers of a school of thought called behavior-centered design.
Behavior-centered design takes the view that people know what’s good for them, they just don’t always do it—an assertion that anyone who has tried to follow through with a New Year’s resolution can probably relate to. Behavior-centered design builds on, as Curtis wrote in 2015, “a particular set of evolutionarily important tasks humans must solve in order to survive and reproduce” and satisfy needs. They follow basic principles related to motivation and habit creation, such as social conventions, cultural expectations, and geographical setting. Or, more simply, says Dr. Om, “Behavior change is all about changing the script in peoples’ heads through motivation.”
Dr. Om with a group of participants in a safe food hygiene trial.
Organizations that use the behavior change model, like WaterAid, focus on the ABCDE approach (Assess, Build, Create, Deliver, Evaluate), which identifies the levers (the social, physical, and biological factors) that change behavior, coupled with a design process to create, implement, and evaluate the program. This approach starts with listening to communities to identify universal behavioral determinants (such as disgust, love, or status) and design approaches that tap into these motives.
It doesn’t end there. Om insists that interventions must be coordinated and integrated into government plans as well as other ongoing development efforts (such as immunization campaigns, education, and nutrition). WaterAid and other organizations following this model are focusing on strengthening systems to sustain these services and behaviors so that programs are “layered and iterative,” leading to universal access.
Dr. Om points to a current WaterAid project in Nepal that integrates hygiene into an immunization program run by Nepal’s Ministry of Health. The pilot started in four districts serving 35,000 mothers and is now being scaled up nationwide to reach 650,000. WaterAid is running similar systems-level campaigns in 17 countries. Internally, the organization is building centers of excellence on behavior change, sharing lessons learned and best practices with a broader federation, and empowering country programs to share what is and is not working, all in an effort to build knowledge in the sector.
Dr. Om Prasad Gautam presenting at WaterAid’s February 2019 Global Hygiene Conference
Today, the novel coronavirus is the most urgent public health threat facing the countries where WaterAid works. The organization takes a “do no harm” approach, having stopped face-to-face interaction. Instead, WaterAid is working with partners on media campaigns and providing handwashing facilities. When it’s safe to do so, the organization will pivot to behavior change programming. If Dr. Om has anything to do with it, in the next epidemic that comes along, vastly more people globally will practice the life-saving habit of hand washing.
Please welcome our newest Global Washington members. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with their work and consider opportunities for support and collaboration!
SIGN Fracture Care International
SIGN is a humanitarian organization that builds sustainable orthopaedic capacity in developing countries by providing relevant education to surgeons, then manufacturing and donating the instruments and implants needed to treat fractures. Signfracture.org
April 14: PATH: Real- Time Epidemic Response
April 16: World Affairs Council: Rethinking National Security in the Age of Pandemics
April 17- 24: FIUTS Blue Marble Bash
May 30: Global Visionaries: Virtual Auction & Gala
Senior Development Manager (Individual Giving), The Max Foundation
Manager, Grants and Contracts, Village Reach
Information Systems Officer, Global Partnerships
Check out the GlobalWA Job Board for the latest openings.
April 10: Contingency Planning for Fundraising
April 17: Overview of the CARES Act and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)
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SEATTLE – As part of ongoing efforts to support communities around the world amid the unprecedented impact of COVID-19, today The Starbucks Foundation announced it is donating more than $3 million to support community response efforts globally.
“As the world grapples with an issue of enormous scale and human impact, we are dedicated to serving communities through the lens of Our Mission and Values: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time,” said John Kelly, board member of The Starbucks Foundation. “We believe that together we can make a difference and, together, we will overcome this unprecedented challenge.”
Read more at: https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2020/the-starbucks-foundation-donates-more-than-3m-to-global-covid-19-relief-efforts/
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International Women’s Day 2020: To commemorate International Women’s Day, Uber has brought its global “Driving Change” campaign to India and announced a partnership with Breakthrough, a non-profit organization which works to reduce violence against women and girls in India.
To commemorate International Women’s Day, Uber has brought its global “Driving Change” campaign to India and announced a partnership with Breakthrough, a non-profit organisation which works to reduce violence against women and girls in India. As part of the collaboration, Breakthrough is launching a campaign, #IgnoreNoMore, which encourages bystander intervention and supports collective action to end gender-based violence in public spaces.
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Welcome to the March 2020 issue of the Global Washington newsletter.
To honor International Women’s Day, Global Washington has launched a month-long issue campaign to elevate the importance of ending gender-based violence. This month we are also celebrating the 25th anniversary of an historic gathering in Beijing that was a threshold moment for women’s rights – the Beijing Declaration, which set out specific goals to end violence against women globally.
Despite the tremendous progress that has been made since the Beijing Declaration, we still have a long way to go. The World Health Organization estimates that globally more than one in three women has experienced physical and/or sexual violence in her lifetime.
Today, numerous Global Washington members are part of a global movement to end gender-based violence. And it does feel like a movement. Some of the changes are happening at the grassroots community level, while others are focused on shifting national and international policy.
Please take the time to learn about the effective strategies that GlobalWA members are using to end gender-based violence around the world. In the articles below, we take an in-depth look at how the global network of Vital Voices elevates women leaders around the world to effect positive change. You will also find out how this month’s Goalmaker, Amanda Klasing from Human Rights Watch, became involved with the global women’s rights movement. And finally, I hope you will take the time to watch a video interview with Rikki Nathanson, a pioneering transgender activist from Zimbabwe, who is on the board of OutRight Action International.
Also this month, we have decided to host an event that will be online only to support social distancing in light of the Coronavirus in Washington state. Please join on March 18 for a virtual event on this topic. We will have speakers representing OutRight Action International, Rise Beyond the Reef, Seattle International Foundation, and CARE.
I hope you are staying healthy, and I also encourage you to stay connected online to the GlobalWA community.
Kristen Dailey
Executive Director
By Joanne Lu
A workshop in NYC, led by Panmela Castro, a graffiti artist who was a victim of domestic violence. Vital Voices connected her with other graffiti artists and helped her establish Artefeito, an organization that uses art to transform culture for social progress. Photo courtesy of Vital Voices Global Partnership.
Twenty-five years ago, tens of thousands of women from around the world decided it was beyond time for women to have a seat at the table of their own wellbeing and advancement. On September 4, 1995, they traveled to Beijing, China to attend the U.N.’s Fourth World Conference on Women, a critical event that would later be recognized as a significant turning point for the global agenda for gender equality.
It was at that conference that then-First Lady of the United States Hilary Clinton delivered a famous speech in which she declared that, “human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.” Also at that meeting, 189 countries unanimously agreed to adopt an agenda that set out to achieve gender equality in 12 critical areas, including violence against women. Sixty-eight countries even made actionable commitments, such as a six-year, $1.5 billion program by the U.S. to fight domestic violence. Perhaps most importantly, some experts say the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action made violence against women a matter for public discussion, instead of just a private, family issue.
Although the Beijing Declaration continues to be celebrated as a major step forward for women, no country has achieved equality yet, and violence against women and girls, in particular, remains an alarming global problem.
Femicide Watch reports that in 2017, an estimated 87,000 women around the world were murdered – more than half of them (50,000) by an intimate partner or family member. This means that every single day, 137 women are being killed by their own family.
The World Health Organization (WHO) also estimates that more than one in three women have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate-partner violence or sexual violence by a non-partner in their lifetime. But the estimates vary by region and in some countries, intimate-partner violence has affected up to 70 percent of women.
It’s true that gender-based violence (GBV) includes more than just domestic violence against women. CARE defines GBV as “a harmful act or threat based on a person’s sex or gender identity.” So, it certainly includes violence against men and boys, such as the targeted killing of men and boys in conflict or sexual violence against male refugees. However, GBV does disproportionately affect women, girls and other minorities (particularly LGBTIQ people), largely because they are disempowered by systemic gender inequality. And it can take on many different forms, including street harassment, human trafficking, female genital mutilation, child marriage, marital rape, honor killings, psychological bullying, and cyber harassment.
What’s more, GBV has serious repercussions on survivors. For example, the WHO found that women who have experienced intimate-partner violence report higher rates of depression, having an abortion and contracting HIV than women who have not. Many survivors also face social stigma.
Since the Beijing conference in 1995, governments, NGOs and intergovernmental organizations have adopted many strategies to fight gender-based violence and bring it to an end globally, all of which must work together to change societies that allow gender-based violence to continue.
To tackle a problem, one must first understand the scale and scope of the problem. But GBV is notoriously under-reported because of barriers like social stigma and limited access to services and resources. This lack of data means that it’s nearly impossible to accurately assess if global rates of GBV are increasing or decreasing over time. For this reason, there has been a push to collect more data. Researchers are finding better ways to collect information, like calling violence-against-women surveys “women’s health surveys” instead, and organizations, like Human Rights Watch, are compiling the data into reports for use in advocacy. OutRight Action International, an advocacy group that fights for the rights of LGBTIQ people around the world, also does a lot of work to fill the huge gaps in data regarding violence against sexual and gender minorities.
As a result of improved data collection and public conversations about GBV after Beijing, two-thirds of countries have adopted laws to stop domestic violence. But Every Woman Treaty wants to take it a step further by creating a legally binding global treaty that requires countries to prevent and address violence against women and girls. In the meantime, organizations like OutRight and Vital Voices are working with institutions on the ground to make sure that the laws are actually being enforced and that women, girls, and LGBTIQ individuals have access to the help and services they need.
But ending GBV is more than just a legal battle; it also requires resources, including financing. Although funding for gender equality and women’s empowerment is increasing, women’s rights organizations are still “significantly underfunded” compared with other development programs, according to the Equality Institute.
Ending GBV also requires a shift in cultural norms and attitudes toward gender. That’s why Breakthrough is using pop culture, media and technology to challenge gender-based norms in the U.S. and India and to help tackle violence. For example, their first campaign in India in 2008 was a series of TV ads called “Bell Bajao!” (or “Ring the Bell!”), which promoted the idea that violence is everyone’s business. So, if you witness your neighbor being violent toward his wife, you can help by creating an interruption, like ringing their doorbell. Breakthrough is also helping women in India realize for themselves that violence against them by their husbands is, in fact, a problem and should not be accepted.
To accelerate changes from the ground up, some organizations are focused on supporting grassroots activists. For example, the Seattle International Foundation (SIF) has been partnering with the U.S. Department of State for years on a program called Mujeres Adelante (or “Women Forward” in Spanish), which addresses GBV by hosting grassroots women leaders from Central America in the U.S. for two weeks of leadership training and exchanges. The goal, according to SIF, is to create a more organized and powerful network of change agents across the region who can support each other in their efforts to end GBV.
While women become more empowered to assert their rights, many organizations are also realizing the importance of engaging men and boys in the conversation in order to break the cycle of violence. After all, violence in many cases is learned behavior. In Lebanon, for example, a study found that men who had witnessed their fathers beating their mothers during childhood were three times more likely to perpetrate physical violence. However, CARE is helping men and boys redefine masculinity through family economic initiatives that teach couples how to run their households as equals, through male support groups that have open discussions about GBV and by facilitating conversations about GBV between male change agents and political and religious leaders. In patriarchal systems, it’s especially important for men to lead other men by example. That’s why Vital Voices, an organization that invests in women leaders, puts a big emphasis on male allies when they train police officers, lawyers, judges, and religious leaders – professions still dominated by men in many countries – on how to prevent and respond to violence against women.
Although there’s still a long road ahead in the fight to end GBV, experts are encouraged that at the very least, social change has been initiated. And as all of these strategies continue to work together to address the many facets of violence, changemakers are optimistic that the momentum will build: new generations of girls will grow up knowing that they have a right to safety, education, and decision-making about their own wellbeing, and new generations of boys will learn how to be allies. But making that a reality will require sustained efforts to actively change norms and uphold the rights of women, girls, and minorities everywhere.
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The following Global Washington members are working to end gender-based violence around the world:
Awamaki partners with women’s artisan cooperatives to teach them to start and run their own businesses. Awamaki invests in women’s skills, connects them to markets and supports their empowerment. Through Awamaki’s programs, artisan women from marginalized and remote villages learn business and leadership skills so they can earn an income and gain a voice in their households and their communities. The organization’s trainings include gender-based violence awareness and women’s rights topics, and its income-generating programs allow women to build successful futures and create a better life for themselves and their children.
Every Woman Treaty is a coalition of more than 1,700 women’s rights activists, including 840 organizations, in 128 nations working to advance a global binding norm on the elimination of violence against women and girls. The organization’s working group studied recommendations from the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and scholarly research on how to solve the problem of violence against women and girls, including trafficking and modern slavery, and found that a global treaty is the most powerful step the international community can take to address an issue of this magnitude.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) fights to end violence against women and girls, advance women’s right to health care, and promote women’s economic and social rights. HRW’s method is straightforward. The organization investigates violations of women’s rights, talking to the women and girls directly affected on the ground in countries around the world. HRW documents its findings in hard-hitting reports with detailed recommendations. Then HRW uses these reports—and targeted media outreach—to generate pressure for reform by the entities that perpetrate abuses against women. All HRW’s work is intersectional and is done in partnership with local organizations and activists. HRW researchers fight sexual harassment in the workplace and abuses in garment manufacturing to combatting human trafficking; work to end child marriage, and defending women’s access to land and the right to health, including sexual and reproductive health. HRW’s latest work is uncovering the new intersections between technology and gender-based violence, including digital stalking and on-line harassment, as it continues to document abuses and foster coalitions that protect, defend, and fight for women’s rights around the world.
Kati Collective improves systems across global development by providing experienced, strategic, and pragmatic action focused on three of the most important drivers of change: women, digital, and partnerships. In all of its engagements, Kati Collective applies a gender lens, thinking strategically about how to engage men and boys, while concurrently supporting women and girls in LMICs. Kati Collective’s work concentrates on culturally relevant technology for social impact, focusing on girls’ and women’s empowerment applications for effectively educating communities and maximizing outcomes for the underserved across the globe. Gender-based violence, which is faced by women globally, is not a female problem – it is a human problem, rooted in the attitudes, cultural norms, and behaviors of men worldwide. When men and boys are educated about ingrained sexist and systemic biases, they begin to see how they can partner in stopping these behaviors and practices from harming the next generation. Kati Collective approaches partnerships with the goal of aligning agendas regarding GBV and other female-centric issues forward collectively. Local and global perspectives must come together for impactful and lasting systemic change. Kati Collective provides its clients with perspective and experience, as well as the strategies and tools needed to improve outcomes for women on a global scale.
Landesa champions and works to secure land rights for millions of those living in poverty worldwide, primarily rural women and men, to promote social justice and provide opportunity. Evidence shows that women’s land rights can transform power dynamics within households and communities, improving women’s status and their own perceptions of their power. This empowerment forms the bedrock for greater economic opportunity for women, and can also contribute to better health outcomes, including potential reductions in gender-based violence, rates of HIV infection, and other threats to women’s safety. In West Bengal, India, Landesa is working with USAID and PepsiCo to raise awareness of issues related to GBV in agricultural supply chains. This work includes developing guidance documents for a project that is helping women farmers learn skills to participate in PepsiCo’s potato supply chain. Guidance has been tailored both for field staff who work directly with farmers and for management staff, including training materials developed in collaboration with a local CSO to help field staff address GBV. Across more than 50 countries, Landesa has helped strengthen land rights for more than 180 million families.
Mercy Corps is a global team of nearly 6,000 humanitarians working in more than 40 countries around the world. From Colombia to the Central African Republic, Mercy Corps partners with local communities to build strong, equitable, and protective societies in which women and girls can thrive. In order to combat Gender-Based Violence (GBV), Mercy Corps works to address the root causes of GBV and connect survivors with the vital resources and services they need. In Lebanon, Mercy Corps hosts a series of dialogue sessions for Syrian refugees in order to bring awareness to GBV and provides case management, connecting survivors to medical and legal services, psychological support and safe housing.
Lesbians, bisexual women and transgender (LBT) people around the world often face violence and exclusion in many spheres of their lives, fueled by laws that criminalize same-sex relations and gender non-conformity and encouraged by governments who tolerate, endorse, or directly sponsor the violent clamp-down on those who do not follow prevailing societal norms. Often LBT people are excluded or driven away from needed services and social support, and violence often goes unreported. They are also often denied access to justice based on archaic laws that limit the definition of rape while also delegitimizing same-sex and queer intimacy. OutRight Action International works with grassroots partners in Asia and the Caribbean to ensure that the experiences of LBT people are included in anti-gender-based violence work. For example, in 2019, OutRight and its Caribbean partners launched the Frontline Alliance: Caribbean Partnerships Against Gender Based Violence project to engage first responders, local government officials and others with a focus on domestic violence, family violence and intimate partner violence and to advocate for improvement in policies and protocols through engagement in research, trainings and strategic campaigning. OutRight has also documented the violence and exclusion LBT women face in Asia, worked with grassroots partners to improve domestic violence protections for LGBT people in Sri Lanka and the Philippines, Myanmar and China, and is currently launching a regional platform of experts on SOGIE and GBV in Asia.
Oxfam America’s work to advance gender justice is multifaceted and tailored to the people Oxfam serves. In some countries, Oxfam is the largest and most prominent organization to take a stand for women and gender-diverse people, and alongside them, often supporting the infrastructures of burgeoning movements. In other countries, like Sri Lanka, Oxfam helps rethink entrenched systems and remap biases to shift attitudes and overcome barriers. In all places, Oxfam strives for sustainable change. Oxfam does so first by acknowledging women, girls, and feminist actors as effective social change agents who must have a hand in ensuring their own rights and in the development they most want to see – development that will transform their families, communities and countries. Oxfam’s gender-based violence (GBV) work is focused on working with women’s rights organizations and feminist movement actors in 30 countries to challenge and transform harmful social norms. Oxfam’s focus on ending GBV is on addressing changes in social norms that perpetrate violence against women in creative ways and engaging feminist activists a youth at the local level. Oxfam’s global, regional, and national GBV work includes: 1) innovative global and national campaigning activities, like the Enough campaign
Working with digital influencers to counter anti-rights actors; 2) engaging and supporting the agendas of women’s rights organizations and feminist movement actors; 3) collaboration with feminist funds to provide small, flexible grants to young feminist organizers running campaigns; and 4) supporting the mobilization of young people at regional level.
Seattle International Foundation
Seattle International Foundation (SIF) champions good governance and equity in Central America through support for rule of law and the strengthening of civil society. When security and rule of law deteriorate in the Northern Triangle of Central America, women face not only systemic violence from powerful gangs, impunity and government repression, but pervasive domestic and sexual violence as well. This has exacerbated the tendency to migrate, despite a high likelihood of facing additional violence en route and a slim likelihood of obtaining asylum in the United States. SIF has committed to addressing and mitigating this reality through its multi-prong approach and through its key initiatives: the Central America Donors Forum, Central America in Washington, D.C., Central America and Mexico Youth (CAMY) Fund, Centroamérica Adelante and the Independent Journalism Fund.
Vista Hermosa is a family foundation located in Pasco WA, established by Ralph and Cheryl Broetje in 1990 to invest in the growth of flourishing communities. Informed by teachings of servant leadership, healing centered engagement and empowered worldview, Vista Hermosa takes a holistic approach to understanding and reconciling people’s connections to self, others, God, and place (shalom). Vista Hermosa accompanies very marginalized groups of people to discover who they are, find their voice, and be the solutions to their own wellbeing and development. The foundation currently funds partners in Mexico, Haiti, India, and East Africa, as well as the U.S. One of its strategies to address gender-based violence is through supporting the adaptation of SASA! (originally developed in Uganda), a community-led awareness, education and action methodology. Vista Hermosa funded the adaptation for the Haitian context and most recently for Mexico/Central America. The foundation is currently assembling a group of funders to support a cohort of regional NGOs to implement this evidence-based curriculum that addresses power imbalances between women and men in communities. Vista Hermosa also supports a range of organizations working on child and sex trafficking, FGM, and new masculinities.
Vital Voices is a global movement that invests in women leaders solving the world’s greatest challenges. Vital Voices understands that, in order for the world to embrace women’s full potential across industries and issues, gender-based violence (GBV) must be eliminated. Vital Voices works with women leaders and male allies to ensure that victims and survivors of GBV gain better access to services, protection and the justice they deserve. Vital Voices oversees key programs implemented in partnership with local leaders to deliver on this work. The Voices Against Violence Initiative champions innovative solutions to end GBV. Within Voices Against Violence, Vital Voices provides and administers Urgent Assistance Funds to survivors of extreme cases of GBV who do not have alternative means of support for immediate, short-term needs such as medical expenses, psychosocial counseling, emergency shelter and more. Also through Voices Against Violence, Vital Voices hosts Justice Institutes – interactive training programs that promote holistic response to violence and exploitation by convening judges, prosecutors, law enforcement and service providers and other stakeholders across the justice system to focus on victim safety and offender accountability. Vital Voices also oversees the Global Freedom Exchange, which provides a dynamic educational and mentoring experience for emerging and established women leaders who are on the forefront of global efforts to prevent and respond to the destructive crime of human trafficking. These programs support Vital Voices’ work protecting human rights so that everyone can enjoy the safety and security they deserve.
By Joanne Lu
Vital Voices staff and Global Freedom Exchange Fellows from countries across Africa gathered in Cape Town for a “Regional Activation.” Pictured here, the group visited a women-owned, women-run social enterprise, called Khayelitsha Cookie Company. Photo courtesy of Vital Voices Global Partnership.
Alyse Nelson was just a college student when she heard then-First Lady Hilary Clinton’s landmark speech on women’s rights at the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995: “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.”
Little did she know that the fire that she felt in that moment would forever change her life, setting her on a quest “to use power to empower and to use voice to give voice.”
Just two years after the conference, Nelson worked with several other women, including Clinton, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Ambassador Swanee Hunt, to establish the Vital Voices Democracy Initiative, a State Department program which sought to promote women’s advancement as a U.S. foreign policy goal. By 1999, the program was ready to become an independent non-governmental organization, Vital Voices Global Partnership, a network-based organization on a mission to “invest in women leaders who are solving the world’s greatest challenges.” Vital Voices today supports women leaders through a myriad of programs – including fellowships, grants and training – such as individualized investment and activations through their international network to expand leaders’ skills, connections and visibility. Vital Voices works to turn women leaders’ daring vision for change into bold realities.
Today, Nelson is the president and CEO of Vital Voices, now a vast global network of more than 18,000 women leaders (and male allies) in 182 countries and territories. But their resounding impact is far greater as many women leaders are changing the lives of thousands and millions more, says Nicole Hauspurg, Vital Voices’ Director of Justice Initiatives on the Human Rights team. After all, she says, women are multipliers; often demonstrating a unique ability and willingness to pay forward their opportunities in order to have a broader impact on their communities. This attitude is exhibited even in the way that new women leaders connect with Vital Voices. While some women cold-call and others respond to open applications for fellowships or programs, the primary way Vital Voices identifies women leaders is through other women leaders in the network.
Specifically, Vital Voices supports women who are who are creating change in four key ways: they are boosting economic empowerment and entrepreneurship in their communities; they are promoting human rights and ending gender-based violence (GBV); they are making or influencing policy and serving as political leaders; or they’re confronting issues and want assistance advancing their own leadership as women. To correspond with these focus areas, Vital Voices has several teams that operate differently based on their mandate and the needs of the women they work with around the world.
For example, one of the many efforts Vital Voices’ human rights team oversees is an Urgent Assistance Program that provides emergency financial support to survivors of extreme GBV around the world. This program and others are made possible through the Voices Against Violence: The GBV Global Initiative, a public-private partnership between Vital Voices, the Department of State, and the Avon Foundation for Women. If an individual is experiencing an extreme form of GBV, they – or an organization or individual that is helping them – can contact Vital Voices’ GBV experts with linguistic support for short-term lifesaving assistance for their needs in the immediate aftermath or threat of extreme violence.
“The reality is we have varied and diverse program offerings because we realize that the needs of women leaders around the world are not one-size-fits-all,” says Hauspurg. “Women everywhere are blazing trails around solutions that are responsive to the local, national, regional and global challenges that impact them and the intersecting communities of which they are a part.”
Vital Voices’ program offerings have expanded to reflect what the women in their network have expressed they need support with. Most of the human rights teams’ work, therefore, focuses on domestic violence, sexual violence, human trafficking, harmful traditional practices, female genital mutilation and early and forced marriage. Although other teams engage with human rights advocates and defenders who promote a broader spectrum of human rights, the human rights team works exclusively on GBV.
“We realized that one in three women experience violence in their lifetime, so if we want women to advance in all areas of society – to get to be entrepreneurs, to get to be political leaders – fundamentally, we have to create an environment that’s free of violence and exploitation,” says Hauspurg.
One way that Vital Voices is tackling human trafficking, for example, is through its Global Freedom Exchange, a two-week educational and mentoring program in partnership with Hilton that takes anti-trafficking advocates – many of whom identify as survivors of trafficking themselves – to three U.S. cities, each with their own unique challenges and best practices in preventing and responding to trafficking. The program is complemented by regional programming as well as competitive grants, which support participants as they adjust the models they observed to their own contexts. Among the program’s alumni are two Seattleites: Wendy Barnes, who is the program director of Dignity Health’s Human Trafficking Response Program and Alisa Bernard, the director of education and partnerships at the Organization for Prostitution Survivors.
Also through VAV, Vital Voices has conducted two dozen Justice Institutes on Gender-Based Violence in 14 countries. Justice Institutes train judges, prosecutors, law enforcement, advocates and other community leaders involved in the justice system on how to more effectively identify, investigate and prosecute GBV – and why it’s important to do so. Especially with the help of male allies, Justice Institutes are helping to shift societal attitudes and enforce laws and policies that either don’t exist or aren’t implemented to their full extent.
Brazil, for example, didn’t have a domestic violence law until 2006. When the law was finally introduced, it wasn’t enforced and many women had no idea they had rights. Says Hauspurg, “Sometimes laws need help keeping their promises.” That inspired interest in Justice Institutes in Brazil, of which there have been five implemented in partnership with Vital Voices and local stakeholders. Moreover, it inspired Panmela Castro, a graffiti artist who was a young bride and victim of domestic violence, to begin painting beautiful murals late at night that depicted women as survivors and educated them about their rights under the new law. But to really scale her impact, Panmela needed leverage, so Vital Voices connected her with other graffiti artists and helped her establish Artefeito, an organization that uses art to transform culture for social progress.
A workshop in NYC, led by Panmela Castro, a graffiti artist who was a victim of domestic violence. Vital Voices connected her with other graffiti artists and helped her establish Artefeito, an organization that uses art to transform culture for social progress. Photo courtesy of Vital Voices Global Partnership.
As we approach the 25th anniversary of the conference that sparked this journey for Alyse Nelson and the tens of thousands of women, like Panmela, who have been impacted by her work, Vital Voices is looking for ways to continue building on the momentum of the last 25 years. One way is by adding new and different types of actors to their already extensive list of multi-sectoral partners, which currently include the U.S. Department of State, CARE, Avon, Hilton, Uber, Promundo, and Global Fund for Women, among others. They’re also always looking for more ways to include more women, whether by seeking creative methods of outreach, ensuring that as much as possible programming and services can be delivered in local languages, providing different forms of transportation to their programs or using pseudonyms for survivors – because the more women leaders they can reach, the more those women can pay it forward. And that’s the power of empowering women.
By Penny Carothers
Growing up in South Texas close to a fluid border, Amanda Klasing saw deep inequality firsthand and wanted to do something about it from an early age. From a deeply religious family whose faith was informed by social justice, she always knew she’d have a career and a life that included service. What she didn’t realize then was that her life’s work would require her to face an inherent tension in her upbringing.
This tension was a fact of life in her childhood, streaming from the radio and from the front seat of the family car. On rides to and from baseball practice—on a team where she was the only girl—she heard messages like, “feminazis are going to ruin the world,” from the family’s favorite radio program, The Rush Limbaugh Show. “I grew up in a very conservative household where the worst thing that you could be was a feminist,” she explained. “At the same time, my dad also encouraged me to pursue anything that I wanted to, whether it was sports or leadership or a scholarship. Whatever it was, there was no distinction in the way that he saw my abilities and my opportunities and the way he saw my brother’s.”
Buoyed by her parents unflagging belief in her, Klasing excelled as a student and discovered human rights as a framework for understanding the social justice messages of her youth. While in law school and graduate school, she focused on human rights advocacy, which led her to Human Rights Watch (HRW) where she is now acting co-director of the women’s rights division.
Human Rights Watch’s Women’s Rights Division (WRD) has been protecting the rights of women and pushing for gender equity for 30 years. Their in-depth research and targeted advocacy have achieved impact around the world, from global treaties protecting the rights of women workers to national-level policy changes to advance reproductive rights, end child marriage, increase access to education, and protect women from violence.
At HRW Amanda has carried out research and advocacy on a number of human rights issues including the First Nations water crisis in Canada; sexual violence and other forms of violence against women displaced by conflict in Colombia; the relationship between women’s and girls’ human rights and access to good menstrual hygiene management; and the rights to water and sanitation in schools.
Amanda began documenting and elevating the experiences and the voices of those impacted by human rights violations, and she’s always learned from the people she meets. During research and advocacy work in Colombia, Amanda met Angélica Bello, a woman who was targeted by paramilitary successor groups in Colombia for her activism. Angélica and her daughters were victims of sexual violence. Rather than stay silent, she used her voice to call for an end to impunity for perpetrators. Angélica was a tireless advocate for survivors, helping them pursue justice for rape or assault and for increased access to protection and medical help. Despite threats against her life, Angélica kept highlighting the issue of sexual violence and the protections victims needed from the government. For her work, she was harassed and threatened relentlessly. Angélica died never receiving the psychosocial support she needed and was advocating to make available to all survivors. A year after Angélica’s death, a bill protecting the rights of survivors of sexual violence passed into law.
Several years later Amanda met Carol, a young mother in Brazil. Carol’s second daughter, Gabi, was born with congenital Zika syndrome. “Carol knew that something deeply wrong had happened, that there were so many government failures leading up to the Zika outbreak and afterward, and that her child and family have a right to receive services,” Klasing explained. Amanda worked with Carol to tell the stories of women and babies affected by Zika in northeastern Brazil and to create an HRW report on the issue. Amanda says, “I saw amazing growth in Carol and in her work with us and her community—the change that she will continue to have with other children and families is phenomenal and exponential.”
Maria Carolina Silva Flor and Joselito Alves dos Santos with their 18-month-old daughter, Maria Gabriela Silva Alves, pictured after the launch of the Human Rights Watch report Neglected and Unprotected, July 2017. © 2017 Amanda Klasing/Human Rights Watch
As Amanda emerged as a leader in the women’s rights movement , she continued to grapple with a tension she sees in her work with women like Carol and Angélica: incredible human rights violations juxtaposed with the strength she sees in survivors as they persevere and demand respect for their rights even while facing daily indignities and atrocities. This is what is at the heart of the human rights movement: survivors seeking justice and to be seen as having the same inherent dignity as all human beings. It’s one of the reasons she was drawn to and keeps doing the work. “The brave women and girls who I have spoken to throughout my career continue to motivate me and in particular the leaders that rise out of movements at the grassroots level. I have felt very fortunate to work with women’s rights advocates and I am amazed by their fortitude and their ability to hope for a different world.”
Despite the difficulties, Amanda is encouraged by advances in centering human rights conversations on impacted populations. HRW has always strived to promote a connected, outspoken, and effective global women’s rights movement that is intersectional and inclusive. She says, “My personal and professional goal is to see human rights organizations adapt to be in service to a movement and to the leaders of directly impacted populations. There’s so much space for innovation and opportunity to bring our research methodologies and unique strengths to partner for new approaches…My colleagues at HRW are always willing to evolve and be influenced by our partners.”
You can say the same about Klasing. Though she prefers to talk about her work and the strength of grassroots leaders rather than herself, it is striking that in her role at HRW Klasing broadcasts a different kind of story than the one she grew up listening to on the radio. The tension between the messages she heard as a child and those she shares now may be strong, but the connection is undeniable. She summed it up best herself in a 2017 article for Women’s eNews when she said, “My father exposed me to what the world thinks of women who fight too hard for equality, but also raised me to be strong enough to be one of those women.”
Please welcome our newest Global Washington members. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with their work and consider opportunities for support and collaboration!
Fanikia Foundation
Fanikia Foundation provides support to underprivileged individuals and communities in Tanzania and the United States through education, training, and information. Its main goal is to eliminate poverty and to empower individuals in specific communities. Different strategies are needed to tackle these issues. The foundation partners with like-minded organizations to eliminate poverty and illiteracy. Currently Fanikia Foundation is focusing on two programs: “Educate a Girl,” a program based in Tanzania and “Drive to Higher Education,” based in the United States. fanikiafoundation.org
Vital Voices
Vital Voices is a global movement that invests in women leaders who are solving the world’s greatest challenges. Guided by the belief that women are essential to progress in their communities, Vital Voices identifies women with a daring vision for change and invests in them to make their vision a reality. Through long-term investments that expand each leader’s skills, connections, and visibility, Vital Voices accelerates and scales their impact. vitalvoices.org
Many member events in March have been cancelled or are now being held virtually. You can find out about upcoming events on our Community Calendar.
Research and Impact Officer, Global Partnerships
Director of Communications and Marketing, Tearfund
Global Entersprise Director, Days for Girls
Enterprise Program Administrative Assistant, Days for Girls
Check out the GlobalWA Job Board for the latest openings.
March 18: (Virtual Event) Proven strategies for stopping gender-based violence
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By Kelly Pendergrast, Communications Consultant at Future of Fish
Boats arranged on the beach in Paita, Peru. Photo courtesy of Future of Fish.
Billions of people depend on fish as a critical source of protein. From lobster divers in Belize to handline mahi-mahi fishers in Peru, communities around the world feed themselves and make a living from the fish they pull from the ocean every day. But these livelihoods are under threat. Climate change is already wrecking 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.
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Welcome to the February 2020 issue of the Global Washington newsletter.
When I hear people in developing countries talk about climate change, it’s often about droughts, famines, increased disease, loss of income, or forced migration. It’s a devastating new reality and it’s clear that those who continue to be hardest hit by the effects of climate change tend to be those who can least afford it.
Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson states, “the fight against climate change is fundamentally about human rights and securing justice for those suffering from its impact.” She speaks of “Climate Justice” and elevates solutions to climate change that put those most vulnerable at the center. I couldn’t agree more.
In addition, many of those on the frontlines of climate change are also the leaders we need for smart and sustainable adaptation and mitigation efforts. Global Washington has amazing members elevating local leaders such as Rise Beyond the Reef, founded by an inspiring couple in Fiji who are listening to local wisdom and creating community around an abundance mindset – one that respects “the connection between land, food, traditional knowledge, identity and innovation.”
And closer to home, the Seattle Foundation is supporting communities of color and low-income populations as those most impacted by climate change in our region. Their focus is on a more human-centered climate response for long-term systems change.
I hope you enjoy the discussions this month and I encourage you to share what you are learning with others so that more people can benefit and be part of this important conversation.
Kristen Dailey
Executive Director
By Joanne Lu
A woman in Fiji cultivates her crops. Photo credit: Rise Beyond the Reef.
On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans celebrated the first Earth Day as a peaceful demonstration for environmental reform. Fifty years later, it’s now celebrated around the world and has paved the way for efforts like the Environmental Protection Agency, the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the Canopy Project. But these efforts have not been enough, and more than ever, the world is wrestling with the risks and effects of climate change, particularly on the world’s most vulnerable communities.
Last month, in the 50th edition of the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risks Report, all five of the top risks were environmental, including damage from extreme weather events, the failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation by governments and businesses, human-made environmental damage and disasters, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, and natural disasters. Although climate change is happening everywhere, research repeatedly shows that those who are already struggling with poverty, oppression and instability are being affected the most and will increasingly bear the consequences. That’s because the injustices associated with poverty, age, gender, social exclusion and weak infrastructure undermine these populations’ ability to cope with climate change.
For example, according to the World Bank, 78 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas and most of them rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. That means that shifting weather patterns, rising temperatures, extreme weather events like floods and droughts and land degradation are putting the poor at greater risk of losing their livelihoods, being unable to feed their families, sinking further into poverty and maybe even being forced to migrate. By 2030, the World Bank estimates that food prices could be 12 percent higher on average in sub-Saharan Africa because of crop yield losses from climate change. Combined with the other effects of climate change – including increased conflicts and deadly infectious diseases – the World Bank warns that more than 100 million additional people could be living in poverty by 2030, and most of them will be in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
What’s even more unfair is that in many cases, the communities that are most affected are the ones which have contributed the least to climate change. The island nation of Kiribati, for example, is one of the lowest emitters of carbon dioxide in the world. Yet, because of top polluters like the U.S. and China, Kiribati is literally disappearing beneath a rising sea. In 2016, the UN Institute for Environmental and Human Security reported that 94 percent of people living on Kiribati had already been impacted by climate change.
While developing countries are suffering the most from climate change, vulnerable communities in wealthy countries are being disproportionately affected, as well. A federal report published in 2018 concluded that low-income communities and some communities of color, many of which are already overburdened with poor environmental conditions and adverse health conditions, are less resilient to and disproportionately affected by extreme weather and climate events, including the health impacts. In Washington state, for example, Seattle Foundation says that “46 percent of all toxic sites are in areas mostly populated by people of color, while 56 percent are in largely low-income areas.” These communities, therefore, are struggling with contaminated drinking water, poor air quality, unhealthy housing and extreme weather events. Because of discriminatory zoning, banking and employment practices, people in these communities also have the least access to tools that would help them cope, such as transportation, education, insurance and healthy housing.
The federal report also attributes part of the problem to the fact that these vulnerable populations are often excluded in planning processes. That’s why the Seattle Foundation launched its Climate Justice Impact Strategy to ensure that communities of color and low-income communities are “leading and shaping efforts to reduce the disproportionate effects of climate change that they experience.”
World Vision also works closely with communities around the world to identify solutions that work for their individual contexts. In Ethiopia, for example, World Vision wanted to address the health problems, carbon emissions and deforestation associated with open cooking fires. So, they worked with women to determine what kind of fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly cookstoves worked best for their needs, and they have since distributed tens of thousands of them across the country.
In India, Earthworm is also helping smallholder farmers become more resilient in the face of climate change by helping them nurture the country’s soil back to health. The Mitti Bole program (or Soil Speaks) brings together international soil experts, Indian organic farming pioneers and other researchers to educate farmers on responsible soil and water management, agroforestry to improve soil quality and sequester carbon as well as ways to reduce their pesticide and fertilizer dependence.
Experts are recognizing, too, that any effective response to climate change must take gender into account, because women and girls are disproportionately affected. Part of this is because 70 percent of the world’s poor are women and girls, but also societal roles, gender-specific health concerns and discrimination play a big part. For example, when Cyclone Idai hit Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe last year, 75,000 pregnant women were affected, with 7,000 at risk of “life-threatening complications” because the flooding and destruction obstructed access to clean water, sanitation and reproductive health care. Domestic work and caregiving duties – women and girls’ primary responsibilities in many contexts – also become much more difficult and time-consuming with climate change. And if they are displaced from their homes by an extreme weather event, they face a greater risk of exploitation and sexual violence.
But women and girls have a crucial role in climate change adaptation and mitigation. That’s why Project Drawdown, a repository for substantive solutions to climate change, focuses to a large extent on women and girls, including girls’ education. Education, they say, “lays a foundation for vibrant lives for girls and women, their families, and their communities,” but it also helps curb carbon emissions because women with more education tend to have fewer and healthier children. Education can also help girls and women become more productive and responsible food providers with a greater capacity to cope with climate shocks.
Remote Energy is also helping more women get involved in climate solutions in a technical capacity. Their program equips women in developing countries with the technical skills and a community of support to become solar electric technicians. This not only opens up economic opportunities for women, but also gives them a greater voice in decisions about energy within their communities. After all, in developing countries, women are the main users of household energy, so training them in renewable technologies makes their work more sustainable and efficient, which also gives them more time to pursue education and income-earning activities.
All of these programs illustrate the core principles of climate justice as laid out by the Mary Robinson Foundation. We must remember that climate change is not just an environmental or physical problem; it also contains ethical and political dimensions.
The core principles of climate justice are as follows: 1) respect and protect human rights 2) support the right to development 3) share benefits and burdens equitably 4) ensure that decisions on climate change are participatory, transparent and accountable 5) highlight gender equality and equity 6) harness the transformative power of education for climate stewardship and 7) use effective partnerships to secure climate justice.
These principles are not new, the foundation says, but should help those in pursuit of climate justice achieve a human-centered approach – one that shares the burdens, benefits (wealth from emissions, for example) and responsibility for solving climate change fairly and equitably, and, perhaps most importantly, protects the rights of the most vulnerable.
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The following Global Washington members are working to address climate change and its impacts on the most vulnerable communities around the world.
Earthworm Foundation (formerly known as The Forest Trust) has 20 years of experience in finding solutions to the major social and environmental problems that our world is facing today. Earthworm’s vision is for future generations to not simply survive, but to thrive. The nonprofit seeks to build a world where the balance between people and the environment, value and profit, people’s beliefs and actions is maintained and where human, natural and capital resources become a force for good. For that, Earthworm sees a world where forests are a boundless source of materials and a home for biodiversity; communities see their rights respected and have opportunities to develop; workers are seen as productive partners; and agriculture becomes the instrument to feed a hungry planet and keep our climate stable.
FSC Investments & Partnerships
Forest Stewardship Council Investments & Partnerships (FSC I&P) is the Seattle-based branch of FSC. As the original pioneers of forest certification, FSC has over 25 years of experience in sustainable forest management. FSC promotes the responsible management of the world’s forests, and has developed a high standard of forest management that prioritizes the environmental, social and economic rights of community foresters, and indigenous people around the world. FSC I&P’s mission is aligned with the FSC in promoting environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world’s forests. In 2018, FSC launched its Ecosystem Services Procedure, which allows businesses and governments an additional mechanism to demonstrate the impact of their products and investments on watershed services, carbon sequestration and storage, and biodiversity conversation, among other ecosystem services. Recently, FSC Canada received funds from the Canadian Ministry of Environment and Climate Change to support implementing the new Canadian National Forest Standard, the result of five years of rigorous consultation with indigenous groups, environmental and social stakeholders, and industry actors. It addresses the most pressing issues facing Canadian forests, including preserving the threatened woodland caribou, Indigenous people’s rights, worker’s rights, including gender equity, and landscape management and conservation.
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.
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 35 million farmers and business owners around the world, supporting them to build businesses that deliver living incomes and protect the environment. Heifer works with smallholder farmers using a tried and tested community development model, providing farming inputs 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 works with them to manage grazing, protecting areas of important biodiversity, enabling farmers to make a living income and restore resources for future generations. Heifer also invests alongside farmers in clean, green energy solutions, like solar power systems and biogas, so they can generate the energy they need to power their continued growth. Heifer believes local farmers hold the key to feeding the world, and it is working with them to make their farms sustainable in every sense of the word.
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. We disseminate our findings through our global media network and 11 million social media followers. We use our 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, we successfully advocated for the inclusion of human rights language in the landmark 2015 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 forests that serve as critical “carbon sinks” and accelerating a global shift away from the use of coal, one of the dirtiest fossil fuels. We will undertake research and advocacy on issues including food insecurity for Indigenous communities in Canada and the ways in which climate-harming activities, like coal emissions in Europe and Africa and deforestation in South America, also harm human rights.
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. As climate change is a key driver of events such as floods and droughts that undermine development gains and threaten vulnerable people, Mercy Corps partners with local communities to rebound from disasters while helping them be more prepared for the next ones. In Mali, Mercy Corps partnered with local communities, through a cash for work program, to construct dams along the Niger river to secure communities against flooding and conserve water for off-season farming. As a result, for the first time in 30 years, 250 families in the Tassakane village of the Timbuktu region didn’t suffer from flooding during the rainy season
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 recently made three commitments: 1) the company will become carbon negative by 2030; 2) it will take responsibility for removing its historical carbon emissions by 2050; and 3) it will 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.
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.
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 leaves no one behind, and promote resilient development by building capacities and leadership of communities & womenon 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 unlike other organizations that focus 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 are 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 US 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 (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.
Rise Beyond the Reef bridges the divide between remote communities, government and the private sector in the South Pacific, sustainably creating a better world for women and children. There is no reason not to value the inherent intelligence and resilient nature of Pacific Island cultures that have self-sustained for thousands of years. Rise Beyond the Reef believes that if leadership in remote communities can be cultivated and strengthened, if these fire-keepers of traditional knowledge can have a place where they are protected, ignited and supported to grow sustainably in the 21st century, if women have an equal voice that’s heard and respected in their communities, if their experiences and insights are valued, if children’s rights are protected, then the entire community will rise. It’s not about helping the poor or just focusing on the environment, it’s about creating value around the important role remote communities play in our world’s whole picture, including creating a stable climate. It’s about valuing rather than extracting. It’s about supporting rather than directing. It’s about seeing our collective future. That’s when we all rise together.
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 they serve. 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, we address its root causes, identify and adapt to its impacts, and strengthen 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.
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 nearly 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.
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.
To address climate change Vulcan philanthropy funds projects and investments in research, innovation, and policy change. One innovative project for example is improving researchers’ ability to understand sea ice in response to climate change. Through the Foundation and personal philanthropy, Paul G. Allen and Vulcan have provided more than $50 million for forest preservation, research, education, development and management, protecting key land and habitats in the Pacific Northwest and around the world. In addition, Vulcan Production films, such as Racing Extinction and Pandora’s Promise help audiences understand the effects of climate change and spark a dialogue about solutions. On the policy front, Paul G. Allen and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation joined a lawsuit to require the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management to prepare a programmatic environmental impact statement for the federal coal leasing program. In a blog post, Allen said “It is time for our government leaders to make informed decisions on how to best manage our public resources to meet our nation’s energy needs.”
More than a million vulnerable species need humans to take action for their survival. Meaningful reductions in carbon emissions to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis require behavioral, organizational and policy change. Woodland Park Zoo has joined The Wave, a coalition of more than 100 Pacific Northwest organizations pledged to fight for 100% clean energy, zero waste, and clean air and water for every living creature. Through exceptional animal care and sustainable practices such as solar panels, eliminating single-use plastics, investing in green infrastructure, and converting our animals’ waste into ZooDoo compost – Woodland Park Zoo continues to inspire our community and nearly one million unique visitors a year to make conservation, and sustainability, a priority in their lives.
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 resources management and climate adaptation and mitigation. Projects include interventions like reforestation, agro-forestry, climate-smart agriculture, clean energy and access to carbon markets. World Vision Australia 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 the 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.
By Stephanie Stinson
2017 Earth Day climate march in Seattle. Photo credit: Rick Theis, Twenty20.
Community foundations first emerged as U.S. institutions more than 100 years ago. Since then they have become essential bridge builders, civic leaders, and philanthropic catalyzers in the places they serve.
Closer to home, the name Seattle Foundation has long been synonymous with efforts to strengthen the health and vitality of our region through philanthropy since its creation in 1946. Each philanthropic strategy designed by Seattle Foundation is rooted in the belief that all individuals, families, and communities deserve opportunities to thrive, regardless of their race, place, or other identity. In line with its tradition as a recognized leader in striving to reduce the inequities that exist across our local communities, Seattle Foundation launched a Climate Justice Impact Strategy in 2018 to guide the evolution of its ongoing commitment to this work.
Part of a broader Community Program practice area, the Climate Justice Impact Strategy endeavors to address the disproportionate impacts of climate change on communities of color and low-income communities, while also ensuring these communities themselves are at the frontline in designing initiatives to address a changing climate. The strategy document states: “Everyone has a stake in achieving climate justice and we believe that focusing on those first and worst impacted ensures that we all thrive.”
Sally Gillis, the managing director of strategic impact and partnerships at Seattle Foundation, oversees the Climate Justice Impact Strategy. Drafted with an eye towards long-term systems change, Gillis said that the strategy recognizes the importance of concurrent efforts around mitigation, adaptation resilience and leadership.
After launching its climate justice strategy, the Seattle Foundation undertook its first major action in this area – the endorsement and support of Washington state Initiative 1631, a carbon emissions fee. “This for us was a strong step forward in speaking to our commitment, using our voice as a civic leader in support of equitable climate change policies that truly support frontline and marginalized communities,” said Gillis. “We continue to see policy as a critical lever. While the initiative wasn’t successful, I’m proud that we stood on the right side of history in speaking to our values.”
When asked what particular policies Seattle Foundation anticipates supporting in 2020, Gillis commented that the organization will be keeping an eye on what unfolds during this legislative cycle to then inform future ballot priorities. She also noted that Seattle Foundation relies on its community partners to elevate ways the organization can be most valuable.
“There is great effort through many of our grantees to put progressive policies on the ballot and in front of the legislature, recognizing that if we don’t act quickly, climate justice is going to be harder and harder to be realized.”
A fundamental component to the strategy’s approach includes producing more prominent messaging around the human-centered impacts that communities of color and low-income communities face in a changing climate. It is widely documented that in the United States, race is the most significant predictor of a person living near contaminated water, air, or soil. Locally, this is evidenced by the fact that 58 percent of the population that lives within one mile of the Duwamish River Superfund boundary are people of color. To this end, Seattle Foundation is using storytelling to better illuminate the complexity and humanity of climate justice.
Last August Seattle Foundation invited 20 philanthropists to join Puget Soundkeeper and Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition on a boat tour of the Duwamish River. This gave philanthropists the opportunity to reflect on both the social and environmental consequences of a century of development in Seattle’s commercial district and how they wanted to be part of solutions moving forward.
“We know not everyone is able to take time out of their day to join us,” Gillis acknowledged. “Therefore, I’m excited in 2020 to think about how we might use vlogs (video blogs) and video to capture the stories of our grantees, and truly tell of their resilience and leadership through this work. We need to shift the storyteller to on-the-ground leaders who are holding and centering community.”
A key aspiration of the outing was to bring more overall attention to human-centered impacts within the broader climate change narrative.
“Our neighbors along the Duwamish River will experience climate change through sea level rise, storm surges, flooding, and this will amplify the community’s current and urgent need to take action,” stressed Gillis. “At the same time, that community is seeing increased gentrification and decreased affordability, so that local residents don’t just face climate change, but they face affordability changes. We must intentionally plan and protect communities so that they aren’t forced to make false choices between sea walls and affordable housing, both of which are necessary for a community to thrive in place.”
Gillis noted that these same choices, between livability and safety, are made by communities in many of the places that Global Washington members work around the world. Such circumstances are heightened by extreme inequality and a lack of government accountability.
In describing the foundation’s programmatic goals for the coming year, Gillis said they will continue to work in partnership with institutional funders, while concurrently working across silos to ensure that highly impacted communities are given the space to lead.
“We recognize that within the environmental field, especially in the Pacific Northwest, has been historically white-led and male-dominated. We know that in order to ensure that climate justice is realized, we have to expand the movement, reinforcing People-of-Color-led leadership within the field,” said Gillis.
Pursuant of these leadership objectives, in December Seattle Foundation invested $500,000 in ten frontline organizations undertaking community-based and community-defined efforts. Gillis said that she looks forward to evolving similar work as a key priority in 2020.
Gillis cites honest feedback and fostering authentic partnership with these frontline organizations as being among the biggest lessons learned since the foundation adopted this strategy.
“As part of our grant making and convening efforts, we have been a long-time funder of Front and Centered, a collaborative of 60 plus POC-serving organizations, fighting for environmental justice. This has brought us into honest dialogue with those organizations who have called us into conversations and who have pushed us to be better than philanthropy has been historically,” said Gillis.
Finally, Gillis noted the importance of connecting Seattle Foundation’s local efforts to the broader climate justice initiatives taking place worldwide.
“As we approach climate justice, we could work in our local Pacific Northwest context. At the same time we are aware that we can’t work in isolation. For example, we know that the burning forests of Australia will impact our air quality here in Seattle. Ultimately, we are sharing one planet and one set of solutions. Thus, we continually seek out opportunities to learn from national and international leaders to help inform our locally-led solutions.”
Global Washington works in partnership with Seattle Foundation to promote climate justice as a priority issue locally and globally. For more information about how you can support Seattle Foundation’s work in the area of climate justice, contact Sally Gillis.
By Amber Cortes
Janet and Semi Lotawa in Fiji. Photo provided by Janet Lotawa.
The climate is already changing, and it’s getting urgent.
You could look at it this way—there is scarcity, there is instability, there is crisis. There is inequality, there are ‘the haves’ and the ‘have nots.’
Or you could see it another way entirely—that there are solutions right in front of us, if we can just listen. There is abundance in community. There is resilience in wisdom. There’s empowerment and innovation when people come together for the greater good.
It’s a way of thinking that originally brought Janet and Semi Lotawa together in the remote Fijian village where they met, and it’s what has sustained their relationship for the past 25 years. It’s also a guiding principle behind the work that they do running Global Washington network member organization Rise Beyond the Reef.
While in high school, Janet and her family went to Fiji for a vacation. There, Janet says, she was struck by a gut-level feeling of finding something she never knew she was even missing, “that special place that’s been existing in your head, that you never think actually exists on the planet, too.”
The missing piece Janet had been craving was a sense of community.
“I think it’s the just immeasurable side of being in a community and what it brings to you. And what that environment can create—that’s what was so intriguing to me.”
Women in Fiji creating traditional crafts. Photo credit: Rise Beyond the Reef
Janet spent the next summer volunteering in a Fijian community on a learning program, which was where she met Semi, who had just finished forestry school and was a conservation leader in the program.
“And it was not really anything but in the back of my mind,” Semi said, “because I knew two weeks later, they will leave and go back to the US. But, you know, right after that, we kept in touch.”
And they did so by writing letters, since Semi lived a rural and remote coastal community on the Fijian Island of Viti Levu.
“Being in the village, you don’t have a designated post office, so it has to be a care of somebody,” Semi explained. “So, a month later, ‘oh, hey, I think you have a letter from somewhere!’ From Janet, who must be eagerly waiting on the other end to receive a reply!”
Semi came to the States to visit Janet in 1998, Janet recalls, and the rest was history:
“It wasn’t planned that he was going to stay. But he did! And we decided to get married, instead of going back and forth for years. So, we eloped!”
The two spent the next decade in the States while Semi, who had worked in sustainable development, pivoted towards a business degree—”because aid is great,” he explained, “but it is at some level also what makes people handicapped; it keeps their hands out.”
Growing up in Fiji, Semi had seen his fair share of NGOs and donors coming in “with their own money, agenda, and frameworks.” But their frameworks often felt foreign to the local communities there, who were the resource owners (82% of land in Fiji is Indigenous-owned), and had their own way of doing things.
“One thing was obvious—that when the funding timeline was over, nothing was sustainable! As far as transformational changes in the community, nothing would stick.”
Remote village in Fiji. Photo credit: Rise Beyond the Reef
Janet agreed, adding that the “rigidness of the lens that’s providing the funding support creates a missed opportunity really to learn from indigenous communities.”
That’s why the Lotawa’s approach for Rise Beyond the Reef, which works towards economic empowerment of women in rural remote Pacific coast communities, revolves around aligning with culture first. They start with a baseline process of listening to the community.
For example, when women said they wanted to earn their own income, it resulted in a partnership approach between Rise Beyond the Reef and 350 women in 23 rural communities to create a community-centered supply chain that sends community-made, locally-sourced artisanal goods to market.
“Way before FedEx,” Semi says, “we had our own ways of moving product across those mountains. And so, when we started this program, we never really reinvented a new way of moving product. But it’s because we understand the social current; the traditional way we exchange goods.”
Photo credit: Rise Beyond the Reef
Rise Beyond the Reef’s other programs include an education leadership training program to help men address gender-based violence in their communities, and an indigenous tree species replanting initiative.
“I think a lot of our work is around trying to help what we call the total abundance structure,” says Janet. It’s a mindset rooted in community and self-sustaining resiliency.
“In Fijian culture, they call it solesolevaki. So, it’s working together for the greater good beyond just one individual person. And that sort of philosophy is carried through a lot of the community structure,” Janet explains.
It’s the spirit of solesolevaki, Semi says, that informs and nourishes Rise Beyond the Reef’s community development framework.
What’s at stake in the global climate crisis, Janet and Semi insist, is this total abundance mindset—”the connection between land, food, traditional knowledge, identity and innovation.”
Instead, the global development world operates on a scarcity mindset, Semi says, with siloed strategies and projects becoming “exhausting rather than sustaining,” and promoting a victim mentality.
Fijian woman weaving a basket. Photo credit: Rise Beyond the Reef
“What we’ve seen is that the areas that have had the highest rates of interaction with the aid sector are the ones that see themselves as the greatest victims,” Janet explained.
When it comes to adaptation and mitigation, Fijians, like others faced with the complexities of climate effects, are not victims – but agents of change with solutions of their own. And the role of organizations like Rise Beyond the Reef is to give them a boost.
“Infusing opportunities and resources to help communities continue to create their own version of change and own the thing that they’ve created. And that’s where you get the beauty, right?” says Janet.
And driven by its creators, an “abundance mindset,” Janet says, can produce the most lasting change.
“And it’s something that’s, you know, I joke, it’s climatized, right? Like, it’s going to last, it’s going to survive in that environment. And that’s really the key to sustainable development—just that ability to create something in balance.”
Global Washington members can help support Rise Beyond the Reef by ordering some of their handcrafted, community-made gifts—just in time for Valentine’s Day! Their new product line comes out this month.
by Amanda Miah, Content Manager of Tearfund USA
Approximately 45 million people across 16 countries in southern Africa are facing severe food shortages due to a devastating combination of extreme weather events and political and economic instability. Photo credit: Tearfund USA
Last September, the world witnessed an unprecedented movement of young people raising their voices, demanding that their leaders take action on the global climate crisis. For millions of people across the world, standing up for climate justice isn’t just a passing trend; it is both urgent and necessary for a flourishing future.
Tearfund, a faith-based international aid and development organization, is among those taking action. We have seen firsthand how climate change is affecting those we serve. The problems produced by an unstable climate are undeniable and as a result, vulnerable people are being pushed back into poverty at an alarming rate.
Please welcome our newest Global Washington members. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with their work and consider opportunities for support and collaboration!
Hope for Life
Hope For Life serves impoverished youth through holistic care. It provides stability and empowers the communities they serve with resources and education needed to obtain a flourishing future. hopeforlife.us
Manos Unidas International
Manos Unidas International provides professional development training, program support and financial support for organizations serving children and youth in Latin America. manosunidasperu.org
February 8 – 9: Asian Art Museum – Housewarming: Free Reopening Weekend
February 8: The Foundation for International Understanding Through Students (FIUTS) – CultureFest Performance Showcase 2020
February 13: GSBA, Washington State’s LGBTQ & Allied Chamber of Commerce – Thrive Together: 39th Annual GSBA Business & Humanitarian Awards Dinner
February 13: The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies – Destination Europe!
Check out other upcoming events in our Community Calendar.
Research and Impact Officer, Global Partnerships
Senior Philanthropy and Major Gifts Officer, Landesa
Senior Manager, Strategic Initiatives, Malaria No More
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by Amanda Miah, Content Manager of Tearfund USA
Approximately 45 million people across 16 countries in southern Africa are facing severe food shortages due to a devastating combination of extreme weather events and political and economic instability. Photo credit: Tearfund USA
Last September, the world witnessed an unprecedented movement of young people raising their voices, demanding that their leaders take action on the global climate crisis. For millions of people across the world, standing up for climate justice isn’t just a passing trend; it is both urgent and necessary for a flourishing future.
Tearfund, a faith-based international aid and development organization, is among those taking action. We have seen firsthand how climate change is affecting those we serve. The problems produced by an unstable climate are undeniable and as a result, vulnerable people are being pushed back into poverty at an alarming rate. Continue Reading