April 2019 Newsletter

Posted on April 18, 2019.

Welcome to the April 2019 issue of the Global Washington newsletter.

IN THIS ISSUE

Letter from our Executive Director
Issue Brief: Failing Fast Forward: Learning to Build Water Systems that Last
Organization Profile: WaterAid: Working Towards Clean Water for All
Goalmaker: Kirk Anderson, Director of International Programs, Water1st
From Our Blog: Introducing Project WISE (WASH-in-Schools for Everyone)
Welcome New Members
GlobalWA Member Events
Career Center
GlobalWA Events
GiveBIG 2019

Letter from our Executive Director

Kristen Dailey

Water is an essential element for survival, yet efforts to ensure that everyone has access to this precious resource have faced an uphill battle. According to UNICEF, 30 to 50 percent of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) project fail after two to five years. In the business community, “failing forward” is often considered a sign of progress – companies make mistakes, they learn from them, and they find ways to improve. In global development, however, we often avoid acknowledging mistakes, in part due to fear of alienating donors.

In order to accomplish the seemingly impossible – such as ensuring clean water for everyone on the planet – we must be willing to innovate and try new approaches. In the process, despite our best efforts there is always the potential for failure.

This month we’re focused on learning from failure when it comes to clean water projects. Yet the same could be said of any other global development sector – healthcare, education, agriculture, human rights, etc. The more open and transparent we can be about what’s working and not working, the faster we can course-correct and have the greatest impact.

We call our members “Goalmakers” for a reason. With the UN Sustainable Development Goals in our sights, we have dedicated the next decade to helping our members accelerate progress toward a better and more sustainable future for everyone.

In this month’s newsletter you will read about an inspiring Goalmaker, Water1st’s Director of International Programs, Kirk Anderson, who has devoted his career to ensuring people have reliable access to clean water year-round. You’ll also read about WaterAid’s comprehensive approach to helping communities advocate for and implement self-sustaining water infrastructure. I also hope you’ll join us on April 25^th for Failing Fast Forward, an in-depth conversation on this topic with our members: MSR Global Health, Splash, Water1st, and WaterAid.

KristenSignature

Kristen Dailey
Executive Director

Issue Brief

Failing Fast Forward: Learning to Build Water Systems that Last

By Joanne Lu

Photo Credit: @R_Tee via Twenty20

For decades, we’ve heard that access to clean water changes everything. Not only does it improve the health of entire communities, it also gives women freedom to earn an income and children time to go to school, when they don’t have to spend hours walking miles every day just to gather water. That’s why global progress has been rightly celebrated: Between 2000 and 2015, 1.6 billion people gained access to clean water for the first time.

But according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), as much as 30 to 50 percent of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) projects fail after just two to five years, leaving recipients of the new wells, toilets or other projects back where they started – even worse off sometimes. This has led to calls for the WASH sector to be more upfront about failures and understanding what went wrong. Without learning from mistakes, we will miss the mark on Sustainable Development Goal 6: to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

There are many reasons why water projects fail. But Kirk Anderson, director of international programs at Water1st, says the failure rate is not unique to the WASH sector. In fact, he says that most development efforts suffer problems with sustainability, simply because of the nature of aid.

In a market system, when buyers do not purchase faulty, poor or unwanted products, manufacturers quickly get the message that they need to either improve their product or go out of business. But in a donor system, the users are not the buyers. Therefore, unless the buyers (development organizations, in this case) are regularly asking the users for feedback – and the users are willing to give honest feedback about the gift they received – buyers often continue to fund and implement faulty, poor or unwanted programs.

Pit latrines are a great example of this. For countries like India that are making a strong push to eliminate defecation in open spaces, installing a pit latrine is a cheap and easy way to mark off another community as having access to sanitation. But pit latrines can smell so bad that many sit unused after just a few months. And once a pit latrine is full, who’s going to empty it?

Similarly, some clean water projects are simply insufficient. Water1st’s Founder and Executive Director Marla Smith-Nilson once wrote about how she visited the site of a sealed spring-water catchment chamber in Ethiopia that was supposed to be an “improved water source.” Yes, the catchment was a good way to protect the clean spring water, but the spring itself didn’t provide enough water throughout the year for the community. In additional, the water point wasn’t conveniently located for everyone in the community, which meant that some people still had to walk hours to get there. Then, they had to wait in line for several more hours, because the water trickled so slowly.

On the other hand, rain catchment systems – like the ones Hands for Peacemaking Foundation is installing in Guatemala – collect enough water during the rainy seasons to last households and communities throughout the dry seasons, without them having to walk hours to access it.

To make collected water safe for drinking, some organizations like Friendly Water for the World are teaching groups of people how to make Biosand Water Filters and set up businesses to sell them. The filters are essentially large buckets filled with layers of “specially selected and washed sand and gravel” that remove pathogens and suspended solids. Microorganisms in the sand can remove up to 99 percent of the pathogens. Up to 95 percent of dirt and metals and 100 percent of worms are also removed during the slow filtration process, according to Friendly Water for the World. The technology comes from the Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology (CAWST), a Canadian non-profit and licensed engineering firm. According to Friendly Water for the World, the greatest challenge is not the technology itself, but the social dimension – introducing the approach to communities and encouraging them to use it consistently.

The high failure rate of water projects is also often attributed to a lack of monitoring. The World Bank has estimated that less than 5 percent of water projects are visited after they’re constructed, and less than 1 percent are monitored long-term. This means that most organizations are unaware – or willfully ignorant – when a project breaks or sits unused. Many water systems are feats of engineering that need to be properly maintained, yet in many cases, no one has been trained on how to maintain the system, or spare parts are not readily available to fix it.

That’s why WaterAid, Water1st and others have centered their strategies on local sustainability. With strong input from local partners, these organizations first tackle the technical sustainability of their projects: Is the system easy to use and maintain? Can the technology be used anywhere in the world? Are the spare parts affordable and available locally?

Then, they also set up the local communities to keep the projects running. WaterAid works closely with local governments, as befits its belief that ultimately, it is the responsibility of governments to ensure that all of their citizens have access to water and sanitation services. Beneficiaries also contribute financially or in other ways at the start of projects to instill a sense of ownership.

In the case of Water1st, not only does the organization train communities on the technical aspects of independently maintaining the new water systems, but it also helps communities institutionalize payment of water fees. According to Water1st, when a project is owned and operated by the beneficiaries, they are motivated to keep it running. Water1st also routinely follows up on its projects to make sure they’re not only functioning but that other sociological issues – like hierarchies or conflicts within the community – are not derailing their success.

For years now, the business sector and self-help books have preached the concept of “failing forward” – that failure is inevitable, and ignoring it will precipitate bigger problems down the road, while learning from failure will propel us toward success and innovation. Unfortunately, the WASH sector – and international development as a whole – has been slow to embrace this mindset, mostly because of the risk that donors will pull funding if they admit failure.

But some organizations are starting to realize there is no alternative route to success. BRAC and Canada’s Engineers Without Borders are hoping to push the entire industry forward by publishing their mistakes in annual “failure reports.” At one point, Water1st, along with a host of other organizations, also developed a “Water for Life rating” that independently rated WASH programs on their long-term sustainability. Although the rating system didn’t take off – likely because organizations perceived it as a risk – Water1st believes it still has potential to propel WASH programs forward if donors were willing to support organizations that go through the process. Those that received a high score could be awarded a grant to keep doing what they’re doing, while those that scored poorly would be given financial support to fix the problems.

With 2030 fast approaching as the “deadline” for the Sustainable Development Goals, the WASH sector doesn’t have time to continue pushing its sustainability issues out of sight. Failing forward is the only way to “ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.”

* * *

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. http://www.friendlywater.net/

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 448 water catchment systems and 226 water filters in 17 villages. http://www.handsforpeacemaking.org/

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 from 2500m to 80m. 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. https://www.mercycorps.org/

MSR Global Health

MSR is a leading innovator and manufacturer of low-cost, field-proven products that improve access to basic human needs for people around the globe. With 50 years of technical engineering and manufacturing expertise, MSR is developing technologies that increase access to vital needs such as clean water, sanitation, and hygiene. https://www.msrglobalhealth.com

Path From Poverty

Path From Poverty transforms lives and communities by working with rural women’s savings groups in eastern Kenya. Launched in 2000, the organization now comprises 52 groups with over 1,100 members. It provides training in leadership, group governance, small business development, finance management and community service that supports women to launch their individual or group income-generating projects and to pool group savings and purchase 10,000-liter rainwater catchment tanks. To show its support and encouragement for their hard work, Path From Poverty also sends eight “gift” water tanks each month to needy women. In 2018, Path From Poverty installed 191 rainwater tanks that now provide clean, safe water to over 2,000 women, their families, and neighbors. https://pathfrompoverty.org/

Splash

Splash is a nonprofit organization that designs child-focused water, sanitation, hygiene (WASH), and menstrual health solutions for 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. This is accomplished through government partnership, supply chain development, local leadership, and other systems-strengthening activities. To date, Splash has completed over 1,700 projects at child-serving institutions, including schools, hospitals, shelters and orphanages. Splash reaches over 430,000 children a day in eight countries (China, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam). http://splash.org/

Water1st International

Water1st prides itself on funding sustainable water projects that involve local communities, local women, as well as a consistent funding stream. Since its founding in 2005, Water1st has provided clean water to over 188,000 people. While its projects focus on providing easy access to clean water, the organization also ensures that projects integrate toilets and hygiene education. Water1st’s success centers on robust program evaluation of each of its funded projects to ensure that deliverables are effective and community needs are met. http://www.water1st.org/

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. Since 1981, WaterAid has reached 26.4 million people with clean water and 26.3 million people with decent toilets. http://www.wateraid.org/us

World Vision

World Vision is the leading NGO provider of clean drinking water, reaching one new person every 30 seconds. Focusing on the rural, ultra-poor, combining access to clean water with sanitation and hygiene interventions and engaging communities in sustainability efforts, World Vision and its partners are committed to expanding their reach to one new person every 10 seconds with clean water and sanitation by 2020. With the use of right-sized equipment, appropriate water sources, manual drilling, mechanized wells with solar pumps and over 500 WASH professionals who live and work in the communities where they lead efforts, nearly 80 percent of World Vision wells continue to function at a high level after 20 years. http://www.worldvision.org/our-impact/clean-water

Organization Profile

WaterAid: Working Towards Clean Water for All

By Arielle Dreher

Molia Abdallah, 47, fills a bucket of water at the solar-powered water scheme being constructed in Chicoma, Nampula Province, Mozambique. Photo Credit: WaterAid/Chileshe Chanda

In most parts of the U.S., we don’t think twice about turning on the faucet or hopping in the shower. With infrastructure in place, it’s incredibly easy to forget that public utilities, engineering, and coordination enable access to fresh water for millions of Americans every day. But this kind of infrastructure is expensive to build and maintain, especially in parts of the world where governments are just beginning to prioritize water for their people.

Worldwide, 844 million people do not have access to clean water, UNICEF estimates. WaterAid, a global nonprofit is working to change this.

Established in 1981 by members of the U.K. water industry, WaterAid works to close the gap globally on access to clean drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (referred to as “WASH” for short). The organization is now bringing water resources to communities in 28 countries, on three different continents.

“The emphasis was really on water supply in the early days, then coming on to sanitation and how to do that effectively, and now hygiene is a big focus, so it’s an integrated approach,” said Vincent Casey, WaterAid senior manager for water, sanitation and hygiene.

Access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene is crucial not only for daily life but also for health. Every two minutes, diarrhea caused by dirty water or poor toilets kills a child under five years old. Casey says this is why WaterAid also focuses on toilets and hygiene practices in the communities where it works. Clean water alone does not impact the disease burden that exposed human waste can have on a community.

WaterAid has staff in 34 countries, including those where advocacy and fundraising work happen, like in the U.S. and the U.K.

WaterAid Burkina Faso’s Regional Learning Center Coordinator, Lucien Damiba, removes a water monitoring device from a borehole. Photo Credit: WaterAid/Andrew McConnell

A large part of the WaterAid model is ensuring that local and national governments recognize the crucial needs of their people for access to clean water. Casey said WaterAid works at all levels of government, from local communities to national policymakers.

“We work a lot with districts or local governments, so operation-wise not only the delivery of WASH but how you keep those benefits in place,” Casey said.

In other words, helping create national or district-level policies is important, but not sufficient. WaterAid also works with other NGOs and education and health advocacy organizations to ensure that they are including education about handwashing, good hygiene and sanitation practices. Each in-country WaterAid team works to influence policy, and sometimes directly implements water initiatives, as well.

Back in the 1990s, WaterAid helped introduce gravity-fed water schemes for large communities with thousands of people to get water. In each case, the organization created a structure to govern the new utilities. Casey used WaterAid’s work in Ethiopia, which began in the 1990s, as an example. After a management arrangement for a local water utility is recognized by the national government, this type of multi-village model can become a reality.

“That’s literally all the villages nominating someone to a board, and that board appointing an executive board to run the scheme, and then that executive board contracts mechanics and people who do financial management and revenue collection,” Casey said.

WaterAid evaluated these types of management models in Ethiopia over several decades, and the most recent evaluation from 2018 shows that they are still performing really well, Casey said. Such large-scale gravity-fed water schemes usually supply water from higher ground springs to lower ground areas. There are no pumps or complex equipment to maintain, making it an easier model to establish.

Mesay Garedew of Oromia, Ethiopia, was one of the most actively involved community members during the development of springs that channel water into the town’s distribution system using the natural force of gravity. Photo Credit: WaterAid/Behailu Shiferaw

Not all of the countries where WaterAid works can support these types of models, especially in rural areas where water is difficult to access underground, or may be contaminated with arsenic or high salinity. In these places, financial stability and investment are necessary. This is where political advocacy comes in.

“You have to be working to push government to take up its responsibility to ensure that everyone has access to these basic things. Governments are responsible for making sure that happens,” Casey said. “(In some countries) they’re not doing it and not delivering on it, and they need to. That needs a push not only from civil society but from individuals themselves, to demand better services.”

Part of WaterAid’s work is connecting water utilities and private companies with community water associations established in the countries where they work. These relationships are not just for financial support, but also to share best practices for sustainability of services.

“A good utility has to be able to have good cost recovery, a good billing system, and good revenue collection processes,” Casey said.

Those partnerships also support new water associations with challenges like reducing water lost due to infrastructure and figuring out how to improve efficiency.

While WaterAid helps find financing and investment for local utilities in the countries where it works, the organization also encourages governments to invest even more. Casey said leveraging government investment has worked in some countries, including Ethiopia.

At its best, WaterAid’s model enables the nonprofit to leave a country entirely. Casey said this is how the process is supposed to work if the job is done correctly. The key, he said, is establishing water utilities as professionalized services.

“It’s not just about building infrastructure, training a few people then walking away; it has to be a formal management model, which is legally recognized in the country and supported nationally,” he said. “And the problem is with a lack of resources, there may be legally recognized management models, but they’re not supported. So, they rely on various donor initiatives to provide the backup support to subsidize major maintenance.”

Ultimately and ideally, WaterAid wants to create a sustainable model for delivering water to communities with reliable funding sources before it leaves. Casey said the current challenge is in places where communities do have access to WASH, but suffer from very poor levels of service.

“People may have access on paper or be within proximity of a water supply installation, but the level of service provided isn’t necessarily very high,” he said. “It’s like a hidden crisis of poor service, poor water quality, long periods of service outage, long periods of service breakdown. It’s not simply a problem of lack of access—it’s beyond that.”

WaterAid has US offices in New York and Washington, D.C., with remote-based staff throughout the country, including in Seattle.

Goalmaker

Kirk Anderson, Director of International Programs, Water1st

By Allegra Abramo

Chittagong, Bangladesh (2016) – Kirk Anderson poses with Israh Jahan, a young girl whose family lives in a low-income area in the city without access to clean water. Water1st worked with a local partner organization to help her family and neighbors construct this water system. Photo provided by Kirk Anderson.

As a young Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho, Southern Africa, Kirk Anderson was hitchhiking to the capital when a United Nations truck stopped to give him a lift. He climbed in and found himself chatting with the undersecretary of health for Sub-Saharan Africa.

“What’s the most important health problem to address in this area?” he asked her.

She quickly replied, “It’s nice to have an easy question once in a while.” If every community had water, she told Anderson, 80 percent of her job would be done for her.

Her response matched Anderson’s experience as a middle school teacher in the country. When his community ran out of water in the dry season, kids didn’t come to school because they were waiting at the spring to fill a cup with water so they could make breakfast.

“Lack of access to water is really holding my community back,” Anderson realized.

Yet most water projects he’d seen had failed, in large part because governments and funders installed pipes and pumps, and then walked away — leaving neither the human capital nor financial resources to ensure they remained viable.

A decade and half later, when Anderson was working on salmon recovery for King County, he still wasn’t sure how development projects could be more effective than those he’d witnessed. Then his wife took him to a talk by Marla Smith-Nilson, who would go on to found Water1st. Smith-Nilson spoke about the importance of working through local partners who understand the subtleties of their cultures and communities.

“Oh my gosh,” Anderson thought. “That’s the thing that’s been missing from the projects I’ve seen.”

Anderson joined the fledgling Water1^st, first as board chair and then as director of international programs. His wife, Jennifer Norling, was also an early supporter and today is Water1st’s director of development and communications. The organization provides ongoing funding and support to partner organizations that build and maintain water infrastructure in countries across Central America, South Asia and Africa.

“We call our projects technologically simple, sociologically complex,” Anderson says. “You need a local partner organization to tackle all those complex social issues.”

Communities are also motivated to keep the water flowing because they get a high-value service: Instead of a central hand-pump, projects include household water taps.

Families pay a monthly fee for the water they use. That ensures there’s money on hand to rapidly make repairs and hire plumbers and other experts when needed. Increasingly, projects are incorporating household meters to allocate the costs of operating the water system fairly and to encourage good management of an incredibly valuable shared resource.

Consistent funding from Water1^st means organizations can retain staff and continue to build their expertise, Anderson explains. It also allows them to translate lessons learned into improvements. In Honduras, for example, the partner organization agreed to add meters only after five years of working with Water1st; now all new projects in the country have meters.

The 14-year-old organization has also learned from its failures. In Ethiopia, Water1^st initially funded an organization to put in community water points. But those aren’t selling much water, Anderson said, indicating that people are using it only for cooking and drinking, and not to improve their hygiene.

A community tap is what Anderson calls a “marginal improvement.” While it provides a source of clean water, people still must waste time traveling and waiting in line. Moreover, once people have to travel more than about 100 meters, water use — and with it, hygiene — falls dramatically.

“I don’t want my mom walking 100 meters and carrying water back to her house every morning, so that she can cook, drink, clean the house,” Anderson says. “That would be a problem for me, so why would I build a problem for someone else?

Instead of wasting money on marginal improvements, Anderson argues, invest in real solutions from the start.

Water systems that reach all the way into people’s homes are a cost-effective solution, Anderson says. They allow families to install flush toilets instead of latrines that attract disease-spreading flies. They also encourage people to bathe frequently, which is especially important in places where people have frequent contact with livestock, soil and sick children.

If you build solutions that people love, they will keep them going, Anderson says. “Because they remember what it was like to carry water, so not carrying water, that’s a big motivator. They remember what it was like to have a latrine, so keeping your toilet working, that’s a big deal.”

Lesson learned: In Ethiopia, Water1^st is now working with its local partner to install household taps.

Anderson says he’s astonished how hard people will work to build effective solutions. He recalls spending a day helping dig a trench for a pipeline in Honduras. “I imagine looking 5 miles down the road to where the community is, and looking at how little I accomplished in one day, and thinking, ‘Are we going to complete this in my lifetime?’”

Yet “they don’t give up,” Anderson says. “If you are willing to work that hard, I’ll invest in that.”

From Our Blog

Introducing Project WISE (WASH-in-Schools for Everyone)

By Cyndie Berg, Director of Business Development, Splash

11 year old Kidist uses the water station at her school in Addis Ababa. Photo credit: Gavin Gough for Splash.

In March, Splash’s Seattle office hosted two of its leaders from Ethiopia: Dawit Alemishet, Country Director, and Kelbessa Wordofa, Director for Project WISE (WASH-in-Schools for Everyone). They were in town to meet with colleagues planning the launch of Project WISE (WASH-in-Schools for Everyone), an initiative to reach every government school in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Kolkata, India, with WASH infrastructure (water storage, filtration systems, drinking and handwashing stations, and improved toilet facilities), as well as behavior change programs for children and adults, and strengthened menstrual health services for girls aged 10 and above.

Splash has reached 79 schools serving 78,000 children in Addis Ababa, and 194 schools serving 55,985 children in Kolkata. Through Project WISE, the organization expects to reach approximately 1,600 schools serving one million children by 2023.

Splash’s efforts will benefit even more children like Kidist, a fifth-grader who is 11 years old. Kidist is very pleased about the improvements that Splash has made at her school. She especially loves the different colored drinking and handwashing stations and is attracted to wash her hands and drink from them.

In the past, she and her brothers used to bring water from home, but it was never enough to last all day. As Kidist explained, they couldn’t bring a very big bottle of water, since her parents don’t have access to water in their home and needed to source water from the neighborhood tap. Sometimes her brothers finished their water before lunch, and she would share her own half-liter bottle with them.

Thanks to Splash, Kidist and her brothers and all the other students can access clean water at school all day long.

Welcome New Members

Please welcome our newest Global Washington members. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with their work and consider opportunities for support and collaboration!

Heifer International

Heifer’s mission is to work with communities to end hunger and poverty and to care for the earth. heifer.org

Member Events

April 19: Seattle International Foundation // In Solidarity with Nicaragua: One Year of Resistance

April 2 – June 4: UW Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies // Spring 2019 – Trump in the World, Lecture Series

April 25: WaterAid // More Than Just Coffee: POC Coffee Panel + Happy Hour

April 29: Stolen Youth // Not on Our Watch – Luncheon

Career Center

Product Leader, RoundGlass

Development Assistant, World Relief

Regional Major Giving Officer, YWCA

Manager, Western Region, Global Impact

Check out the GlobalWA Job Board for the latest openings.

GlobalWA Events

April 25: Failing Fast Forward: Learning to Build Water Systems that Last

June 7: Disability Inclusive Development Initiative Workshop

Give Big 2019 graphic

Don’t miss your chance to attract new donors to support your organization. The deadline to register for GiveBIG is Friday March 29. By that day you also need to have paid your registration fees or you will not be able to participate. GiveBIG raised $16,500,000 last year. It is easy to register and once you are registered you can participate for free in the GiveBIG fundraising trainings with Ariel Glassman from Ostara. 501 Commons is also providing Fundraising Accelerator to help you mount a successful campaign. Every two weeks 501 Commons will send you specific actions you can take to prepare for GiveBIG.

Mark Your Calendar

April 19: Last day for profile changes
April 23: Early Giving begins
April 28: Seattle Times Giving Guide published
May 7: Early Giving ends
May 8: GiveBIG!

If you have questions or need assistance contact 501 Commons by phone at 1-833-962-3615 or by email at givebig@501commons.org

Filed under: Newsletter

Medical Visits Surge Along Venezuelan Border

Posted on April 4, 2019.

A Venezuelan couple speaks with a physician at the Americares medical clinic in La Guajira, Colombia. Photo by Nicolò Filippo Rosso/Americares.

Emergency medical teams provide over 50,000 patient consults

Stamford, Conn. — April 4, 2019 — Demand for health services is surging at Americares emergency medical clinics in Colombia as Venezuelans stream across the border in search of food, employment and medical care. This week the clinics reached a milestone, surpassing 50,000 patient consultations since opening last summer.

Americares medical teams are treating nearly 2,000 patients a week at emergency clinics in Arauca, Atlántico, La Guajira and Norte de Santander. The health-focused relief and development organization plans to move one of its four clinics to a larger location and is seeking funding to open additional clinics in the coming months to meet the increasing demand for primary care. Continue Reading

Filed under: Members In The News • Tagged with: Americares, Colombia, health services, Venezuela

Congressional Tribute To Mercy Corps Founder, Dan O’Neill

Posted on March 27, 2019.

Dan O’Neill, Mercy Corps Co-Founder and Global Washington Board Member, who retired in early 2019 from the board of Mercy Corps, was recently honored with a tribute by Senator Jeff Merkley (OR) for his decades of humanitarian service.
Dan O'Neill

Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 44
(Senate – March 12, 2019)

From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2019/03/12/senate-section/article/S1790-3

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, Robert F. Kennedy once said:

“We want to make sure that we bequeath to our descendants a better and safer world than the one in which we live today.” For nearly four decades, Dan O’Neill has dedicated himself to creating that better, safer world for future generations. As he prepares to step back from his work and enjoy a much-deserved retirement, I want to share a few thoughts about this wonderful individual. Continue Reading

Filed under: Members In The News • Tagged with: Dan O'Neill

Changing the Narrative on Early Marriage

Posted on March 25, 2019.

By Urvashi Gandhi, Director of Advocacy, Breakthrough

Nation Against Early Marriage banner

11.30 a.m. I was sitting in classroom 8-C when my younger brother came running to call me home. The groom’s family was here. They wanted an early wedding. My father wanted me to go home immediately.

My mother wanted me to wear a sari.

No one asked me what I wanted.

The next day I spoke to my class teacher. I told her I wanted to study. She discussed it with the principal.

She, and fifteen of my classmates came to talk to my father. At first, my father refused to listen, and my classmates refused to leave.

Today, I am back at school. I am studying to take the board exam next year. I am to teach at my village school.

Reena Kumari (name changed), Ranchi

In states like Jharkhand (India), close to 40% of young girls are married before the age of 18.

Even though India has seen a dip in child/early marriage from 47% to 27% it still contributes to one-third of the world’s child brides. These reductions are primarily in the age group of 0-10 years, but adolescent girls still remain at high risk of early marriage. Continue Reading

Filed under: Our Blog • Tagged with: Breakthrough, Early Marriage, India

Americares Deploys Response Team to Mozambique

Posted on March 21, 2019.

Stamford, Conn. – March 21, 2019 – Americares is deploying an emergency response team to Mozambique to assess health needs and coordinate emergency shipments of medicine and relief supplies for Cyclone Idai survivors. Idai made landfall in Mozambique’s coastal city of Beira Thursday evening, flattening homes, destroying roads and causing widespread devastation as it continued its deadly path toward Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Approximately 2.6 million people across southeastern Africa were affected by the cyclone, making it one of the most devastating natural disasters in the region’s history. Reports indicate 90 percent of Beira was damaged or destroyed. According to officials, more than 500 deaths have been confirmed across the three countries and hundreds of people are reported missing. President Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique fears the death toll could climb to 1,000 as rescue workers struggle to reach the hardest-hit areas. Continue Reading

Filed under: Members In The News • Tagged with: Americares, Mozambique, Tropical Cyclone Idai

Schools for Salone Awarded Top Prize by University of Washington ‘Social Justice Through Philanthropy’ Students

Posted on March 20, 2019.

Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Remote Energy, Splash, and World Relief Seattle also awarded generous grants

March 20, 2019

SEATTLE – For the second year in a row, Global Washington collaborated with the University of Washington Department of Law, Societies, and Justice on a course called “Social Justice Through Philanthropy.”

Throughout the quarter, students learned about global giving and ethical philanthropy. They also put their learning to practical, real-world use by soliciting and reviewing proposals from 34 Global Washington non-profit members that are working in the areas of human rights, clean water, climate change, refugees, and education.

Photo courtesy of Law, Societies, and Justice (University of Washington).

At the end of the course, the students selected five grantees: Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and Remote Energy each received grants of $8,000; Splash and World Relief Seattle received grants for $15,500; and Schools for Salone was awarded the largest grant of $35,000.

“As a network of organizations within Washington state that are improving lives in developing countries, Global Washington seeks to connect, promote and strengthen our members to have a greater collective impact,” said Kristen Dailey, executive director of Global Washington. “This unique collaboration with the University of Washington allows us to elevate our members’ work with new audiences, attract funding for some amazing non-profits, and also raise the consciousness of younger generations who are interested in helping solve global challenges.”

Funding for the grants was made possible by The Philanthropy Lab , a private foundation dedicated to increasing philanthropy education at U.S. universities.

Past winners have included Spreeha, Mavuno, Malaria No More, Extend the Day, and Rwanda Girls Initiative.

“After completing this course, my students have a better grasp of the privilege and responsibilities that go along with philanthropic giving,” said Stephen Meyers, assistant professor in the UW Department of Law, Societies, and Justice. “Who knows if they may one day become philanthropists themselves, but regardless of how they choose to use the knowledge, they now understand what it takes to make a lasting impact.”

Filed under: Press Releases • Tagged with: Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Remote Energy, Schools for Salone, Social Justice Through Philanthropy, Splash, World Relief Seattle

Americares Responds to Tropical Cyclone Idai

Posted on March 20, 2019.

Stamford, Conn. – March 20, 2019 – Americares is preparing emergency shipments of medicine and relief supplies to help families affected by Tropical Cyclone Idai in Mozambique. The deadly storm lashed the city of Beira in central Mozambique Thursday evening before barreling inland toward Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Approximately 2.6 million people were affected by the cyclone across three countries and reports indicate 90 percent of Beira was damaged or destroyed. According to officials, more than 200 deaths have been reported in Mozambique alone and hundreds of others are reported missing. Officials fear the death toll could reach as high as 1,000 people as rescue workers struggle to reach some of the hardest-hit areas. Continue Reading

Filed under: Members In The News • Tagged with: Americares, Tropical Cyclone Idai

Event Recap: ‘Brave Girl Rising’ is Changing the World’s View of Girls’ Potential, One Story at a Time

Posted on March 18, 2019.

By Riley Grace Borden, Guest Writer

A crowd of Seattleites of all ages gathered on Friday, March 8, at the SIFF Theater Seattle premiere screening of the latest chapter of Girl Rising’s short film, Brave Girl Rising. The CEO of Girl Rising, Christina Lowery, participated in a panel discussion after the showing, along with the executive director of Global Washington, Kristen Dailey, and the executive director of the International Rescue Committee in Seattle, Nicky Smith. Continue Reading

Filed under: Our Blog • Tagged with: Brave Girl Rising, Global Washington

WaterAid featured in the Economist Special Report on Water Scarcity

Posted on March 18, 2019.

March 1, 2019 — The Economist’s international editor Simon Long travelled to two WaterAid projects in India last month and has published a special report on water scarcity.

“Thirsty World” is a six-part series which takes a look at how climate change, population growth and poor management are bringing the global water crisis to a breaking point.

Filed under: Members In The News

March 2019 Newsletter

Posted on March 12, 2019.

Welcome to the March 2019 issue of the Global Washington newsletter.

IN THIS ISSUE

Letter from our Executive Director
Issue Brief: What Will It Take to End Child Marriage?
Organization Profile: World Concern – Ending child marriage begins by keeping girls in school
Changemaker: Perla Vázquez, Deputy Program Director at the Seattle International Foundation CAMY Fund
Welcome New Members
GlobalWA Member Events
Career Center
GlobalWA Events
GiveBIG 2019

Letter from our Executive Director

Kristen Dailey

International Women’s Day was last Friday, March 8, and in honor of the day Global Washington announced our new Women of the World program. This learning network of female philanthropists who care about global issues is an expansion of the Women of the World annual breakfast, which the Seattle International Foundation transitioned to Global Washington in 2018. More information about Women of the World will be available on the GlobalWA website shortly.

Also in honor of International Women’s Day, Global Washington is elevating the issue of ending child marriage and discussing effective interventions from our GlobalWA member organizations. When a girl is married at an early age, this often means she stops attending school, is more vulnerable to abuse, and faces greater health risks, especially if she becomes pregnant. Fortunately, the practice of early marriage is in decline. In order to eliminate this practice altogether by 2030, as outlined in the targets for Sustainable Development Goal 5 (“Gender Equality”), the global community will need to accelerate efforts to promote the rights and well-being of girls and young women.

Learn more about promising efforts in our profile of an incredibly inspiring Changemaker, Perla Vázquez, who is the deputy program director at the Seattle International Foundation’s Central America & Mexico Youth Fund (CAMY Fund). We also explore how World Concern’s scholarships in Bangladesh help girls stay in school and reduce the pressure on their families to see them marry at a young age. By working with communities to change norms around early marriage, our members are catalyzing transformational change that helps break long-standing cycles of poverty. Our event on March 27, Vowing to End Child Marriage by 2030, will continue this conversation, with speakers from World Concern, UNICEF USA, and CAMY Fund. I hope you can join us!

KristenSignature

Kristen Dailey
Executive Director

Issue Brief

What Will It Take to End Child Marriage?

By Joanne Lu

Two girls pose for a photo outside their school in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Photo by Taylor Jashinsky for World Concern.

Imagine being a 9-year-old girl, with dreams of becoming a teacher one day. You love school and learning and spending time with your friends. But at home, your father is talking about finding you a husband – not when you’re in your twenties, educated and working. No, now.

Child marriage is a violation of international human rights law. Yet around the world, about 650 million of the women and girls alive today were married before their 18th birthday, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). By 2030, it’s estimated that more than 150 million girls will become child brides. The problem affects young boys as well, but to a much lesser degree than girls. In 2015, UNICEF estimated that about 18 percent of children married before age 18 are boys, while the rest are girls.

No doubt there has been progress. Concerted efforts to eliminate the practice have successfully averted about 25 million child marriages over the last decade: Whereas one in four women and girls were married as children 10 years ago, that ratio has dropped to one in five. But UNICEF warns that progress is not nearly fast enough to eliminate the practice by 2030, as laid out in UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5. In fact, the agency says that the rate of progress needs to be 12 times faster than in the past decade to meet the target, and right now, not a single region in the world is on track to do so.

While South Asia has improved the most, UNICEF reports that girls in Latin America and the Caribbean are still just as likely to become child brides as their mothers were. Meanwhile, early and forced marriage is actually expected to increase in Sub-Saharan Africa, because the population is growing rapidly, but progress in eliminating the practice has been slowest in the world. Currently, 38 percent of girls in Sub-Saharan Africa become child brides.

But it’s not just a practice in the developing world. In the U.S., child marriage under certain circumstances, like parental or judicial consent, was legal in every state until last year, when New Jersey and Delaware completely banned marriage under age 18.

Why does forcing children into early marriages occurs on such a large scale around the world? According to Girls Not Brides, the reasons vary from community to community, but some of the main drivers of the practice are gender inequality, tradition, poverty and insecurity. In many contexts where the practice is common, girls are seen as economic burdens on their family. Marriage, therefore, is a way to pass that burden onto another man. In cultures where the bride’s family pays the groom a dowry, they often pay less when the bride is young and uneducated. Plan International also notes that certain cultures consider younger wives to be more obedient, while some families think marriage will protect their girls from sexual violence.

But that is not true, according to Plan, as girls married early are “more likely to experience violence, abuse and forced sexual relations.” They also face a higher risk of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, because usually they are less educated about safe sex, have less say about how to practice sex and are subjected to unprotected sex with husbands who often have prior sexual partners. But perhaps the most dangerous consequence of early marriage is early pregnancy. According to Girls Not Brides, the biggest killer of girls aged 15 to 19 globally is complications in pregnancy and childbirth. Perhaps that’s why SDG 5 identifies child marriage as a harmful practice on par with female genital mutilation.

In addition to serious health consequence, child marriage also forces children to drop out of school, take on adult responsibilities, spend their time on unpaid household work and give up their dreams. This in turn often keeps them trapped in a cycle of poverty.

But the problems aren’t strictly confined to child marriage. UNICEF points out that cohabitation – when a girl isn’t legally married to a man but is his caregiver and lives “in union” with him as if they’re married – can often be more problematic. The lack of legal status as a wife can undermine a girl’s rights to inheritance, citizenship and social recognition.

All these risks contribute to girls being among the world’s most vulnerable populations, who must be protected by laws. But as Plan International points out, it’s not enough for legislators to set the legal age of marriage to 18. The laws must also be enforced and awareness of them spread. Youth activists in some communities are using mediums like radio, music and theater to teach about children’s rights.

But many of the leading interventions to protect children from early and forced marriage center around education. UNICEF reports that in many countries, every year of secondary education reduces the likelihood that a child gets married before age 18 by five percentage points or more. Staying in school allows girls to not only increase their earning potential, but it often also provides more safety and security, better health and more agency to make their own life decisions. Unfortunately, in many of the communities where child marriage is prevalent, sending a child to school – particularly a girl – is not an expense that many families prioritize. Often, it’s more economical to just marry off their daughter.

That’s why World Concern offers scholarships to girls who are at risk of child marriage, effectively taking the financial decision off the table for families. CARE also includes empowerment activities in their girls’ education programs to help girls build confidence and leadership skills. And in many rural communities, girls have no educated and working role models, so CARE builds houses for female teachers to live in these communities that otherwise have no female teachers.

Some organizations also focus on increasing girls’ (and boys’) access to youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health services. These services included sexual education and family planning, which teach girls’ and their communities about children’s rights and puts them in a better position to decide if and when to have children.

But some advocates say that in order to fully eradicate the practice, the conversation around child marriage has to change.

“I find the term ‘child marriage’ an oxymoron, because you cannot have ‘child’ and ‘marriage’ in the same phrase,” Jemimah Njuki, a senior program officer at Canada’s International Development Research Centre, said in a recent interview with BRIGHT Magazine. “We’re talking about the sexual abuse of children.”

Njuki says that sanitizing the practice by “couch[ing it] within the respectable institution of marriage” is undermining efforts to eliminate it.

“If we change the conversation to one of child sex abuse, then we focus on the man who is doing it, as well as the cultural beliefs that condone it,” she says.

* * *

The following Global Washington members are working to end early marriage through their work.

Breakthrough

More than one in four girls in India is married before the legal age of 18 years, thereby subjecting them to a lifetime of ill health, neglect and violence. Breakthrough today reaches over 400,000 adolescents across five states in India to help change this bleak situation. The organization does this by building the agency of girls to believe in themselves and to demand their rights to health and education. Breakthrough also works with girls’ families and communities to ensure they value girls and have faith in their potential, so that girls can thrive. While this is a slow process, results are already visible – for example, in its program areas in Jharkhand, Breakthrough has been able to increase the age at which girls are married by 1.7 years. Learn more at https://inbreakthrough.org/focus-area/early-marriage/

CARE

Founded in 1945 with the creation of the CARE Package®, CARE is a leading humanitarian organization working in 93 countries to fight global poverty. Women and girls are at the heart of CARE’s community-based efforts to improve education and health, create economic opportunity, respond to emergencies and confront hunger. Through CARE programs such as A Future She Deserves, CARE is working to prevent and eliminate child, early and forced marriages with a goal of reaching over 1 million girls and their families. CARE places a special focus on addressing child marriage in crisis zones, where girls are especially vulnerable. Girls in these contexts, such as those from Syrian refugee families, are often married off for income, legal status or perceived protection. CARE works together with community leaders and partners to change social norms so that vulnerable girls and young women can achieve their aspirations.

Landesa

Under the umbrella of its Center for Women’s Land Rights, Landesa’s Girls Project in West Bengal, India, aimed to improve the social and economic status of girls, and thereby reduce their many vulnerabilities in the short and long-term, including early marriage. Around the world, land is a source of wealth, status, and opportunity. But rights to land are not equitably distributed to all. By increasing girls’ and communities’ understanding of girls’ land-related rights and helping girls to use land to create assets, girls can demonstrate their value, gain some control over their futures, and are better equipped with the skills and understanding necessary to exercise their land rights as adults.

Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps works to empower and educate girls and delay early marriage through initiatives like girl groups and accelerated educational opportunities. In Niger, which has the highest child marriage rate in the world (3 in 4 girls marry before their 18th birthday), Mercy Corps has established safe spaces in 20 rural communities for over 3,000 out-of-school adolescent girls. Here girls can discuss topics like family planning, health and nutrition, and education. As a result, 93% of girls enrolled could name at least one benefit to delaying early pregnancy. Also in Niger, Mercy Corps implemented a two-year accelerated program that helps girls finish primary school and re-enter and complete high school. After the first two years, 90% of students graduated and 95% of community members and parents reported that it was important for girls to postpone marriage so they could finish their education.

Oxfam America

Oxfam America is a global organization working to right the wrongs of poverty, hunger, and injustice. As one of 19 members of the international Oxfam confederation, Oxfam America works with people in more than 90 countries to create lasting solutions. Oxfam believes that young people, especially girls, have the right to decide freely if and when to marry as well as to make informed choices about their sexual and reproductive health and rights, in a supportive environment. Through its “Creating Spaces” programme to take action on violence against women and girls, and its work with partners through the “More Than Brides Alliance,” Oxfam works to reduce child marriage and its adverse effects on young women and girls in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nepal, the Philippines, Malawi, Niger, and Mali. Learn more at https://www.oxfam.ca/project/creating-spaces and https://morethanbrides.org.

Sahar Education

Sahar creates opportunities in Afghanistan that empower and inspire children and their families to build peaceful, thriving communities. It achieves this by building schools and designing educational programs that address key barriers that keep girls from accessing and completing their education. In Northern Afghanistan, for example, an estimated 57% of girls are married before the legal age of 16. While early education is encouraged, girls are often forced into early marriage around age 12 or 13, and drop out of school. Sahar’s Early Marriage Prevention Program inspires girls to continue their education and empowers them to become leaders in their community. It also equips them to advocate for themselves by increasing their knowledge of potential educational opportunities and an understanding of their legal rights. Each year, Sahar reaches 500 girls directly, and more than 2,000 community members.

Seattle International Foundation’s Central America & Mexico Youth Fund (The CAMY Fund)

The CAMY Fund works to address and prevent child marriage and early unions in Latin America and the Caribbean through a multipronged approach that includes advocacy, convening, grant making, and research. The CAMY Fund is a leading actor on the issue in the region, and tirelessly promotes keeping girls and young women at the center of the discussions that affect them directly, and consciousness of the cultural, social and political context that makes the practice of child marriage manifest in this diverse region with large impoverished, rural and indigenous communities. The CAMY Fund is a program of the Seattle International Foundation, and its child marriage initiative receives funding support from the Ford Foundation, Novo Foundation and Summit Foundation. Read more here: http://unionestempranas.org/en/lac-initiative/

UNICEF

750 million girls and women today were married before their 18th birthday. This practice is a fundamental violation of human rights and causes girls to lose valuable economic, educational, and social opportunities. If current trends continue, the number of girls and women married as children will reach nearly one billion before 2030. UNICEF works with governments to sustainably address the root causes of child marriage by strengthening systems and working to end harmful behavioral practices. In 2015, the global community made a strong commitment to ending this problem by endorsing UN SDG 5.3, which aims to “eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriages and female genital mutilation.” This target has the power to influence a number of other goals on the agenda, including those around clean water, poverty, nutrition, health, education, economic grown and the reduction of inequality.

World Concern

World Concern is a Christian global relief and development organization that partners with isolated and impoverished communities beyond the end of the road to give them access to clean water, sustainable food options, healthcare, education, and other necessities of life. By first listening to leaders within a community, World Concern helps it determine primary needs and goals, empowering families to own the work, which brings transformation that lasts. One of the vital aspects of World Concern’s work is the effort to change cultural norms regarding child marriage. By providing scholarships for girls to attend school and building awareness of the dangers of child marriage in communities, World Concern is helping young women gain a brighter future. This breaks the cycle of poverty within a family and benefits the entire community. World Concern operates transformational community development programs in Haiti, Kenya, South Sudan, Somalia, Chad, Uganda, DRC, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, Yemen, and Syria.

World Justice Project

The World Justice Project is an independent, multidisciplinary organization working to advance the rule of law around the world. Effective rule of law reduces corruption, combats poverty and disease, and protects people from injustices large and small. It is the foundation for communities of justice, opportunity, and peace—underpinning development, accountable government, and respect for fundamental rights. In recent years, significant strides have been made in advancing legislation to prevent child marriage. Trinidad and Tobago, Guatemala, and El Salvador have all amended a number of marriage acts and loopholes that had outlawed underage marriage. Malawi—a country that consistently ranks among the world’s top twenty nations with the highest prevalence of child marriage—removed a provision that permitted child marriage if the parents consented.

Organization Profile

World Concern – Ending child marriage begins by keeping girls in school

By Joanne Lu

Salma (far right) presents to her preschool class (2018). Photo provided by World Concern.

Salma is a preschool teacher in rural Bangladesh. She’s a high-school graduate and plans to continue her education in college. In a country where an estimated 45 percent of girls drop out of secondary school, Salma is a big deal.

But just four years ago, at 14 years of age, Salma was among millions of girls who live in absolute fear of being forced into marriage, likely to an older man. As a girl from a poor family in Bangladesh, which has the fourth highest rate of child marriage in the world, according to UNICEF, and the second highest number of child brides – nearly 4.5 million in 2017 – Salma was staring down the barrel of child marriage.

That is, until she received a scholarship from World Concern to stay in school. The UN Population Fund says that girls who have a secondary education are up to six times less likely to be married off before their 18th birthday. That’s why World Concern believes the solution is to keep girls in school, especially when their families can’t afford it.

The scholarship is just one component of World Concern’s holistic approach to what they call “transformational development” in the world’s poorest and hardest-to-reach places. Over its 65-year history, World Concern has refined the ways it addresses not just physical and economic needs, but emotional and spiritual, as well – taking into account the whole person.

“We believe that every human being is created in the image of God,” says Cathy Herholdt, World Concern’s senior communications director. “Every human being deserves to have their basic needs met and have an abundant life. That faith is what drives us; it’s why we do what we do.”

That belief also guides their transformational development approach, in which communities take charge of their own development. Instead of a top-down approach, World Concern works alongside communities to identify their greatest needs, their greatest assets and how they want to improve. It’s also why 95 percent of World Concern’s staff are nationals from the 15 countries in which they work across South and Southeast Asia, East Africa, Haiti, and the Middle East.

Herholdt says that over the 30 years that World Concern has worked in Bangladesh, they’ve seen how child marriage is a “scourge” that’s keeps people trapped in a cycle of poverty and causes extreme physical and emotional harm to young girls.

“Literally, they’re terrified,” Herholdt says about the girls she has interviewed.

Often the girls’ mothers were themselves married as children, and they talk about how it took all their choice and freedom away. They don’t want that life for their daughters, but in a male-dominated society, where spending even $50 to $100 a year to send a child to school is too costly for a family earning a dollar a day, parents often feel like they have no choice.

Salma (left), poses with other scholarship recipients (2015). Photo provided by World Concern.

World Concern’s scholarships give girls and families the choice to keep their daughters in school until they’re past the age of forced marriage and to break the cycle of poverty by setting them up for better jobs and futures.

The effects are spreading beyond families into entire communities. For example, World Concern is helping women’s groups (or “federations,” as they call themselves) learn about the impacts of child marriage, why it’s better for girls to be in school, how to prevent child marriage and how to spread that message.

These women are banding together to form a powerful voice and actually effect change from within their communities. When they hear that a family is considering marrying off their young daughter, if just one of them goes to confront the father, it often doesn’t go well and can even be dangerous. But when they all go together to come alongside the family and share why it’s a bad idea and that there are better options, they say they’re often successful in stopping the child marriage.

“It’s coming from within the community,” says Herholdt. “It’s a very powerful thing to see.”

As daughters watch their mothers step up to protect them and each other, girls are also finding ways to replicate that empowerment through youth health and hygiene clubs and other group support systems. Boys are also watching their sisters excel in school, while their mothers run businesses and become community leaders. This, says Herholdt, is how culture changes holistically.

At the moment, World Concern’s child marriage program is primarily in Bangladesh as well as a few other countries, like Kenya, Chad and Somalia, where the issue is prevalent. But Herholdt says they’re excited to continue expanding their transformational development work into new areas that are the hardest places right now, including Syria, Yemen, and South Sudan.

“We’re moving away from one-off sectors and focusing on how and where we can have greater impact with our holistic approach,” says Herholdt. “We’re letting that drive who we are and how we do our work.”

Changemaker

Perla Vázquez, Deputy Program Director at the Seattle International Foundation CAMY Fund

By Arielle Dreher

Perla Vázquez is no stranger to activism or feminism. She recalls being a 15-year-old activist in her hometown, advocating for teens’ rights and later for women’s rights in her own community. Vázquez, born and raised in Mexico City, where she still lives, took her passions and made them her career.

“I think it’s very important that every person—and every woman—can decide for themselves who they share their lives with,” Vázquez says.

This sentiment is, indeed, at the heart of her work. As a young activist, she was a director at ELIGE, a feminist youth organization in Mexico, which advocates for sexual and reproductive rights for young people. Vázquez studied political science at the Autonomous Metropolitan University and has her master’s degree in international cooperation for development from the Mora Institute.

Vázquez worked as a regional specialist in the Americas for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Plan International, and she is a current board member on FRIDA, a young feminist fund.

Vázquez currently works for the Seattle International Foundation’s Central America & Mexico Youth Fund (The CAMY Fund). She joined the Seattle International Foundation team in 2017 as a project manager for The CAMY Fund’s Child Marriage Initiative, and she is now the CAMY Fund’s deputy program director.

ELIGE, which Vázquez still gets to work with today in her role at CAMY, advocates for national reforms needed for youth in Mexico, particularly in regards to reproductive health. For example, in the public health sector, only women who are of the legal marrying age by the country’s standards are allowed to receive access to things like condoms, Vázquez said. This precludes young women, who are not yet 18 years old from receiving reproductive health services they want or need. ELIGE works to change these types of laws nationally.

The Seattle International Foundation started the CAMY Fund in 2014. It has since invested close to $3 million in over 30 non-profits and youth collectives in Central America and Mexico that are working on sexual and reproductive rights, as well as women’s rights, including secondary school retention and ending early, forced and child marriages. Culturally, these topics can be difficult to tackle in Central America and Mexico, Vázquez says, particularly ending early marriages.

The CAMY model includes funding, technical assistance, and convening for groups that are led by young adults, much like Vázquez herself, and work in all parts of advocacy and education locally and nationally in Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Mexico.

Perla Vázquez leading a workshop at the Latin American Regional Youth Convention to Prevent Early Unions, held in Guatemala, March 2018. Photo provided by The Seattle International Foundation.

While other countries and continents struggle to end forced marriages of young girls, the majority of early marriages in Latin America happen when a young woman is between 14 and 17 years old. Vázquez said this is unique to the region culturally because it happens at all class levels—in rich and poor communities—and in countries that might have laws prohibiting marriage before the age of 18. It is also easy in some communities to lie about a young woman’s age in order to marry her off.

“It is very complex,” she said. “For example, in Guatemala it is forbidden for a person to get married before the age of 18, but that does not limit the cultural practice of getting married sooner, especially in communities with more corruption.”

In some indigenous communities in Central America, there are two sets of law in play, as well, Vázquez said, and while national law might prohibit marriage before the age of 18, local law might not.

Often when a marriage is forced, the young woman is seen as a part of a trade agreement or a commodity exchanged by families, both rich and poor.

“The structural problem in the society is that women are seen as objects without rights,” Vázquez said.

Many forced marriages in this region are between young teenaged girls and much older men. For example, a 15-year-old could be married off to a 25 or 35-year-old. This is seen as a cultural norm in some places, Vázquez said, and some groups that CAMY Fund supports work in these communities to challenge these norms by educating young women and men about women’s rights, especially in marriage. The work is vast, as education for parents and men (especially in schools) does not promote women’s rights or feminism. Recent studies in Guatemala show that educated men still prefer wives who are much younger than they are, continuing the cycle of young women being married off well before they have an opportunity to see if they want to pursue other options.

“We have been working on child marriage through different approaches because it is really the responsibility of the parents and the adults—not the young people,” Vázquez said.

Adults need to be willing to have conversations as well as educate their families in order to keep young women from marrying young. One group funded by CAMY in Nicaragua, Fundación Mujer y Desarrollo Económico Comunitario (The Foundation for Women and Community Economic Development), works with mothers and daughters to educate and improve relationships, as well as to break culturally held beliefs that marriage is the only option for their daughters.

“This process in Nicaragua was very, very interesting because they discovered the importance for both mothers and their daughters to understand that their daughters can decide their futures,” Vázquez said.

Education is a central tenant of many of the organizations that CAMY funds, with social media campaigns and websites in Spanish and Portuguese that local communities can read and understand about reproductive and sexual health. Vázquez said that changing how men think about marriage and women is also important to ending young marriage in Latin America. The patriarchal portrayal of marriage can be damaging, Vázquez said, especially to women who are subjected to violence or abuse if a man uses the marriage as a way to exert power.

“I think it is very complex in Latin America,” Vázquez said. “We need to change the perspective of love and couples, especially the role of men.”

While the work never stops, progress is possible. Last year, CAMY and other organizations pushed for research in Latin America that took a feminist approach. For Vázquez, this is part of her everyday work, as she travels internationally, sharing the methods and research from groups that CAMY funds, as well as presenting the strategies that local youth-focused and youth-led groups use to bring about change. Ultimately, the work comes down to young women learning from a young age that their bodies are their own.

“They can take possession of their own bodies, and they can decide whether or not they want to be romantically involved with someone,” she said. “That is not something that the family can decide. Women do not belong to their families; they are not objects to be exchanged.”

Welcome New Members

Please welcome our newest Global Washington members. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with their work and consider opportunities for support and collaboration!

Hunger Project

The Hunger Project is an organization committed to the sustainable end of world hunger. It has ongoing programs in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where it implements programs aimed at mobilizing rural grassroots communities to achieve sustainable progress in health, education, nutrition and family income. thp.org

Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation

The Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation’s aims to increase awareness of the US public and policymakers vis-a-vis the humanitarian crises underway in Yemen, and support relief and reconstruction, while facilitating peace campaigns. yemenfoundation.org