SEATTLE – On International Women’s Day, Global Washington (GlobalWA), the leading association in Washington state that connects companies, foundations, and non-profit organizations to improve lives in developing countries, announced the formation of a new network of female philanthropists, Women of the World.
Women of the World members have access to a learning network of other female philanthropists who care deeply about global issues and global development experts who are improving lives. This unique network solely focused on global issues is an expansion of the annual Women of the World breakfast, which the Seattle International Foundation transitioned to Global Washington in 2018. Global Washington will leverage its established network of over 100 global non-profit organizations to provide quality content for Women of the World.
“By establishing the Women of the World network, we are creating a space where philanthropists can increase their understanding of global issues with a community of their peers,” said Kristen Dailey, executive director of Global Washington. “This is first and foremost a learning network, but it also increases Global Washington’s ability to strengthen non-profit organizations that are working in developing countries.”
Female philanthropists who join Global Washington as “Women of the World” members are eligible to participate in year-round programming and help shape the beloved annual breakfast. The network will also include women under 40 who are new to global philanthropy and diverse voices to create dynamic conversations.
“The Women of the World network fills an unmet need in global giving,” said Melissa Merritt, Global Washington Board Member and charter WoW member. “For many female philanthropists who are new to global issues, or are looking to expand their giving, there are so few spaces where they can ask questions and share knowledge in a trusted setting. I am so excited to see this vibrant network grow and flourish.”
For more information about Women of the World membership and eligibility criteria, please contact Doni Uyeno (doni@globalwa.org).
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About Global Washington
Global Washington is a non-profit association that supports the global development community in Washington state. Together with our members, we are working to create a healthier and more equitable world. We promote our members, bring them together to spark new ideas and partnerships, and build a network of leaders who are improving lives around the world. Learn more at globalwa.org
Women carry so much of the world’s burdens. Across the globe, women and girls overwhelmingly shoulder the burden of unpaid and labor-intensive household duties. For those who work in factories and on farms, the work in the home doesn’t go away—the women simply wake up earlier. As development organizations and agencies increasingly identify women’s economic freedom as the key not only to empowering women but also unlocking benefits that uplift whole communities, it seems that women now also shoulder the burden of saving the world.
Empowering women economically and realizing its subsequent benefits for communities is easy in theory, but much harder to implement. On February 7th, Global Washington hosted an all-female-identifying panel to share their insights and expertise on using women’s economic empowerment to catalyze their leadership and improve rights for all. This panel was moderated by Teresa Guillien, Managing Program Director, Resource Media. Speakers included Anna Banks, Chief Marketing Officer, Fair Trade USA; Mara Bolis, Associate Director of Women’s Economic Empowerment, Oxfam America; and Dar Vanderbeck, Chief Innovation Officer, CARE. Continue Reading
There is a growing understanding that placing women at the center of global development programs is critical to short- and long-term success. When it comes to economic empowerment, statistic show that when a woman gains her own income, she prioritizes investing in her children’s education and other family needs. This has an economic ripple effect from the household to the community and all the way up to strengthening national economies.
Sarah Hendriks, who heads up Gender Equality at The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, shared at the Global Washington conference last December that economic empowerment of women is also a powerful lever to achieving gender equity.
Global Washington member organizations have documented the increase in agency, voice and choice when a woman gains her own income. Increasingly, organizations are more intention in achieving this empowerment outcome through their economic development programs.
Unfortunately, this is not as simple as it sounds. Multiple barriers keep women from having a stronger voice in their household and community. Continuing with our theme of exploring solutions to so-called “wicked problems,” this month we have been unpacking the opportunity that economic empowerment of women presents, one that also often leads to greater civic engagement and political participation.
In our newsletter, we explore how Fair Trade USA’s model supports women’s economic opportunity and local leadership. We also profile Abby Maxman, Oxfam America’s president and CEO. If you missed our panel event earlier this month with senior leaders from Oxfam America, Fair Trade USA and CARE USA, you can watch the video recording here.
Global Washington is also supporting events focused on empowering women and girls in February and around International Women’s Day in early March. Check out our event page and I hope to see you at one of our up-coming events.
How Women’s Economic Empowerment Energizes Political Participation
By Joanne Lu
Zipporah, 23, who goes by “Zippy,” didn’t believe she had much of a future in Kenya. After receiving financial training and being connected to a business mentor, Zippy has become a leader in her youth group, as well as a savvy entrepreneur with two clothing shops and a cybercafe. She now sees herself as someone who can effect change in her community, and she says she intends to run for local office in the next election. Photo: Corinna Robbins / Mercy Corps.
Last November, American women made history when a record number of women won seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. This was not just a win for women. Research shows that when women have decision-making power, communities as a whole benefit.
Yet in many developing countries around the world, women struggle to even have a voice in their own homes. However, global development practitioners are finding that when women have more economic freedom, they often also gain voice and agency at the household level, community level and even beyond.
Women and girls are disproportionately affected by poverty, discrimination and exploitation. Globally, they bear the lion’s share of unpaid household work, which according to a recent Oxfam report would be equal to about $10 trillion in annual sales at a single company – or about 43 times that of Apple. If they do have access to employment opportunities, they’re often insecure, low-wage jobs, according to UN Women. Gender discrimination also hampers their access to assets – like land and loans – and their ability to make economic and social decisions.
All in all, poverty cannot be eradicated without gender equality.
That’s why development organizations and agencies have been focused on reaching women with economic empowerment programs. These include savings, cash transfers, microcredit, financial literacy training, skills training, cooperatives, market access, and other initiatives to help them gain access to economic resources.
The UN identifies three economic interventions that have proven to work for all women: savings, child-care provision and land rights. Other interventions are rated as proven or promising for poor, very poor, young and/or all women. For example, networks and mentors are promising for all women, while conditional cash transfers and demand-driven job services are proven to work for young women.
Global Washington member Awamaki helps women’s associations start and run small businesses that create artisanal products. According to Awamaki’s founder and executive director, Kennedy Leavens, the organization was founded on the belief that “income in the hands of women is the best way to lift communities out of poverty.”
“Women know what their children and their communities need and they make those investments when they have the means to do so,” she says.
At the household level, the extra income allows women to have more say in economic decision-making, often for the benefit of the whole family. Studies have found that women spend about 90 percent of their earned income on their families – for better food, school fees, health care – compared to men, who spend 30 to 40 percent on their families. For some, the extra savings, loans or income means they can start a business that serves their communities, as well.
But perhaps the most transformational impact is the empowerment.
CARE actually defines women’s economic empowerment as the process by which women increase not only their right to economic resources, but also their power to make decisions that benefit themselves, their families and their communities.
“When women earn an income, it makes them no longer dependent on men, so they have respectability,” says Conchi Maravilla, a coordinator for Oxfam’s Saving for Change program in El Salvador. “The women support each other, and it radiates out into the community.”
Oxfam’s Saving for Change program is a village savings and loans program that teaches women how to save money regularly, borrow from the groups’ pooled funds and repay loans with interest. Gathering regularly for savings groups, cooperatives or other economic activities has been shown to increase women’s confidence, facilitate collective action and improve their ability to negotiate with men.
According to Oxfam, “empowered women members” of their Saving for Change program have since asked for a suite of training modules to further increase their economic and political participation. For example, the “SfC + Citizenship” module teaches members about ID cards, paying taxes, having birth certificates for their children, voting, running for office and holding local leaders accountable for public services.
“Saving for Change is as much about strengthening member’s voices as it is about increasing their financial inclusion,” the organization’s website says.
According to Oxfam, participation in the savings groups are empowering women to get involved with – and even elected to – local decision-making bodies like village and municipal councils and water boards.
“Women participate in a more active way now,” Carlos Antonio Diaz, the mayor of Gualococti, El Salvador, told Oxfam. “Their capacity to speak out is more developed, and they have more positive self-esteem, which is important. They are more active than men in the community here.”
Women’s economic empowerment is an end goal in itself even as it serves as a means to women’s political participation. In the same way, women’s political participation is an end, but it can also be a great means of accelerating sustainable development, economically and otherwise.
Some suggest that gender equality in politics promotes gender equality in the workforce, which, according to a 2015 study, could double women’s contributions to global GDP growth. Women who have been empowered by financial inclusion programs are also influencing public policy from local to national levels for better labor laws, better representation in government, and greater investments in education and health for women and girls.
As Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of Oxfam International, said a few years ago, “…when you have more women in public decision-making, you get policies that benefit women, children and families in general.”
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The following Global Washington members are supporting women’s economic empowerment and increased political agency.
Awamaki
Awamaki partners with women’s artisan cooperatives to create economic opportunities and improve well-being. The women knit, weave and host tourists in the rural Peruvian Andes. The organization helps them start and run successful cooperative businesses so they can earn income and lead their communities out of poverty. awamaki.org
CARE USA
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. For over 25 years, CARE has been providing economic opportunities to women through its globally-recognized Village Savings and Loans Association model. A VSLA is a self-managed group that meets regularly and provides a safe place to save money, access loans, and get emergency insurance. CARE has directly supported nearly 7 million members in VSLAs across 45 countries. VSLAs provide unparalleled access to savings and credit for low-income women, accelerating their economic success and ability to navigate life’s inevitable shocks. The social networks they create empower women to join forces, raise their voices and achieve their goals. In Niger alone, one-third of women participating in local government come from VSLA groups initiated by CARE. https://www.care.org
Fair Trade USA
Fair Trade USA is a nonprofit organization and the leading certifier of Fair Trade products in North America. The organization’s rigorous standards around agricultural and factory production help protect fundamental human rights, ensure safe, healthy working conditions, protect the environment, and deliver additional economic resources to producing communities. Additionally, Fair Trade standards include a baseline price to protect farmers when the market dips too low, and ensures that producers earn additional Community Development Funds to address their pressing needs. Many groups vote to spend this money on projects that benefit women, like cervical cancer screenings, scholarships, child care centers and microloans for income diversification. https://www.fairtradecertified.org
Global Partnerships
Global Partnerships’ Women Centered Finance with Education and Health investment initiatives have invested $187 million in 65 partners in 17 countries across Latin America, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa. Through these strategies Global Partnerships invests in enterprises that deliver credit to female microenterpreneurs along with access to a savings account, education and/or basic health services. With access to these services, women living in poverty are able to improve their health and economic position as they practice prevention, seek timely treatment, make more informed decisions, smooth household income and consumption, build assets, and better deal with health and economic shocks. https://globalpartnerships.org
Grameen Foundation
Grameen Foundation is dedicated to enabling the poor, especially women, to create a world without poverty and hunger. The foundation’s programs connect poor rural women and their households to essential financial, health and agricultural products, while also building empowering ecosystems that support women’s breakthroughs. Access to financial services and training, in combination with structured “gender dialogues,” propel women’s economic empowerment. Working through women’s self-help groups and community partners, Grameen Foundation guides dialogues about traditional gender roles and their impacts on family well-being. This integrated approach increases women’s autonomy and encourages more gender-equitable decision-making in households on issues from finances to family planning. With increased capacity and autonomy, women are able to achieve greater economic empowerment in the family and beyond. https://grameenfoundation.org
Landesa
Landesa champions and works to secure land rights, a powerful tool to promote social justice and create opportunity for millions of people living in poverty around the world. For women especially, land rights can be transformative to their social and economic empowerment within households and communities. Equipped with secure land rights, women gain a stronger voice in household decision-making, spending, and management of their land. The resulting benefits can include greater savings and financial stability, improved nutrition and food security, and increased spending on education and health care, creating a ripple effect for women, their families, and whole communities. For more than 50 years, working across 50 countries, Landesa has helped strengthen land rights for an estimated 125 million families. https://www.landesa.org
Mercy Corps
Mercy Corps helps girls and women build economic independence by providing financial services such as grants, loans and community savings groups, mentorship and job training. For example, in Kenya, Mercy Corps helped girls develop skills to manage and sell small livestock, like bees and chickens, which improved girls’ average monthly incomes from $6 to $56 in West Pokot and from $26 to $87 in Turkana. Girls who participated also reported a 50% increase in household decision-making since the start of the program. Engaging women in household decision making and local governance is vital to creating inclusive governance and economic systems. In Mali, Mercy Corps worked with 120 women leaders to build basic leadership skills, enhance understanding of local governance processes and develop advocacy skills. Following the 12 months of training, 38 of the women leaders ran for office in local elections and 14 were elected. In 2018, Mercy Corps impacted the lives of more than 6.9 million women and girls through opportunities to improve their education, health, leadership and livelihoods. https://www.mercycorps.org
Oxfam America
Oxfam is a global organization working to right the wrongs of poverty, hunger, and social injustice. Globally, Oxfam works with 22.1 million people in more than 90 countries to create lasting solutions to the injustice of poverty and hunger. Oxfam works to increase women’s access to and control over resources as part of a larger focus on gender justice, aiming to transform gender power relations and norms through campaigning, programming, advocacy, and research to facilitate women’s articulation of their own voice and agendas. For over 13 years, Oxfam has been working through its Savings for Change program to build resilience and increase women’s empowerment by providing basic financial services to women around the world, as well as training in business skills, agriculture, active citizenship and advocacy, and mobile banking. Saving for Change is as much about strengthening member’s voices as it is about increasing their financial inclusion. Oxfam believes that strengthening women’s agency and space is an essential precursor to achieving gender equality as well as political, social, economic, cultural and environmental security. https://www.oxfamamerica.org
Street Business School
Street Business School (SBS) provides entrepreneurial education and confidence to women living in poverty. On average, graduates triple their income, going from $1.35/day to $4.19/day. This change in income is life-altering for alumni and their families. With increased earnings, SBS graduates educate their children, provide healthcare, increase their family’s daily meals, and discover their influence. SBS sees dramatic shifts with graduates’ confidence, creating a stronger voice in their families and their communities. SBS has trained 46 other NGOs how to incorporate this program into their communities because its partners share the belief that when a women is economically strong, the holistic benefits to all are invaluable. https://www.streetbusinessschool.org
Upaya Social Ventures
Upaya Social Ventures creates dignified jobs for women living in extreme poverty by building scalable businesses with investment and consulting support. Of the nearly 12,000 jobs created by Upaya’s investment portfolio companies, half are held by women, most of whom are entering the workforce for the first time. This is no coincidence, since half of Upaya’s active portfolio is comprised of women-led social enterprises. Upaya places a strong emphasis on investing in women entrepreneurs, a population largely underfunded in comparison with their male counterparts. The organization believes the more it demonstrates women’s success in entrepreneurship, the more likely it will be to kick-off a chain reaction of women-led ventures, job creation for women, and growing prosperity overall. https://www.upayasv.org
A thoughtful model and a little bit of encouragement is sometimes all that is needed to empower women in potentially intimidating workspaces. Or at least for Fabiola, this was the case.
Fabiola worked at a vegetable greenhouse in Sonora in northern Mexico when the farm decided to become Fair Trade certified. Fabiola, one of thousands of workers, was elected to be a representative on her farm’s Fair Trade Committee. She was shy and hesitated to speak in front of others. As a part of the committee, she received training and learned how to negotiate and represent her fellow co-workers’ concerns.
Nathalie Marin-Gest, Fair Trade USA Senior Director of Produce & Floral, visited Fabiola’s farm a year after she was elected to the committee.
Fabiola had embraced her new role whole-heartedly. Marin-Gest said Fabiola was firing a construction manager who was not doing a good job and hosting meetings with thousands of workers with ease. She was emboldened by being on the committee and learning how the farm production process worked. She was advocating for workers and communicating with suppliers regularly.
“I’d never spoken up in public—I was terrified to,” she told Marin-Gest at the time. “I didn’t want to accept the nomination but now I feel proud of myself for being able to do this, and my kid told me, ‘Mom, good job. I’m proud of you,’ and it was the most amazing moment.”
Moments like these reveal just how much deeper than a label on a bag of coffee or sweatshirt Fair Trade USA’s work goes. When we hear “fair trade,” it’s easy to simply acknowledge that a label like that ensures ethical practices and fair business, but the actual work of Fair Trade USA is much more intricate and weighty than that.
Fair Trade USA helps develop sustainable supply chains by setting rigorous social and environmental standards that farms, factories and fisheries around the world are certified against by third-party certification bodies. To achieve Fair Trade certification, Fair Trade USA has developed detailed certification criteria for the different product categories, like the Agriculture Production Standard (APS), which is more than 100 pages long. These standards set basic principles in each workplace like eliminating workplace discrimination, requiring equal pay for equal work, as well as ensuring that workers make at least minimum wage or above. These standards also include criteria around maternity leave for women and ensure that employers cannot force women to take pregnancy tests before they are hired, which is a practice unfortunately common on many farms that do not want to take on the supposed burden of hiring a woman who will need to leave to give birth.
The certifications and audits are really just the beginning of the work Fair Trade does with its members. As Marin-Gest puts it, “we provide a platform for farms, factories, fisheries to be able to integrate social compliance into their own program to write a framework…essentially helping to tie compliance and operations back to the human, in particular.”
Besides the impact created from compliance with the Fair Trade Standards, when products are sold with the Fair Trade Certified™ seal, a few extra cents go back to the workers and small producers. These Fair Trade Community Development Funds are pooled and used collectively on projects that help meet the needs of those within the scope of the certificate. In order to manage the funds appropriately and represent all participants, the APS has an Empowerment module that requires the formation of a Fair Trade Committee. Fair Trade USA requires its partners to map their workforce and see who actually works for the company in order to ensure that the Fair Trade Committee is made up of a group of people that actually represents the workforce (number of men or women, migrants or locals, or those with disabilities, job type, etc.). The general assembly of small farmers or workers then elects the committee members. A needs assessment of all the small farmers or workers (on large farms) is conducted to direct the decisions on how to use the Fair Trade Community Development Funds. The Fair Trade Committee then develops projects based on the needs of the general assembly members, their families and communities. Projects focus on helping to solve community problems and make work more accessible, particularly for women.
In Ecuador, women working on a floral farm that was Fair Trade Certified began to get sick. The women were working six days a week, and on Sundays, their only day off, women would go into the river to wash their family’s clothes. The high-altitude river was getting contaminated, and women were having bone and respiratory problems.
After the Fair Trade Committee at the farm looked deeply at the root causes of why so many women were getting sick, they decided to use their Fair Trade Community Development Funds to create a laundromat, employing an attendant to do the laundry, on-site at their farm. Women can now bring their family’s laundry to work and leave at the end of the day with clean, folded laundry. Suddenly, women actually had a day to rest at the end of a long workweek and were much healthier. Marin-Gest said that small innovation led to some women finishing up school or starting their own businesses.
“Their lives have changed completely just from setting up a little laundromat program, because they dug deep and found out what was really happening; they were creative and found a solution that changed lives dramatically,” she said.
Farms, fisheries and factories that are Fair Trade Certified™ must continue to not only meet the certification standards but also continue to improve their workforce environments in order to keep their workers. Internationally, farmers have been experiencing labor shortages, and Marin-Gest said Fair Trade USA’s affiliates have actually seen just the opposite, due in part to the standards and good work environments those standards create for workers.
“People also care how they’re being treated and if they have a voice on that farm,” Marin-Gest said. “So what we’ve found with the Fair Trade program is that farms have gone from having extreme labor shortages to having waiting lists of workers who want to work there.”
This makes sense with a model that encourages workers to not only have better lives but also re-invest their Fair Trade Community Development Funds into programs that are good for the community. Marin-Gest pointed to examples like women creating their own sewing design shops or pig nurseries with the Community Development Funds, or building homes and communities near to farms, to eliminate commute stress or family separation. Fair Trade USA also provides financial literacy training, which really helps families plan their financial lives, as well.
Beyond fair, humane working conditions for workers around the world, Fair Trade USA is also helping empower women and their families to advocate for their rights and work to have more financially stable and secure lives in the future. Or as Marin-Gest puts it, looking at women like Fabiola and her child, “generations are getting impacted, as well.”
Abby Maxman was a long-time admirer of Oxfam America before she became its president and CEO in June 2017. Throughout her 30-year career in international aid and development, she has always been drawn to Oxfam’s underlying philosophy, “that systemic injustices keep people poor, and it’s not an accident,” says Maxman.
Maxman has dedicated her life’s work to fighting the injustice of poverty, but she didn’t always know this is how her career would unfold.
Maxman credits the Quaker school she attended as a child for exposing her to issues of social justice around the world. There, she was first confronted with shocking images from the 1984 famine in Ethiopia and institutionalized racism in apartheid South Africa. At the time, Nelson Mandela was still in prison and the HIV/AIDS epidemic was just beginning to hit the public consciousness.
Looking back, Maxman believes these events were seminal moments in her own awareness and connection with international issues. But even as she studied for a degree in political science and history, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do.
“But I knew I had this vague, probably uninformed, interest of wanting to make a difference in the world,” she says.
Then, one rejection changed the course of her life. Maxman’s heart was set on a research fellowship in Latin America after college. But when someone advised her not to count on only one thing, she half-heartedly applied for the Peace Corps, as well. She was devastated when she didn’t get the fellowship. However, the Peace Corps wanted her, and she was soon on her way to Lesotho as an agriculture and community development worker.
“Without a doubt, that was probably the best thing that ever happened to me, because it opened this world to me of international humanitarian relief and development, multilateralism, the UN architecture – everything just opened up to me in that learning journey,” she says.
In Lesotho, she witnessed apartheid first-hand, as well as the fortitude and resilience of women who regularly faced financial exploitation and led their households in the absence of men, most of whom had left for South Africa as laborers.
To this day, those experiences continue to inform her view that poverty is a result of human action, inaction, decisions and political choices. “Poverty is political,” she says. “It’s about politics and power.”
Oxfam America President Abby Maxman at the border wall separating the US and Mexico. Photo: Oxfam/Alyssa Eisenstein.
That’s why Oxfam’s three-prong approach to poverty and inequality is so compelling to her. “We help people build better futures for themselves; we save lives and alleviate suffering in disaster and humanitarian crises. But the real multiplier that takes impact to scale is policy advocacy.”
This is something that she has felt is “absolutely essential” as she’s navigated her lengthy career – from the Peace Corps to the World Food Programme, to the German development agency GTZ (now GIZ), to 20 years at CARE, where she eventually became the deputy secretary general of CARE International.
Now at Oxfam America, she plans to continue pushing for policy solutions to systemic issues, particularly around gender justice.
“I have seen in my career and all my learnings have shown this very simple thing: that when women and girls at the community-level have voice and choice about how decisions are made – at the household level, at the community level, at the local political level – families and communities are healthier and wealthier, period.”
Maxman has worked with many women’s economic empowerment programs, including Oxfam’s village savings groups program, Savings for Change. She’s witnessed how savings not only allows women to have more say in the health and education of their families, but also creates social cohesion, gives them a place to convene for support and community, opens up more economic opportunities,, and provides them the means to participate in socially important things, like funerals.
“The economic empowerment that can contribute to social and political participation has an exponential effect on households and communities,” says Maxman. “I’ve seen it be a very powerful changemaker in many places around the world.”
That includes the U.S., where Maxman says Oxfam America’s domestic program will continue to advocate for social change on issues of women’s rights, human rights, worker rights, and social justice for excluded and marginalized populations. It’s not just because injustice and poverty are wrong regardless of whether they’re in a developing or developed country, but also because what happens in the U.S. affects the rest of the world.
“The U.S. has a disproportionate influence on the world – for good and for bad,” she says. “Everything that happens in these United States affects global poverty, social justice, good governance, the rule of law, institutions – everything.”
Maxman is also committed to making sure Oxfam is a better model of equity in the workplace and on the frontlines of their work around the world.
“Gender justice has always been core to Oxfam, and yet we know we’re not always modeling that at the levels we want to,” she says. “I’m excited to see the transformative power of creating more equal societies and the power of bringing women’s voice and choice into what we do and how we do it.”
Please welcome our newest Global Washington members. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with their work and consider opportunities for support and collaboration!
Bloodworks Northwest
Bloodworks Northwest is an independent, non-profit organization harnessing donor gifts to provide a safe, lifesaving blood supply to more than 90 Northwest hospitals. Its mission is to save lives through research, innovation, education and excellence in blood, medical and laboratory services in partnership with its community. Bloodworksnw.org
Dr. Tom Uldrick, Deputy Head of Global Oncology at Fred Hutch. Photo by Robert Hood/ Fred Hutch.
In advance of World Cancer Day, Global Washington interviewed Dr. Tom Uldrick, the new deputy head of Global Oncology at Fred Hutch.
What led you to research the intersection of cancer and HIV/AIDS?
I did my medical training in New York City during the period when antiretroviral therapy was revolutionizing medicine. During my premed years, it worked in a large HIV organization and observed firsthand how advances in science could alter the course of an epidemic. During my residency and fellowship at Columbia University, I was inspired by many great mentors and leaders in the field of HIV and cancer, including Scott Hammer, Riccardo Dalla-Favera, Wafaa El-Sadr, Al Neugut, and Salim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim. My fellowship culminated in a Kaposi sarcoma research project in South Africa – that was the start of my research career in the field of HIV and cancer. Continue Reading
Pat Garcia-Gonzalez at the annual meeting of the Nigerian Society of Hematology and Blood Transfusion. Photo by Martin De Bruin.
Pat Garcia-Gonzalez, co-founder and CEO of The Max Foundation, has spent the last 15 years facilitating access to cancer treatment in low- and middle-income countries. In this Q&A with Global Washington, she shares the many lessons she has learned in this work, and how both cancer treatment and patients’ access to treatment globally has changed. You can also catch her talk on February 12, 2019, at The Pacific Science Center: “the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” Pat will discuss the state of global cancer treatment and The Max Foundation’s strategies for removing barriers to access.
What lessons have you learned in 15+ years working in treatment access?
The first lesson I have learned is that it is possible. It is actually possible to provide access to innovative cancer treatment for patients living in low- and middle-income countries, even when the treatment might be long-term, and in some cases, indefinite. I have also learned that for every patient we are able to rescue, we are not only saving the life of that particular individual, but we are also saving the lives of many others in their family and their communities. We even have a great impact on the availability of oncologists and hematologists by providing the means for them to successfully treat patients and inspiring medical students to want to become oncologists and hematologists.
I have also learned that nothing is simple; these problems are often complex and require great commitment from multiple partners and a great deal of patience, hand-in-hand with a “never give up” attitude.
Finally, I have learned that no matter how hard it is, it is worth it. Continue Reading
As a mom who spends most of her waking hours thinking about how to improve health around the world, I’ve never thought twice about whether I vaccinate my son. I know that not all of my neighbors in the Seattle area feel this way, but the decision for me is rational. Vaccines are safe, they prevent disease, and they are relatively low cost and easy to obtain.
It may be easier when, in my work with a nonprofit dealing with health systems in Africa, we are reminded constantly that deaths of children under 5 have dropped nearly 60 percent worldwide since 1990, and vaccines are a major contributor to this progress.
Yet Washington state suffers one of the lowest measles vaccination rates in the United States – below that of many low- and middle-income countries. Last Friday, Gov. Jay Inslee declared a state of emergency in response to more than two dozen confirmed cases of measles in our state.
Editor’s Note: This event took place at Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA on January 24, 2019. Also check out our related video interview with World Vision’s executive advisor on fragile states, Jonathan Papoulidis.
Read Global Washington’s January Newsletter on this topic of building greater resilience in fragile states.
With only eleven years left to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, it is increasingly clear that a crucial part of the world is being left behind: fragile states.
In fragile states, where the government and civil society lack the ability to mitigate risk, the population is left vulnerable to economic, political, environmental, and social crises. Without the ability to cope, these crises can turn into national disasters.
This year, Global Washington is launching an initiative to advance the Sustainable Development Goals by catalyzing the power of its members in private and nonprofit sectors. Addressing the problems of fragility, therefore, is an essential part of that initiative. On January 24, Global Washington hosted a panel of experts to share insights into best strategies for helping states escape fragility and move toward resilience. Continue Reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: Mara will be speaking on a panel, “Her Money, Her Voice,” at Global Washington on February 7, 2019, discussing women’s economic empowerment and political engagement.
A woman in Sido, Mali, explains to the mayor why formal marriages are necessary to protect women from abandonment. This is a reality seldom explicitly spoken aloud in mixed company. In order not to alarm the men, the rationale for formal marriages is usually given in terms of access to educational and other benefits by children of formally married parents. But this woman is a poised speaker and plans to be a future politician. She speaks her mind even in front of the village elders seated behind her. (Photo courtesy of Oxfam).
What makes a woman speak out when everything about her context suggests it would be much easier to stay silent? In Mali, a country where women have historically held political and economic power, yet, where polygamy is common and women are largely subordinate to men, a woman decided to speak out. She had participated in an Oxfam program that supports the development of women’s savings groups called “Saving for Change” (SFC) and provides basic civic education. She worked with her peers to create a theatre performance for local officials to show the social impact of having poor access to water. She wrote of her experience:
“Putting that piece together made us learn to speak, and now we can’t be quiet.” Continue Reading
With the passing of a “glitter” baton, the 2018 Women of the World breakfast celebration reignited the Seattle community’s passion and dedication to philanthropic causes around the world.
On December 6, more than two hundred women eagerly awaited the start of what promised to be an inspiring and emotional event. Braving the cold, dark morning, they were greeted by the uplifting music of the Seattle Women’s Steel Pan Project, perfectly complementing the energy in the room. Continue Reading
While incredible progress has been made in reducing extreme poverty and improving health and well-being worldwide, those who live in “fragile states” are increasingly being left behind. Fragile states are regions in the world that lack the capacity to manage political, economic, social and environmental risks – leaving their citizens more vulnerable to shocks and crises that arise.
At our conference this past December, Global Washington made a commitment to support our members who are working to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. In doing so, we need to pay particular attention to fragile states and acknowledge the problems where no single solution or intervention is sufficient. Often described as “wicked problems” these are challenges that can be difficult to define, have tangled root causes, and link various stakeholders with diverse values, interests, and positions.
Food security, water access, global warming, pandemics, and war. These all can be classified as wicked problems. Action itself in these contexts presents risks… but then, so does inaction. In collaboration with others, leaders must weigh the possibilities as best they can, consider unintended consequences, and find a way forward.
This month we are grappling with the immense challenge of improving the status quo in fragile states. Our January Changemaker is Rebecca Wolfe, Mercy Corps Director of Evidence and Influence. A leading expert on political violence, conflict and violent extremism, Wolfe contributed to the States of Fragility 2018 report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Another contributor to the OECD report, Jonathan Papoulidis, World Vision Executive Advisor on Fragile States, walks us through how his organization empowers communities in fragile states. Also, you can join the conversation at our GlobalWA event at Microsoft on January 24, which will dive deeper into effective approaches to sustainable development in fragile contexts.
We will continue to break down siloes through our monthly issue campaigns. Next up, we will have a conversation with the CEO of Oxfam America, Abby Maxman, and others on February 7 to examine the intersection of economic empowerment and political freedoms for women. I hope you can join us.
The impact of state fragility is also felt beyond borders. In 2017, the number of people forcibly displaced by conflict and violence hit a historic high of 68.5 million, with over 25 million of those individuals registered as refugees. Violent conflict has also spiked in the past 10 years, and more countries experienced violent conflict in 2016 than at any time in nearly 30 years.
With all the progress made towards achieving global development goals, it’s undeniable that there is still plenty of work to do. As the face of poverty changes, and with growing challenges like state fragility, the global refugee crisis, and climate change, our approaches may have to evolve to truly “leave no one behind” by 2030.
Understanding fragility
While each fragile context is different, all fragile states face a burden where the risks they face are greater than their ability to manage these risks.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) points to “social capital” as a key component of whether or not a state is fragile. These shared networks and norms for co-operation within a society build stability and trust. When social capital is missing, communities become divided, and people don’t see their governments as accountable, responsive, or able to provide basic services like health or education to meet their needs.
The OECD’s 2018 States of Fragility Framework uses five factors to illustrate different ways in which the loss of social capital and weak government institutions can make countries fragile. Political, societal, economic, environmental, or security factors can all contribute to instability in different ways.
These five factors also help nuance the term fragility. A country such as Malawi may have relatively stable political institutions, but face more serious environmental or economic risks. Certain regions or demographics within a country may also be confronted with higher risks, such as remote communities, drought-prone areas, or minority groups. Increasingly, the global community is drilling down to analyze fragile contexts rather than fragile states.
To further illustrate the complex nature of fragility, risk factors can be internal, external, or a combination of both. This may be self-evident with environmental factors like climate change, but can also apply to other factors. Conflicts in countries like Yemen and Syria are prolonged by political interests of external actors. Qatar, the richest country per-capita in the world, was recently ranked the most-worsened country on the Fragile State Index because of political and economic blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and UAE.
As the OECD aptly puts it, “fragility is an intricate beast, sometimes exposed, often lurking underneath, but always holding progress back.”
The impact of fragility
The inability to weather the storms of natural or human-made disasters, economic crises, or social unrest has a profound impact on whether or not the world can achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
Conflict, violence, and climate change are the leading causes of global hunger. Recent research draws attention to this vicious circle of vulnerability and fragility, estimating that a 5 per cent change in rainfall in Sub-Saharan Africa increased the likelihood of conflict in the following year by 50 per cent. Climate change could push the total number of permanently displaced people as high as 250 million people between now and 2050.
In contrast to fragility, resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.
Resilience is already a concept promoted in international development efforts, particularly in sectors like food security, climate adaptation, and disaster preparedness. And while it may have been the development buzzword of 2012, resilience focuses on analyzing risks and developing strategies to avoid or manage major crises. We see parallels in today’s efforts to address fragility.
So what’s new? Just as the OECD’s Fragility Framework helps connect the dots on the range of factors that drive instability, it can also be used to guide efforts that build resilience.
A “fragility-to-resilience” perspective is multidimensional, paying closer attention to the social bonds within communities, the strength and inclusivity of political and economic systems, and exposure to climate-related shocks. These factors allow development efforts to not only be risk-aware, but also proactively address root causes of fragility in the first place.
There are many ways that organizations are already putting this awareness into action. Women’s meaningful participation in the workforce, decision-making, and peace processes dramatically reduces the risk of instability. Countries where women make up 40 percent of the workforce compared to 10 percent are 30 times less likely to experience internal conflict.
Conflict-sensitive programming helps organizations understand the social fabric of communities, identifying the issues they face, local strengths for conflict management, and integrating strategies to minimize unintended harm.
Others are focusing on creating opportunities for youth through education and nonviolent civic engagement in contexts like Somalia, effectively reducing youth participation in and support for violence. Encouraging governments to be more inclusive, especially for youth, can prevent experiences of discrimination, abuse, and corruption that drive youth to take up arms.
The willingness to embrace the “fragility-to-resilience” paradigm is gaining traction among development, political, and security actors. Last year, the U.S. Government released a new, multiagency framework that provided a shared definition of “stabilization,” embracing key principles for more effective action. While global spending efforts on conflict prevention currently represents only a fraction of the amount spent on crisis response and reconstruction, development actors are showing a willingness to change this trend. Last year the World Bank doubled its investments in fragile states. The OECD’s 2018 State of Fragility report also calls for donor countries to provide more and smarter aid in fragile contexts.
At its heart, building resilience acknowledges the goal of healthy relationships between government, civil society, and business. As the UN-World Bank joint report Pathways for Peace acknowledges, “For all countries, addressing inequalities and exclusion, making institutions more inclusive, and ensuring that development strategies are risk-informed” will be critical to building resilience and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
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The following Global Washington members are working to increase resilience in fragile states:
American Red Cross
Armed conflict, international disasters and migration leave millions of people around the globe in urgent need of humanitarian assistance every year. As a truly worldwide network, the volunteers of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent are able to help families reconnect when they have been separated internationally as a result of conflict, disaster, migration or other humanitarian emergency. http://www.redcross.org
Americares
Americares saves lives and improves health for people affected by poverty and disasters so they can reach their full potential. Americares responds to an average of 30 disasters each year, shipping medicine and medical supplies and restoring health services to survivors. Using an app called the ‘Fit Tool’ Americares manages and tracks large shipments of medicine and supplies in the field and shares that information with its partners in real time. Collaborating with its partner organizations in this way improves the efficiency and effectiveness of Americares’ approach, allowing it to reach more vulnerable families with critical health programs, medicine and supplies. https://www.americares.org
Crista/World Concern
World Concern works to build resilience in fragile states, such as South Sudan and Somalia, by training and equipping communities to prevent and recover more quickly from disasters. The organization teaches drought-resistant farming methods, livelihood diversification, and provides livestock restocking, seeds, tools, and training to vulnerable families. World Concern also helps establish self-help and savings groups and income-generating activities in drought- and disaster-prone areas. http://www.worldconcern.org
IRC
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) works in over 40 countries and 27 U.S. cities to help people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and regain control of their future. In Seattle, the IRC is tailoring programs to ensure resettled refugees have access to necessary services and are able to connect with others in their new community.https://www.rescue.org/united-states/seattle-wa
Medical Teams International
In partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, national ministries of health and other NGOs, Medical Teams International provides life-saving health care to refugees around the world. In Uganda, Lebanon, Turkey, Bangladesh and soon Tanzania, Medical Teams International is the health provider for more than 1 million people in critical need. Flashes of intense violence and persecution have sparked a resurgence in the number of refugees from Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Meanwhile, refugees from South Sudan continue to cross the border into cramped settlements in northern Uganda, where Medical Teams has more than 700 Ugandan health staff. http://www.medicalteams.org
Mercy Corps
Mercy Corps works in places characterized by fragility and instability, where people are vulnerable to big and persistent challenges that threaten to derail their progress toward a brighter future. In the face of these complex social, economic and environmental challenges, Mercy Corps sees the possibility for lasting change. Mercy Corps believes that when people are connected to the right opportunities, they can learn, adapt and recover in the face of crises, building better lives for themselves and strengthening their communities. Through Mercy Corps’ resilience approach, the organization is helping people around the world transform their communities for good. https://www.mercycorps.org
Microsoft Philanthropies
Following natural disasters, Microsoft Philanthropies provides technical support as well as technology and cash grants to its non-profit partners. In addition, the initiative resources long-term recovery and building up greater resilience in high-risk communities through long-term engagement programs such as digital skills. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/philanthropies
Nethope
For more than a decade, NetHope has collaborated with its nonprofit members and innovative technology partners to meet the demands of vulnerable communities around the world. This cross-sector collaboration allows for better programs, mitigation of risks, and scaling benefits for greater impact in the communities in which NetHope works. By delivering information technology solutions to the developing world, NetHope helps nonprofits become more effective to achieve great strides for the underserved, and provides tech companies the opportunity to leverage their tools and ideas at scale across the entire sector of development to create successful outcomes, promoting the health and wellbeing for at-risk communities. https://nethope.org
Oxfam
Oxfam is a global organization working to right the wrongs of poverty, hunger, and social injustice. Globally, Oxfam works with 22.1 million people in more than 90 countries to create lasting solutions to the injustice of poverty and hunger. Oxfam believes that building mechanisms for resilience within communities is critical to addressing poverty and defines resilience as “the ability of women and men to realize their rights and improve their well-being despite shocks, stresses and uncertainty.” Oxfam’s governance-based approach to enhancing resilient development addresses the impacts of shocks, stresses and uncertainty on people living in poverty, as well as the causes of vulnerability and risks. https://policy-practice.oxfamamerica.org/work/rural-resilience/
World Relief Seattle
World Relief International helps to build resilience in fragile states through community development (health screenings, microfinance, and agricultural extension) conducted in partnership with entities that have historic authority, relationship and capacity. In Washington State, World Relief Seattle has worked for 40 years to build the confidence of newly arriving refugees – helping them to translate their innate resilience and assets, into the U.S. context. World Relief Seattle provides assistance in housing, job placement, food access, English language training, youth programming, legal services and opportunities for integration with the host community. The organization focuses on social and economic integration, which is crucial to combat fragility and isolation once refugees arrive in the U.S. https://worldreliefseattle.org
World Vision
Because the risks that communities in developing countries face are numerous, World Vision takes a comprehensive approach to risk management. In its resilience programming World Vision takes into account the root causes of vulnerability (i.e. no access to land); changing pressures (i.e. increased urbanization); unsafe conditions (i.e. living on a flood plain), as well as the hazards that people face – be it natural (i.e. cyclone) or human made (i.e. violent conflict). https://www.worldvision.org
Since 1950, when World Vision launched its operations by helping orphans and children in North Korea, many of the Federal Way-based organization’s key moments have been shaped by refugees and fragile states. Now, nearly 70 years later, the organization is honing in on that need with a new global strategy. It’s called Our Promise 2030, and it brings together World Vision’s many decades of experience, resources and programs to better help children and communities in the hardest places in order to accelerate progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.
“In practice our core mission is around serving the most vulnerable children and the poorest,” says Jonathan Papoulidis, World Vision Executive Advisor on Fragile States. “We’re seeing that fragility is really the center of the global development crisis right now.”
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that by 2030, about 80 percent of the world’s extreme poor will live in fragile states. Currently, the OECD lists 58 countries as “fragile contexts.” World Vision works in 38 of them and has long-term development programs in 24. In total, the organization, which is one of the world’s largest non-governmental aid agencies, works in nearly 100 countries.
“Thirty years ago or so, there were lots of different countries struggling with extreme poverty and disaster and conflict,” says Papoulidis. “We’ve seen global progress across the board in many of these places, except in these really fragile ones.”
Even the global refugee crisis, Papoulidis points out, is a symptom of fragility. “We tend to put them in different buckets, but the vast majority of refugees come from fragile states. And the vast majority of them seek refuge in neighboring countries that are dealing with higher levels of fragility, as well.”
As World Vision has remained focused on a broad mission to help vulnerable children and communities at home or on the move, their experience and data has led them to work in fragile states for more than three decades.
“Now we’re saying we’ve got to get a lot more focused in these spaces where ‘business as usual’ development is just not working,” says Papoulidis. “We need a whole different approach to being more impactful and being able to support and empower more communities in these fragile places.”
Through its vast humanitarian and development operations, as well as its advocacy and policy work, World Vision is trying to promote a paradigm shift that considers the larger picture from the get-go. It includes recognizing that conflict is only one piece of the fragility puzzle, along with poverty, grievances and high vulnerability to natural disasters, pandemics and global price shocks.
“What we see now are some very promising thinking and trends in the development space, but we don’t see them fully fleshed out yet, and we don’t see them combined into a paradigm or a package where they’re working together,” says Papoulidis.
For example, development agencies are working hard to build resilience in food security, disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation. But Papoulidis says that resilience efforts are being “stove-piped” into these sectors instead of being applied to the complex interacting risks and crises in fragile states.
“There’s a great need to de-silo this thing and get it into a much broader systems approach that considers political, economic, environmental, social and security factors,” he says.
For example, World Vision is part of a consortium of seven aid agencies called the Somalia Resilience Programme. It provides families across the country with multiple livelihood options to increase their food security and ability to withstand natural shocks. But through local associations and savings groups, it also helps build social capital, which World Vision has identified as a key driver to strengthening resilience to multiple risks in fragile contexts.
“Social capital – the networks, values and norms for cooperating across different boundaries – is really the deficit of fragile states,” says Papoulidis. “If the social contract is broken, that’s when you get low resilience and societal dysfunction.”
It’s important, according to Papoulidis, to build social capital along three tracks: bonding, bridging, and linking. Bonding is strengthening cooperation within communities that already share common ties like worldview, ethnicity, and boundaries. Bridging is building reciprocity – even trust – between communities that are disconnected or even divided with tensions. This could include mediating between ethnic groups that are at odds with each other or supporting regional hospitals that bring together different communities. Linking is connecting communities to formal institutions like governments and formal banking. Building social capital along just one or two of these tracks could actually deepen division, inequality, or exclusion.
In the context of refugees, for example, this includes building cooperation within refugee camps or connecting them with host communities, connecting them with the broader community surrounding refugees, as well as working with the government to provide solutions that are not only for refugees but also for others who are disenfranchised.
“Having the lens of knowing you’re trying to do all three things at once – bonding, bridging, linking – helps figure out where you’re trying to go as opposed to just doing limited work in one dimension,” says Papoulidis.
That larger perspective doesn’t just guide World Vision’s efforts to build social capital. It’s helping to inform their emerging approach to scaling and adapting programs for new contexts as well.
“If you’re going to do social capital strengthening, you can only do it at scale, because you’ve got to do bonding with a large group of communities, but also bridging across wide geographic areas, and linking to cross-vertical levels of government,” says Papoulidis.
Instead of starting with projects – which may seem less risky – Papoulidis says the development industry needs to start with a scaling model. Instead of only building wells, the question is how can we transform a water system?
“Scaling in fragile states is actually less risky than small projects,” he says, because it makes you think through all the systems that enable something to work in a specific context. Do you have political support for this? Is social empowerment and support a core feature? What does your financing look like over the next 10 to 15 years? The foresight it provides, he says, allows you to pull together and adapt different resources, partners, projects, and capacities to reach your goal.
“You can also get to some of the root causes of fragility, because you’re able to help change patterns of cooperation and inclusion at a really large level,” he argues.
That’s how World Vision arrived at Our Promise 2030. Their goal to lift up the world’s most vulnerable children and communities led them to pull all their resources and capacities together with a key focus on fragile contexts. This means continuing some existing initiatives, re-scoping some programs, while determining which others are no longer essential. It also means launching pilot initiatives in the coming year in several fragile contexts.
“Can it be done adaptively to contexts? Can it be done at scale? Can it be done in a coordinated and cooperative way with multiple stakeholders at different levels?” asks Papoulidis. “If we can do that – even though getting out of fragility is a long-term, multigenerational, extremely difficult, often contested and violent process – this approach can do so much to accelerate it.”
Rebecca Wolfe, Mercy Corps Director of Evidence and Influence
By Joanne Lu
Rebecca Wolfe, Director of Evidence and Influence for Mercy Corps
Rebecca Wolfe was on her way to getting a degree in sports psychology when a first-year seminar at Bates College derailed her plans entirely.
Now the director of Evidence and Influence for Mercy Corps, Wolfe is a leading expert on political violence, conflict and violent extremism.
“I never thought this is what I would be doing,” she says.
The seminar was called “Psychology of Peace,” and Wolfe recalls that she never once missed the 8 a.m. class. “I just fell in love with this course,” she says – so much so that she ended up designing her entire major in political psychology around it.
It was during an internship at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) that she first began to dig into a dialogue process methodology developed by Harvard professor Herbert Kelman. The next year, Wolfe became Kelman’s last Ph.D. student before he retired.
Wolfe says she always intended to be a practitioner. But because she didn’t think she could get into graduate school without saying she wanted to be an academic, she convinced herself that she wanted to be one.
“I then got on the academic treadmill and didn’t quite know how to get off,” she says. “I didn’t know what else I was qualified to do.”
In a prestigious post-doctoral position at Princeton University, Wolfe researched collective punishment: Why do people who are generally good believe that it’s okay to punish a group for the act of one individual? One of her advisors was Daniel Khaneman, an Israeli-American psychologist who, one month after Wolfe arrived at Princeton, won a Nobel prize in economics.
But it was actually a connection Wolfe made while working on her Ph.D. in social psychology at Harvard that helped her eventually jump off the “academic treadmill.” As a student she did a fellowship in the Program on Negotiation started by Roger Fisher. During her fellowship, she also helped Fisher write his last book, called Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate.
Fisher was the founder of a group called Conflict Management Group, which merged with Mercy Corps in 2004. Two years later, Fisher helped Wolfe join Mercy Corps.
Wolfe says that even before merging with Conflict Management Group, Mercy Corps had already been doing peacebuilding work.
“I think we were really one of the first that got it as an issue,” Wolfe says. “Mercy Corps understood that in order to deal with issues of poverty and a lack of development, we had to address conflict, as well. In today’s world, it’s troubling how right we were that most humanitarian crises – and the whole refugee crises – are due to conflict.”
The first big program Wolfe worked on was in Sri Lanka, then Kenya around electoral violence. After that, she went to Tajikistan and Yemen, where violent extremism began to take center stage in her work.
She first dove into issues of violent extremism in 2008, and by 2010, when she opened Mercy Corp’s Yemen program, she was already recognized as an expert in the subject.
“It was a much different place than it is now,” she recalls.
After Houthi rebels captured the capital, Sanaa, in 2014, Yemen has been embroiled in what the U.N. has described as the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” But in 2010, when Wolfe was researching which conflict in Yemen to work on, she says the conflict in the north was widely considered all but settled. Where there seemed to be increasing instability at the time was in the South, where grievances were growing stronger.
“The north and south had unified in the early ‘90s, and the south felt that they were getting fewer resources than the north,” Wolfe says. “I didn’t know it to the extent at the time, but violent extremist groups often recruit based on grievances, and that type of fragility is where they emerge.”
So, she designed a program to try to reduce those vulnerabilities toward recruitment into any type of political violence, including violent extremist groups. And on the community-level, she saw a lot of success.
“I actually had a lot of hope for Yemen then,” she says. “Then, Yemen became this bad case of foreign interference. Without external influence, the Houthis would not be able to do what they’re doing today. This is such an external conflict at this point; it’s not about Yemenis whatsoever. And that’s what breaks my heart.”
That kind of frustration is something Wolfe has had to deal with often in her work.
“You can do a beautiful peacebuilding program and really help people at a community level, but if the government continues to do things that don’t help or potentially hurt people, there’s only so much the program can do,” she says.
In Nigeria, for example, Wolfe designed a peacebuilding program to address a conflict between pastoralists and farmers. Then, the government instituted laws that significantly harmed the pastoralists. Despite this, many people that Mercy Corps worked with continued to help each other in the crisis. On a community level, she says, they were able to withstand the “negative externalities.”
Rebecca Wolfe (left) stands beside community members in Nasarawa state, Nigeria. Photo: Mercy Corps
“But you can’t scale that in an overall negative environment,” she says. “You’re basically just treading water. The most we can do is tread water with these communities until the overall politics gets worked out.”
Still, Wolfe believes that changing behavior is the “most sustainable change” Mercy Corps can have. That means looking deeper than macro factors – like country-level unemployment statistics – to understand why people make decisions to participate in violence.
Wolfe says that’s actually how Mercy Corps became more well-known in the peace and conflict space, because they published a number of studies that showed that policymakers and practitioners were giving economic factors, like unemployment, too much weight over other factors, like grievances.
“People have taken that to think we don’t think economics matters at all,” she says, “and that’s not the case! It’s just that it had been over-weighted in the response compared to other things.”
Wolfe says that even with economically-based programs – like vocational training and unconditional cash transfers – it’s less about the economics per se and more about how better economic situations shift perceptions of local governments.
Wolfe is also exploring how economic programs can help reduce perceptions among host communities that refugees will hurt them financially and harm their job prospects. Despite a lot of data that shows that refugees and migrants are often an economic boost, that kind of fear is perpetuating many of the social and political challenges of refugees and migrants.
In the coming months, Wolfe will also publish two studies based in Nigeria – “inshallah,” or God willing, she says with a laugh. One will be on peacebuilding between farmers and pastoralists, while the other will be on how to help former members of Boko Haram – many of whom were kidnapped and didn’t have a choice – reintegrate into their communities.
Although Wolfe never would have predicted that this is where her career would take her – that she’d be known as an expert on violent extremism and brief the Pentagon on stabilization strategies – it’s a mantle she’s assumed with grace.
“Especially given that certain policies have made us worse off,” she says, “if there are things I can do to use this money in a more productive way, I do believe I have something to contribute.”
Please welcome our newest Global Washington members. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with their work and consider opportunities for support and collaboration!
Amazon
Amazon is a multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence in Seattle, Washington. amazon.com
Coopersmith Law+Strategy
As a premier Northwest law and strategic firm, Coopersmith Law + Strategy has deep roots locally, but have leveraged that knowledge into a powerful team of global experts. Their extensive expertise in both government and business allow them to offer strategic guidance with global development, including work with multi-lateral organizations, global investment initiatives and business and strategic partnership opportunities. coopersmithlaw.com
InformEd International
InformEd International works to significantly improve children’s educational outcomes in developing countries. Through monitoring and evaluation consulting services, InformEd assists international NGOs to carry out comprehensive evaluations, design robust M&E systems, and embed data-driven decision-making in to their development programs. Additionally, InformEd has designed social enterprises benefiting the education sector in southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, creating sustainable and scalable solutions to the toughest education challenges of today. informedinternational.org
Kati Collective
Kati Collective is dedicated to improving 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. Kati Collective is compelling and impactful, aligning resources from across its network with global and local expertise in order to provide clients with targeted, cost-effective project resources. katicollective.com
RoundGlass
RoundGlass is a socially-conscious global firm spurring innovation and disruption in digital health and wellness. The company believes that change at scale must start with motivating and transforming individuals to live a life of wellbeing and meaningfulness. round.glass
Tondo Foundation
Tondo Foundation supports effective solutions for communities in South and Southeast Asia. The Foundation works with NGOs and social enterprises by building relationships based on mutual trust and respect, spending time and energy to understand problems, providing funding and strategic support, and collaborating to achieve joint goals. tondofoundation.org
Abby Maxman was a long-time admirer of Oxfam America before she became its president and CEO in June 2017. Throughout her 30-year career in international aid and development, she has always been drawn to Oxfam’s underlying philosophy, “that systemic injustices keep people poor, and it’s not an accident,” says Maxman.
