April 2018 Newsletter

Welcome to the April 2018 issue of the Global Washington newsletter.

IN THIS ISSUE

Letter from our Executive Director

Kristen Dailey

Over the past several years, Global Washington has elevated the importance of the people and ecosystems that supply your daily cup of coffee. Coffee is predominantly grown in lower- and middle-income countries, and issues of income disparity and a changing global climate have a dramatic impact on the lives of people who make their living within the coffee industry.

This year, Global Washington has taken a closer look at the disparity between men and women in the coffee supply chain. Although women play major roles in the early stages of coffee production – laboring in the field, harvesting coffee cherries, and processing the beans – men typically have the more lucrative roles of transporting and marketing the product.

Fortunately, several Global Washington members, such as Oikocredit, Fair Trade USA, Global Partnerships, and Starbucks, are working to close this gender gap and empower women in coffee-growing regions. So grab a cup of coffee (or tea, if that’s more your thing) and read about their stories below.

In addition to coffee, there are some other fascinating topics coming up. Global Washington will be partnering with Tableau Foundation and Seattle Pacific University to bring you an inside look at how data and technology are advancing the Sustainable Development Goals. Ms. Atefeh Riazi, the United Nations Chief Information and Technology Officer, will be speaking at a free public event on April 25. We are also partnering with the Seattle International Foundation and Pangea on May 16 to examine current issues of migration from Central America. And lastly, save the date of May 30 for an event with PATH and Days for Girls around World Menstrual Hygiene Day. More information on that event will be coming soon.

KristenSignature

Kristen Dailey
Executive Director

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Issue Brief

Women Hold Up Half The Cup

Gender Imbalances in the Production of America’s Most Popular Beverage

By Erika Koss

Woman picking coffee cherries in Matagalpa, Nicaragua.

Woman picking coffee cherries in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. Photo: Gwenn Dubourthoumieu

At least two dozen pairs of human hands are involved in the production of a single cup of coffee. And many of those hands belong to women. This month, in honor of the Global Coffee Expo—the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s annual conference, held in Seattle from April 19-22—Global Washington has focused on an important issue within the coffee sector: Gender Equality.

In their internationally bestselling book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn observe that if the moral challenge of the 19th century was slavery, and the 20th century’s battle was against totalitarianism, then the 21st century’s “moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.”

A recent Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) paper, “A Blueprint for Gender Equality in the Coffeelands,” summarizes some of the challenges that female farmer-producers face:  “Overall, women earn less income, own less land, control fewer assets, have less access to credit and market information, greater difficulty obtaining inputs, and fewer training and leadership opportunities.”

A coffee farmer enjoys a cup of coffee at a tasting event (called a “cupping”), at the Nyampinga Cooperative, a women’s coffee cooperative in southern Rwanda. Photo: Erika Koss.

All the world’s coffee grows between Earth’s imaginary lines of latitude, the Tropic of Cancer (235 North) and the Tropic of Capricorn (235 South). Coffee aficionados know this zone as the “Bean Belt.” Within the more than 75 coffee-producing countries encompassed by the Bean Belt, there are significant economic disparities between male and female coffee producers.

The SCAA Sustainability Council finds that this gender gap in coffee value chains is most prevalent in four key areas: 1) distribution of labor, 2) income, 3) ownership, and 4) leadership and decision-making.

Many inequalities at the farm level are rooted in the “double burden” that women experience while managing both the farm and the household (which regularly includes at least several children and the elderly). Research shows that women perform most of the fieldwork, harvest work, and processing of coffee. Men often conduct the transport, export, and marketing of coffee—jobs that regularly provide a higher wage and take them away from the farms and their families.

One of the major challenges for rural women throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America, are the customary land laws that prohibit women from owning their own land. As a Gender Issue Brief by Sweden’s development agency explains, less than 20% of agricultural women own their land, which is a major challenge since land ownership is linked to food security and poverty reduction.

In addition to identifying the major challenges in gender disparities, the SCAA provides several recommendations for reducing inequities between men and women in coffee:

  1. Include women and men equally in technical training: Traditionally, women in coffee have been excluded from technical trainings, but in recent years, this is starting to change thanks to organizations such as TWIN Trading. Their gender-inclusive approaches have proven successful in East Africa where mixed-gender programs focus on sustainable agriculture, financial management, and improving coffee quality.
  2. Promote community-driven initiatives that encourage balanced households: Working directly with farmer households to build greater gender balance takes time, but it can lead to transformative and lasting change in coffee-growing communities.An excellent example of this is the Gender Action Learning System (GALS­), which was co-created by sociologist Linda Mayoux with a coffee cooperative in western Uganda, Bukonzo Joint. The methodology is designed to increase the visibility of female farmers along the coffee value chain and to enhance women’s decision-making power at the household level.  GALS helps women gain greater control over assets and ensure they have more equal access to income within their households. Since the original project in 2004, GALS has been implemented in other coffee-growing communities including Colombia and Rwanda.
  3. Empower women and men equally with access to financial resources: Economic empowerment can only be achieved through increasing women’s access to land, income, and credit. If this can be achieved, it has the potential to dramatically improve coffee quality, increase productivity, and alleviate poverty.
  4. Research gender equality in the coffee industry: There is much we still do not know about the best ways to elevate women’s roles throughout the coffee supply chain. The International Women’s Coffee Alliance is a non-profit organization founded in 2003 that organizes women in coffee-producing countries. Their Research Alliance works toward increased awareness and funding for much-needed research regarding gender and coffee. In the last few years, their newly formed data-gathering initiative estimates that in three coffee-producing countries (Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Rwanda), there are more than 135,000 female coffee producers, approximately 30 percent of the total.
  5. Advocate for gender equality: We all have a role to play in helping address the gender pay gap in coffee production. In 2014, the Coffee Quality Institute founded the “Partnership for Gender Equity”—a set of principles created to guide the coffee industry forward.The women, whose hands nurture coffee seedlings, pick coffee cherries from trees, and sort “parchment beans” after processing are vital to a complex global supply chain. But there are an uncounted number of women involved in exporting and importing green coffee beans, as well as roasting, grinding, packaging, and brewing.It is time women at all these stages of coffee production are recognized and fairly compensated. Because from farmer to barista, women hold up—at least—half the cup.

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By increasing women’s access to land, credit, market information, agricultural inputs, and training, the following Global Washington members are working to ensure greater gender equity in coffee production.

Eastern Washington University professor, Julia Smith, teaches anthropology and researches the high-end coffee market in Costa Rica. In her first encounter with women’s work in coffee in the 1990s, Smith observed that women worked harder than men during the coffee harvest. Day after day, they started early in the morning, preparing meals for the family, then picked coffee all day, and finally finished up by washing clothes and collapsing into bed. Today, more women are taking on leadership roles in producing coffee for the specialty coffee market, making decisions about what varieties to grow, how to process it, and how to sell it.

Fair Trade USA is a nonprofit organization and the leading certifier of Fair Trade products in North America. Their rigorous standards around the production of coffee help protect fundamental human rights, ensure safe, healthy working conditions, protect the environment, and deliver additional economic resources to producing communities. In addition to these requirements, Fair Trade also sets minimum prices 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.

Global Partnerships is an impact-led investor whose mission is to expand opportunity for people living in poverty. The organization invests in social enterprise partners who empower people to earn a living and improve their lives. Over the last 24 years, Global Partnerships has impacted more than 8.9 million lives in 19 countries across Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa as a result of deploying $287 million in impact-led investments to 118 partners. Some of these partners include agricultural businesses and cooperatives that help smallholder coffee farmers, both women and men, increase their incomes and strengthen their economic well-being.

Landesa is a global organization that champions secure land rights for rural women and men. The majority of the world’s poorest people share three traits: they live in rural areas, rely on land for their livelihoods, and do not have secure rights to own, access, or use that land. Women are especially burdened. Although women comprise a large portion of the world’s agricultural labor force, women generally have weaker rights to land when compared to their male counterparts. Yet, secure land rights are a key factor in creating an enabling environment that increases women’s participation, profit, and benefit in agriculture and food systems. To close this gender gap, Landesa works with governments, civil society, and the private sector to conduct research and develop gender equitable laws and programming to empower women in emerging economies with secure land rights.

Oikocredit US promotes and facilitates the global work of Oikocredit International, a cooperative social investor that maximizes social and environmental impact through targeted investments to serve vulnerable groups. Led by a dedicated agricultural unit, Oikocredit invests across the coffee value chain with 41 partners in 12 countries. Oikocredit supports farmers with capacity building grants, education, and network services. In all investments, Oikocredit seeks to enhance women’s participation in leadership and to address women’s empowerment at the local level by supporting partners who have dedicated services and programs to address gender equality.

Seattle University was the first Fair Trade University in the Pacific Northwest. As part of the University’s journey to garner Fair Trade certification, Seattle University collaborated with the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) – Managua to develop a new fair trade coffee. In partnership with farmers in the Nicaraguan cooperatives, they developed Café Ambiental, SPC, a student-run social enterprise. Other projects included developing a more sustainable way to treat coffee wastewater, and establishing a scholarship fund for coffee farmers’ children. Most recently, they collaborated with a gender-balanced cooperative in Penãs Blancas that promotes greater participation of women and young people.

Starbucks Since 1971, Starbucks Coffee Company has been committed to ethically sourcing and roasting high-quality arabica coffee. Today, with more than 27,000 stores globally, Starbucks is the premier roaster and retailer of specialty coffee in the world. In March, the Starbucks Foundation announced a partnership strategy to empower at least 250,000 women and families in coffee, tea and cocoa growing communities by 2025, including a new global partnership with the Malala Fund to promote girls’ education and expand leadership opportunities for young women in India and Latin America. The partnership adds to Starbucks’ ongoing social investments worldwide with organizations like Mercy Corps, Eastern Congo Initiative, and Heifer International.

Thriive’s mission is building shared prosperity in vulnerable, global communities. The organization makes pay-it-forward loans of up to $10,000 to ambitious small business entrepreneurs to grow their businesses and create desperately needed jobs. Unlike a bank or microfinance loan, ThriiveCapital loans are not repaid in cash, but by business donations of an equivalent value of job training, income-enhancing products, or basic necessities to disadvantaged community members. Thriive supports many different types of businesses, including coffee growers, roasters, and retailers in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Kenya, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

Woodland Park Zoo  Since 1996, Woodland Park Zoo’s Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program (TKCP) has worked with the communities of Yopno-Uruwa-Som (YUS) to protect the endangered tree kangaroo and its rain forest habitat in Papua New Guinea. In 2009, TKCP partnered with the indigenous YUS landowners and their families to help address economic challenges. In collaboration with Woodland Park Zoo and Seattle-based coffee roaster Caffe Vita, the people of YUS have sold more than 75 tons of their shade-grown YUS Conservation Coffee directly to the international market. Coffee farming in YUS is a family affair, with both men and women playing important roles in its production. TKCP strives to promote gender equity by engaging women in technical trainings, management decision-making, and access to household income.

Erika Koss is a PhD candidate in International Development Studies at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where her research examines the geopolitics of coffee's supply chain of coffee with a focus on gender justice and climate change.

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Organization Profile

Standing on the “Impact-Led Edge,” Global Partnerships Invests in Greater Gender Equity and Agricultural Livelihoods

By: Joanne Lu

Woman farmer

Woman farmer. Photo: Global Partnerships

For Global Partnerships (GP), impact at the household drives every investment. And often, that means investing in women.

GP was founded in 1994 as a grant-making nonprofit by Bill and Paula Clapp, whose vision also included the founding of Global Washington. GPs’ mission then – as it is today – is to expand opportunity for people living in poverty. Twelve years later the organization pivoted to being an impact-led investor to reach more people living in poverty.

Impact investments are made with the intention to generate positive social and environmental impact as well as a financial return. But GP isn’t just an impact investor. GPs’ Chief Impact & Research Officer, Peter Bladin, points out that the organization is an “impact-led investor.” Meaning their investments in social enterprise partners are first and foremost focused on making a sustainable positive impact in the lives of people living under $3.20 a day in sub-Saharan Africa or $5.50 a day in Latin America and the Caribbean (The World Bank’s regional poverty lines).

GP’s social enterprise partners currently span 19 countries. They also fall within GP’s 13 investment initiatives, including women-centered finance with education, urban sanitation, cookstoves, solar lights, health clinics, smallholder farmer market access and others.

“It’s a very broad spectrum, but it’s all driven by entities delivering products and services that are meaningful for households living in poverty,” Bladin said.

The organization launched each of its initiatives after extensively researching the most meaningful market-based solutions that would have a sustainable impact at the household level in the regions it serves. These initiatives are the guidelines for the types of social enterprises (or “partners”) GP invests in.

“Our Initiatives carefully focus on who the target audience is, such as women under a certain poverty level, and what is delivered to them, such as loans plus education,” Bladin said. “This very focused definition on the “who” and the “what” allow us to better understand the expected outcome. We use research, academic and otherwise, that has defined the outcomes in similar situations. By using this approach, it allows us to be more confident in the expected outcome. We also test into these outcomes with select case studies to verify we see the same positive impact.”

Farming family

Farming family. Photo: Global Partnerships.

And much of this research demonstrates that one of the most effective ways to make an impact is by investing in women. Evidence shows that women invest as much as 10 times more in the health and well-being of their families. A child is 20 percent more likely to survive and thrive if it is born into a household in which the mother manages the budget. In addition, when women have the same amount of land as men, there is a 10 percent increase in crop yields. Gender equality in agriculture could also reduce the number of undernourished people globally by as much as 150 million.

That’s why all of GP’s investments are benefiting women, even if it’s not within one of their exclusively women-centered initiatives. For instance, even though women do most of the field work and make up nearly half of all smallholder farmers, contextual barriers make it challenging to work directly with women in agriculture. But by investing in enterprises that address the many needs of smallholder farmers – not just improved inputs like fertilizer and seeds, but also credit, technical assistance, and improved market access – GP is able to invest at various points where the supply chain fails to reach and create value for women.

As an example, Aldea Global is one of GP’s partners in Nicaragua that works with lawyers to help farmers wade through the complicated legal process of land acquisition. Once all the correct documents are filed with the local registrar, Aldea Global presents the farmer with a new land title along with a cash grant. Although they don’t work exclusively with women, they do provide support to women, many of whom, as first-time land owners, are able to transform their lives (and those of their families) with newfound independence, self-esteem, and access to financial products and services.

Because coffee is such a major cash crop where GP invests, many of its partners within the “smallholder farmer market access” initiative focus on coffee cooperatives that supply to specialty brands. A couple of its partners – Aldea Global and APROCASSI in Peru – have very successfully engaged with women-only coffee co-ops. APROCASSI’s women’s group, for example, supplies beans to Allegro Coffee, which is sold at Whole Foods.

Still, GP acknowledges that moving agricultural communities toward more gender equity is a slow process that requires shifts in social, cultural, economic and political norms.

“We think that private capital will play a critical role in unlocking opportunities while legal and cultural norms shift, allowing more women to engage in the market,” Bladin said.

As they work toward that, Bladin says GP also has plans to continue expanding. They have reached almost 10 million people since 1994, and Bladin says they’re on track to reach 30 million by 2024. He also hopes they’ll have significantly more outstanding capital in the next decade to invest in enterprises that are scaling up or just getting started.

But perhaps more importantly, Bladin says GP wants to encourage more investors to join them on the “impact-led edge.”

“We want to stay on that edge,” he said. “And we want to raise the profile of telling people there is an edge – that even among impact investors, you can have more of an impact if you’re not exclusively focused on financial returns.”

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New Member Profile

Fair Trade USA Shows How Social Impact and Coffee Quality Go Hand in Hand

By: Joanne Lu

Marliah holds freshly harvested coffee cherries.

Marliah, a member of a coffee co-op in Aceh, the northern-most province in Sumatra, holds freshly harvested coffee cherries. Photo: Bennett Wetch. © 2015 Fair Trade USA.

Coffee has been at the center of Fair Trade USA since its beginning.

When the nonprofit organization launched in 1998, it had one product – coffee – and just a handful of partner companies. Now, as the leading third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in North America, Fair Trade USA works with more than 1,300 companies to source products and ingredients that foster sustainable livelihoods for farmers and workers and protect the environment.

In its recently announced sustainability standards, the Seattle-based co-op REI even listed Fair Trade USA as a preferred certification for its suppliers.

In addition to coffee, Fair Trade certifies and promotes more than 30 product categories from around the globe, including tea, produce, sugar, cocoa, spices, seafood, apparel, home goods and more. According to the organization, Fair Trade USA and its partners have helped deliver over $500 million in additional economic impact to farmers, workers, and fishermen since 1998.

It all began with a coffee cooperative in Nicaragua. Current President & CEO Paul Rice founded Fair Trade USA after spending 11 years in Nicaragua, where he organized cooperatives and trained farmers. During that time, he helped launch the country’s first Fair Trade organic coffee export cooperative, PRODECOOP. The success of PRODECOOP showed Rice just how transformative it can be when the most vulnerable people along a value chain are treated with respect.

Maria Elva Correa Torres, 40, shows her coffee plants in Cajamarca, Peru

Maria Elva Correa Torres, 40, shows her coffee plants in Cajamarca, Peru.
Photo: James A. Rodriguez. © 2015 Fair Trade USA.

That’s because the length and complexity of traditional value chains often allow unsafe and unfair practices to go unnoticed by consumers and the businesses that sell to them. When companies drive down prices to compete, it’s the farmers and workers whose livelihoods are often cut.

Coffee, in particular, goes through a long and complex process to get from farm to mug: Farmers choose (or are given) trees. They determine where to plant them. The coffee grows as a cherry on a tree. Then, the coffee is harvested – and immediately, its quality begins to degrade. The seed – or “bean” as it’s usually called – is removed from the cherry. The seed is fermented, dried, dried some more, then stored. After a bit, parts of the seed are removed, and it’s stored again. Then, it’s sold, shipped and packaged to sit in in a warehouse, before it’s purchased by a roaster. The coffee then goes through a roasting process, before it’s stored again and bagged. Only then is the coffee ground and brewed for consumption.

According to Fair Trade USA’s Director of Coffee Supply Chain Colleen Anunu, the value addition throughout the whole process sets coffee apart from other cash crops.

“All along these lines there are specific decisions that are made that can impact the quality of the coffee by the time that you drink it,” Anunu said. “It’s really a complex and unreliable trade scheme.”

Although the commercialization of Fair Trade goods began in the 1940s mostly as handicrafts sold in churches and fairs, specialty goods like coffee and chocolate have become prime products in the Fair Trade movement. That demand bolsters the global effort of producers, consumers, certifiers, brands, NGOs and academics to build a more just, transparent and equitable system of global trade. Whereas Fair Trade was initially just focused on rebalancing power dynamics so producers could have more determination in their products and sales, quality and the ability to know the suppliers to some extent now supplement the model.

Fair Trade USA works toward that ideal at various points along the value chain. To make sure the farmers and workers who are producing Fair Trade Certified products are being paid a fair and often above-market price, the organization audits transactions between businesses that sell Fair Trade Certified items and their international suppliers. Additionally, the organization educates consumers about Fair Trade and its impact.

But perhaps the most direct way Fair Trade USA is working to achieve its mission is through its certification process. Producer communities must meet the organization’s strict social, environmental, and economic standards, such as safe working conditions, no child or forced labor, no use of harmful chemicals, and proper waste disposal. When farmers and workers achieve certification, they earn an additional amount of money, called the Fair Trade Premium, with every sale. This fund is then used to address needs within the community.

“The important part is that farmers and workers vote together on how to use this money,” Fair Trade USA’s Director of Marketing and Communications Jenna LeDoux said. “They’re solving their own problems on their own terms.”

Children at school

The Gumutindo Coffee Cooperative in Uganda voted to use some of its Fair Trade community development funds to repair the roofs of the local school buildings after a big storm, as well as to purchase school desks. The community development funds also support teacher training.
Photo: Bennett Wetch. © 2015 Fair Trade USA.

Although Fair Trade is a powerful strategy for economic empowerment, there continues to be a discussion on how to promote more gender equity. Especially in long, complex value chains like coffee, women do a majority of the labor but are often overlooked in the distribution of benefits. They do the housework and in some areas a majority of the farm work, as well, but because their husbands and sons primarily own the land and market the product away from home, women don’t usually have a say in how the money is spent or saved. Training, too, is often conducted for landowners who don’t put the learning into practice, because women are often the ones doing the labor.

Even in Fair Trade co-ops, gender imbalance can be prevalent. Many co-ops don’t recognize women as full members, as membership is partly based on land ownership. However, Anunu pointed out that there are levers within the Fair Trade model that are utilized to promote women’s economic and social empowerment, such as the Fair Trade Premium. The funds might be used as an additional payout to farmers, or it may go toward new warehouses, water treatment facilities, smokeless cook-stoves, women’s health screenings or whatever else the community wants the money to be used for.

Fair Trade standards are also applicable where hired laborers (farm and factory workers) are concerned. For instance, Fair Trade has strict standards around sexual harassment, maternity leave, and health and safety, and it also ensures that the Fair Trade committee is representative of the workforce. This means that if women are employed on a farm, women must be represented in the decision-making process around the Fair Trade Premium fund.

If women are able to receive training along with men, they can increase the profitability of products like coffee by engaging in practices that improve quality. Evidence has also shown that when women have a say in how income is spent or saved, the whole household benefits.

Overall, from a production perspective, Fair Trade is driving change through social and environmental standards. On the consumer side, Fair Trade awareness also is at an all-time high – at 63 percent of the U.S. population, according to Fair Trade USA.

But for coffee specifically, Anunu hopes to see more of a shift in the industry over the next decade toward an understanding that quality coffee and Fair Trade coffee aren’t mutually exclusive.

“Direct trade relationships between roasters and growers too often narrowly focus on the coffee quality and just assume there will be positive social impact because of the higher prices,” she said. In fact, these trading schemes can skip important shared values and assurances that are the basis for the Fair Trade model.

“You can’t have social impact and not focus on coffee quality, and vice versa,” she said. “They need each other to thrive.”

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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!

Friendly Water for the World

Friendly Water for the World expands global access to low-cost clean water technologies and information about health and sanitation through knowledge-sharing, training, community-building, peacemaking, and sustainability. It empowers communities abroad to take care of their own clean water needs. friendlywater.net

Northwest Immigrant Rights Project

Northwest Immigrant Rights Project promotes justice by defending and advancing the rights of immigrants through direct legal services, systemic advocacy, and community education. Northwest Immigrant Rights Project strives for justice and equity for all persons, regardless of where they were born. nwirp.org

Breakthrough

Breakthrough is a global human rights organization working to drive the culture change needed to build a world in which all people live with dignity, equality, and respect. Working out of centers in the U.S. and India, Breakthrough uses a potent mix of media, arts, and tech to reach people where they are and inspire them to take bold action to challenge the status quo. The organization often views the most crucial issues of our time through the lens of gender, because it believes that promoting equality for all genders is a pathway to promoting the human rights, and the humanity, of all people. Since 1999, Breakthrough has also worked to promote immigrant rights, racial justice, and the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS. Us.Breakthrough.tv

Fair Trade USA 

Fair Trade USA is a nonprofit organization that promotes sustainable livelihoods for farmers and workers, protects fragile ecosystems, and builds strong, transparent supply chains through independent, third-party certification. Its trusted Fair Trade Certified™ seal signifies that rigorous standards have been met in the production, trade and promotion of Fair Trade products from over 50 countries across the globe. fairtradecertified.org

Vulcan

Vulcan Inc. is the engine behind philanthropist and Microsoft cofounder Paul G. Allen’s network of organizations and initiatives. Empowered by Paul’s vision to make a positive difference in the world, Vulcan works to be a catalyst for change. The organization is committed to improving our planet through catalytic philanthropy, inspirational experiences, and scientific and technological breakthroughs.  vulcan.com

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Member Events

April 18: Greater Seattle Business Association // Business Development Workshop: How to be a seller on Amazon

April 18: World Affairs Council // Global Classroom: Taiwan in the Balance

April 21: OneWorld Now! // Get Global Youth Conference

April 23: Washington Nonprofits // Finance Unlocked for Nonprofits

April 24: University of Washington and Landesa // Roy Prosterman Lecture and Sustainable International Development Alumni Celebration

April 26: University of Washington // Panel | Women’s Economic Rights in India, Liberia, and Myanmar: Issues and Interventions

April 28: Washington Nonprofits // TACOMA: Tools for Running an Effective Nonprofit

May 2: Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce// Women in Business & Leadership Initiative – Spring Symposium 2018

May 2: Washington Nonprofits // ONLINE: 10 Tips to Use Video to Fuel Your Fundraising and Marketing

May 7: Seattle University // Peter L. Lee Endowed Lecture in East Asian Culture and Civilization

May 8: Washington Nonprofits // Social Media 101 for Nonprofits

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Career Center

Highlighted Positions

Associate Scientist, Intellectual Ventures

Program Officer, International Visitor Program, World Affairs Council

Communications Coordinator, Seattle International Foundation

Innovation Manager, Impact Lab, PATH


Check out the GlobalWA Job Board for the latest openings.

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GlobalWA Events

April 17: Networking Happy Hour with Friends of GlobalWA, WGHA and World Affairs Council

April 19: Women Hold Up Half the Cup – Empowering women in coffee-growing regions of the world

April 25: How data and technology can advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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Oxfam America Announces Fatema Z. Sumar as New Vice President of Global Programs

Today, international development and anti-poverty organization Oxfam America announced that Fatema Z. Sumar is joining Oxfam’s Senior Leadership Team as Vice President of Global Programs.

Ms. Sumar joins Oxfam America following a distinguished career in the U.S. government where she led U.S. efforts to advance sustainable development and economic policy in emerging markets and fragile countries. Most recently, Ms. Sumar served as Regional Deputy Vice President for Europe, Asia, Pacific, and Latin America at the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), where she managed investments focused on international growth and poverty reduction. Prior to MCC, she served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia at the U.S. Department of State and as a Senior Professional Staff Member on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Chairman John Kerry.

Read more: https://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/oxfam-america-announces-fatema-z-sumar-as-new-vice-president-of-global-programs/

United Nations Establishes Tableau as Visual Analytics Standard, Streamlines Global Adoption of Platform

NEW YORK AND SEATTLE, 27 March 2018 — The United Nations and Tableau Software (NYSE: DATA) are proud to announce an unprecedented agreement that provides access to Tableau’s world class visual analytics to professionals working in 193 Member States across the United Nations system.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, speaking at the launch of the Centre for Humanitarian Data in The Hague in December 2017, highlighted the growing importance placed on data systems for disaster response. The event showcased the role of data-informed decision-making applied to addressing social development issues and crisis response, including several innovations.

Read more: https://www.tableau.com/about/press-releases/2018/united-nations-establishes-tableau-visual-analytics-standard-streamlines

Working Together to End the Water Crisis on World Water Day

By Carina Weyer

Girl at water pump

Photo Credit: Dennis Lupenga/WaterAid (Malawi).

In 1993, the United Nations General Assembly designated March 22 as World Water Day. Now, more than twenty years later, World Water Day continues to be recognized as part of the effort to focus attention on the importance of clean water, improved sanitation, and the sustainable management of freshwater resources.

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Learning to Leap – Educational Advancement in the Digital Age

By: Ulrike Hoessle

Rebecca Winthrop

Rebecca Winthrop, senior fellow and director of the Center for Universal Education at Brookings. Photo: Ulrike Hoessle.

If you visit one of the poor communities around Lucknow in the Indian State of Uttar Pradesh, you might be amazed to see a school with a dirt floor, where teacher and students are discussing and applying the lessons from an educational video in the local language.  That is how the non-profit Digital Study Hall, with support from Global Washington member Mona Foundation, mitigates the lack of highly trained teachers and provides high quality education to the poorest.

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William H. Gates Sr. to Receive the Roy L. Prosterman Humanitarian Award

SEATTLE—Landesa is awarding William H. “Bill” Gates Sr. with the inaugural Roy L. Prosterman Humanitarian Award at Landesa’s Seed the Change gala on March 15, 2018 in Seattle, WA.

Landesa helps women and men living in the world’s poorest areas gain access to opportunity and break cycles of poverty. More than 50 years ago, Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Landesa, Roy Prosterman, embarked on a mission that has become his life’s work: providing secure, legal land rights to rural women and men. Continue Reading

One By One and Worldwide Fistula Fund Combine To Stop Fistula and Other Devastating Childbirth Injuries

Seattle – One By One (OBO) and Worldwide Fistula Fund (WFF) will join forces to help more women living with

childbirth injuries such as fistula, a preventable condition that leaves poor women constantly leaking urine or feces . Combining the organizations will be most beneficial to survivors, who will witness program expansion and receive optimized care, said OBO Board Chair Barb Gauld.

“Both OBO and WFF are long-time champions of holistic treatment and prevention of obstetric fistula in Africa,” Gauld said. “It makes perfect sense for us to combine our expertise and passion under one organization dedicated to fighting fistula and other devastating childbirth injuries with our proven methods of care.” Continue Reading

March 2018 Newsletter

Welcome to the March 2018 issue of the Global Washington newsletter.

IN THIS ISSUE

Letter from our Executive Director

Kristen Dailey

Numerous factors are needed to get the flywheel of an economy going, but one in particular is critical – Talent. By “talent” I mean the collective skills and abilities of the individuals who get the work done in any industry or other worthwhile endeavor.

Fostering talent in developing countries requires having schools that educate young people to learn not only the fundamentals, but also to become critical thinkers, problem-solvers, and lifelong learners. And when the needs of an economy shift, new skills training for adults helps ensure that the economy continues to work for everyone in the society.

This month we have been having several conversations about talent development. To kick things off, I interviewed Mansi Agarwal, the CEO of UpSkill India, which is a participant in our member Upaya Social Ventures’ startup accelerator. You can read more about Upaya’s work in this recent Geekwire article.

Mansi and I talked about the various things her organization is doing to ensure that the rural poor in India learn both the soft skills, as well as the more technical skills that they’ll need to take advantage of higher paying jobs in their region.

Together with the Mona Foundation, we also invited Rebecca Winthrop, a senior fellow and director at The Brookings Institution, to talk about what’s needed to “leapfrog” current educational systems in the developing world, ensuring abundant economic opportunity exists for young people in an increasingly digitized and automated global economy.

We also hosted the current iLEAP fellows who are in town from nine different countries in Africa and Latin America. They are demonstrating how grassroots leadership development can ignite social change in communities and collectively around the world. Truly inspirational!

And as if that weren’t enough, Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, joined us for a discussion with the World Affairs Council about the links between today’s anti-globalist movement and widening inequality, which he warned will only accelerate as automation and artificial intelligence eliminates many of the middle-income jobs globally.

Many GlobalWA members are actively working to ensuring that people in developing countries have the ability to increase their earning power and build vibrant local and national economies. I invite you to learn more in the stories below and support their efforts.

KristenSignature

Kristen Dailey
Executive Director

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Issue Brief

Responding to Automation and Global Employment Trends in the Developing World

By Andie Long

22-year-old Tanjit Pathak, from Barpeta, Assam, prepares an arecanut palm leaf on a heated mold. The leaf will be turned into biodegradable dinnerware.

22-year-old Tanjit Pathak, from Barpeta, Assam, prepares an arecanut palm leaf on a heated mold. The leaf will be turned into biodegradable dinnerware. Photo: Upaya Social Ventures.

The ability to learn new skills (and unlearn old ways) has become an increasingly indispensable competency for workers hoping to maintain their relevance in the New Economy. For some, including those who may never have been exposed to traditional teaching methods, new methods are being employed to help them leapfrog their learning to enter new industries.

Along these lines, Global Washington Executive Director, Kristen Dailey, recently interviewed Mansi Agarwal, the CEO of UpSkill India, about dynamic teaching techniques her organization uses. Agarwal is currently part of the “Entrepreneur in Residence Program,” just launched by Global Washington members, Upaya Social Ventures and Seattle University.

Agarwal described how new forms of training, delivered through 3D animation, videos, and even gamified feedback loops, have been helping young people from rural India gain the skills they need to become high demand workers for employers in their region.

For many people in developing and emerging countries, one of the primary challenges they face is the lack of available high quality, well-paying jobs. And leaders of those countries recognize that a key to greater economic development is matching the talents of their citizens with the needs of employers.

Workers often find themselves stuck in vulnerable employment situations, where the wages they earn are inadequate to meet their family’s basic needs. According to the International Labour Office (ILO) report, “World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2018,” around 42 percent of workers (1.4 billion people) globally are classified as having vulnerable employment – either working for themselves or in unpaid family work. In developing countries, this figure jumps to 76 percent of the workforce.

Within developing countries, the ILO report showed that there is also a growing number of people in extreme working poverty – that is, having a per capita household income or consumption of less than US$1.90 per day, adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP). This year, the number of those in extreme working poverty is expected to reach more than 114 million, or 40 percent.

Moderate working poverty is also widespread. In 2017, around 430 million workers in emerging and developing countries were estimated to be living on incomes of between US$1.90 and US$3.10 per day (PPP).

Globally, the unemployment rate is expected to fall slightly this year to 5.5 percent. However, as more people enter the labor market, the total number of unemployed is expected to stay above 192 million.

The high numbers of young people (ages 15-24) who struggle to find gainful employment in the Middle East and Northern Africa is of growing concern to watchers of the global economy.

At the recent World Government Summit in Dubai in February, Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, praised Arab leaders who had begun transitioning “from an oil-fed economy to a more diversified, more inclusive, reformed economy.” Nevertheless, with five million new workers set to enter the Middle East job market each year, global intelligence sources view youth unemployment as a growing security concern, if it is not adequately addressed.

According to the ILO, women are also less likely to participate fully in the labor market. In much of Northern Africa and the Middle East, women are half as likely as their male counterparts to hold jobs. Women are also limited in many places by the types of employment available to them.

Even more concerning than the growing employment shortage, is the potential for new technologies – such as robotics and artificial intelligence (A.I.) – to eliminate jobs entirely. A report by McKinsey & CoJobs Lost, Jobs Gained: Workforce Transitions in a Time of Automation,” argues that half of all current jobs are at risk due to automation, though this trend is likely to occur sooner in developed economies, where the higher cost of labor creates higher incentives to automate. But that doesn’t mean developing countries will remain unscathed.

In an interview this month with Knowledge@Wharton, Srikanth Karra, chief human resource officer at Mphasis, an Indian IT services firm, sees developing countries having potential to be hardest hit.

“Although they have the advantage of leapfrogging into the digital economy, the productivity divide between skilled and unskilled [populations] could lead to a bigger gap in income disparities,” Karra said.

How should developing countries respond? Karra says it’s important to look for what he calls the employment “adjacencies.” These are the jobs that are created alongside, or as a result of, new technologies and breakthroughs. Ideally, governments and corporations will try to map these adjacencies in order to realign the workforce to meet these new needs.

In addition to looking for the adjacency employment opportunities, others argue that increasing automation could enable low-skilled workers to take on more complex responsibilities.

Regardless of how all the predictions pan out, it’s clear that global employment trends are shifting. And those engaged in global development are moving quickly to prepare tomorrow’s workforce for the future.

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Numerous Global Washington members are helping people in developing countries attain the skills, resources, and opportunities they need to secure gainful, meaningful employment. Read more about them below, and consider how you might want to get involved.

iLEAP

For the past 10 years, nearly 650 people from 45 countries throughout Africa, Latin America, and Asia have experienced iLEAP’s transformative leadership training program. Based in Seattle, iLEAP works to create sustainable social change by growing, sustaining, and renewing social leaders in order to help them to be more effective in their work improving livelihoods and overall economic development.

Mavuno

Mavuno is a nonprofit organization that develops local leaders in eastern Congo to end extreme poverty in their own communities. By investing in leaders with loans, training, and market access, Mavuno organizes communities and builds businesses. Mavuno, which was founded in 2014, now works with over 1500 households near Beni in eastern Congo.

Mona Foundation

Since its founding in 1999, Mona Foundation has had a simple but compelling goal — to support grassroots educational initiatives that build stronger and more sustainable communities and ultimately alleviate poverty. Mona partners with organizations that work to reduce the barriers to education, improve quality of learning and cultivate agency of the individual. The foundation’s programs use an integrated approach to develop academic skills, and creative and moral capabilities, to transform young people into agents of change in service to their families and communities. Mona Foundation has awarded more than $12 million to 38 initiatives in 18 countries, providing access to quality education and training for more than 258,000 students, teachers and parents annually.

NetHope

The NetHope Academy Internship Program was initiated in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. With funding from the Accenture Foundation, NetHope scaled the program, offering it in Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Ghana, India, Egypt, and Liberia. NetHope provides technical training, soft skills training, and on-the-job training via internships at host organizations, which subsequently often offer full-time positions. Hosts include NetHope’s 50-plus global nonprofit members, banks, Internet Service Providers, Mobile Network Operators, other large companies, consulting firms, technology vendors, and various government programs. The goal is for graduates to find employment (including entrepreneurship) within 90 days of program completion and for employers to have access to qualified, competent entry-level IT professionals.

Path From Poverty (Formerly Women’s Enterprises International)

Path From Poverty has been reaching across cultures for 18 years, transforming lives and communities by working with women’s groups; empowering and equipping women to break the cycle of poverty and live into their God-given potential. Alone, women survive; but in a group, they thrive. Path From Poverty women’s groups provide support, accountability, sharing of best practices, and fellowship. The organization’s field staff, all of whom are Path From Poverty graduates, provide training in leadership development, project planning, financial stewardship and group governance.

Providence St. Joseph Health Global Partnerships

Providence St. Joseph Health Global Partnerships dedicates the volunteerism of its caregivers to the strengthening of health systems of Guatemala. In conjunction with the Guatemalan Ministry of Health and Medical Teams International, Global Partnerships assesses gaps in facilities services’ and sends clinicians to address those gaps through training Guatemalan clinicians, who in turn become medical skills multipliers by training hundreds more clinicians locally. By focusing on maternal, newborn and child health curricula, this work has the potential to impact over 100,000 people in Chicaman, Guatemala.

Remote Energy

Remote Energy empowers technicians to develop the necessary skills to design, install, maintain, and troubleshoot sustainable solar power systems. The organization also trains end users to operate and maintain their systems. Remote Energy’s classes are customized to meet the needs and goals of partners, and designed to be appropriate for students’ education level, electrical background, language and culture.

Street Business School 

Street Business School (SBS) is a global training organization, teaching others to bring its proven and effective business training and confidence building to their communities, empowering people to become self-sustaining entrepreneurs and leave poverty behind. The school’s world-class and world-changing model is scaling to reach 1 million people by 2027. This dream will become a reality when partners (other nonprofits) that attend Immersion Workshops deliver SBS to their communities. By training other non-profit organizations to amplify their work and increase the income of those they serve, this expansive partnership model lights up the world. Women in Street Business School are increasing their income from $1.35/day to $4.19/day.

Upaya Social Ventures

Upaya creates dignified jobs for the poorest of the poor by building scalable businesses with investment and consulting support. Since 2011, the organization has accelerated 20 small and growing businesses in India and invested in 14 of those companies; its 14 portfolio companies have created nearly 8,000 jobs as of December 2017. With offices in Seattle, Washington and New Delhi, India, Upaya has committed to a goal of helping partners create 15,000 jobs by the end of 2019.

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Organization Profile

Mona Foundation

By: Joanne Lu

Mona Foundation Kali

Kali, a graduate to the Barli Institute for Development of Rural Women in Indore, poses on her red motorbike. The Barli Institute is one of various grassroots educational institutions supported by the Mona Foundation. Photo: Mona Foundation.

 

Context is key for the Mona Foundation, and it has been since its founders first scrawled their ideas for the organization on the back of a napkin in 1999.

According to its mission statement, the Mona Foundation “supports grassroots educational initiatives that provide education to all children, increases opportunities for women and girls, and emphasizes service to the community.” By putting funds into local organizations that provide women and children with holistic education and job skills training, Mona has found that a few dollars can make a huge impact.

For instance, just by funding a scholarship for $50 a month, Mona helped a school in Panama foster the talents of two indigenous girls from a community in which nearly half the families are homeless. After just three years at Badi School, Monica Espinosa and Madelaine Rodríguez won first place in a national competition for science research. They were then invited to present their findings at the International Science and Engineering Fair in Tucson, Arizona, where, out of 1,500 students from around the world, they placed second.

Mona funded the scholarship, but according to President and CEO Mahnaz Javid, it was pivotal for the school to come up with the eligibility criteria themselves. That’s because Mona believes every community knows best what they need to succeed. That’s also why Mona specifically supports organizations that have a close connection to the communities they’re in.

“In each country, context dictates the type of the skills that they need, so there is no cookie-cutter answer to the question of what education and skills training should look like,” Javid said.

Based on their knowledge of their community, Badi School chose to offer Mona’s scholarship to indigenous students, like Monica and Madelaine.

That approach – of never prescribing “expertise,” but supporting grassroots organizations in their own plans for growth – defines every aspect of Mona’s work, even measuring impact. Instead of evaluating projects against Mona’s standards of success, over the last two years, the foundation has asked every project it supports in 10 countries, How do you measure your effectiveness? What does success look like in your area?

“Because what looks like success in girls’ empowerment in India is going to be very different than in a country like Panama or Brazil,” Javid said.

Take Kali, for example. Kali is from a tribal family in the rural village of Alijajpur in India. She was able to attend the first few years of primary school, but then she contracted polio and had to drop out.

“So, she was born a girl, she was born poor and now, she was disabled,” Javid said. “She had three strikes against her before she even reached 5th grade. In a village like that, her future would have been bleak.”

But then a graduate introduced Kali to the Barli Institute for Development of Rural Women in Indore. Barli offers six months of skills training for rural women. It teaches them literacy, vocational skills so that they can making a decent living, organic agriculture, business management, and solar cooking, as well as maternity and early childhood care. Perhaps most importantly, it empowers women to find their voice so they can defend themselves, become advocates of women’s rights and education and help prevent early childhood marriages.

Through the Barli Institute, Kali earned a formal tailoring certificate and opened her own shop. She is now the highest earning tailor in her entire village. She has used her income to send all the children in her family to school, help her husband earn a certificate to work for the government and purchase a fitted red scooter so that she can get around more easily in spite of disability – which she is very proud of, as the only woman in the village with one.

Not only that, she is giving back to her community by teaching 12 other women in her village how to start their own businesses.

Mona Foundation Kali

Kali with family at her tailoring shop. Photo: Mona Foundation.

Kali is just one of the 8,000 women who have graduated from the Barli Institute so far, but her story is representative of nearly all of them. And at $350 per graduate, the Mona Foundation has covered all the costs – including room and board.

What the Barli Institute offers is exactly the type of holistic programs the Mona Foundation supports – ones that offer students opportunities to discover their talents in arts, music and STEM; that prepare them with skills to support themselves and their families; and, most importantly, that teach them to give back.

“The only way to sustain social and economic development within these countries is building the capacity of these grassroots [organizations] to lead their own development,” Javid said.

Empowering communities to chart the map for their own development is especially important with the advent of automation that’s threatening jobs across the globe – whether a surgeon in the U.S. or a factory worker in Bangladesh.

“For economically fortunate countries, within the next 10 years we need a different set of skills,” said Javid, who eschews the terms “developed” and “developing” countries.

“For economically less fortunate countries, we need to think about, ‘What if there aren’t even low-paying jobs available? What sort of skills would they need to have in order continue earning even $10 a day?’” she said. “It’s a different picture, but the same question.”

As the pressures of a changing global economy increase, the Mona Foundation is prepared to scale up, as well. According to Javid, a plan of action is already in place to double the number of students the foundation supports to 500,000 over the next three years. They’re also planning to add a few more projects in Chad, Gambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, and South Africa.

But, she noted, they’ll keep supporting their current partners until they decide – together – that the projects are ready to continue on their own.

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Changemaker

Kate Cochran, CEO of Upaya Social Ventures

By: Joanne Lu

Kate CochranBefore Kate Cochran joined a microfinance organization in 2003, she could’ve spouted off a long list of reasons why she’d never work in international development.

Now, 15 years later, she’s the CEO of Upaya Social Ventures, a nonprofit organization that invests in socially minded entrepreneurs in India, who each aim to create 1,000 jobs in three years for the poorest of the poor.

“I had this mindset that international development was this very inefficient process that was about alleviating pain as opposed to changing the underlying problem,” Cochran said.

“What microfinance opened up for me was the possibility of really making fundamental change at scale; and the fact that it is reliant upon the inner resourcefulness of the client – all of that spoke to me as something that was much more sustainable long-term.”

Although Cochran didn’t think she’d ever end up in international development, she always knew she’d be in the nonprofit sector. Growing up, her family lived the values of public service. Her mother was the “quintessential volunteer,” while her father turned down the Green Bay Packers in 1958 because he was already committed to the Marine Corps.

Cochran began her career in a variety of nonprofits before she decided to go to business school, still with the intention to work in a social space. But when she graduated from UCLA in 1997, the idea of social business or social enterprise hadn’t really taken hold yet.

Instead, she spent several years working in the arts and doing management consulting. Then, in 2003, she moved to Seattle, where she was soon invited to a fundraiser for Unitus, a microfinance organization.

She attended out of curiosity but was so hooked by the message of sustainability that by July, she was working for them. Although she was new to international development, she quickly learned what has taken others many years of disappointment to discover.

“The people around me at Unitus were very aware that we shouldn’t be talking about [microfinance] as a silver bullet,” Cochran said. “There are many things that need to go into increasing economic access for the bottom of the pyramid; microfinance alone isn’t going to solve poverty.”

In fact, Upaya was born out of a research project while she was at Unitus that asked, What can we do to sustainably serve those who are too poor and vulnerable for microfinance?

The answer her colleague, Sachi Shenoy, came up with was: We can give them a job.

According to Cochran, most people at the time believed that stability, in terms of housing, nutrition, education and health, needed to come first. Then, they could work on jobs. But Shenoy believed that jobs should come first so that people can then decide what they need, because for some people, even with 12 years of education – as vital as that is – they’re trapped in poverty until they can translate that education into a livelihood.

When Shenoy first proposed the Upaya model of investing in job-creating entrepreneurs, Cochran wasn’t sure it would work.

“I said, ‘I honestly think that sounds like a difficult model to execute, but I trust you and I love the vision. I will do whatever you need.’”

By then, she had left Unitus, and in 2011, she became the first board member of Upaya. Five years later, she joined Shenoy on staff as CEO.

“We’ve gone from 370 jobs in the first year of our operations to 8,000 jobs created so far,” Cochran said.

Upaya currently has a portfolio of 14 for-profit companies that its team in India sought out. They include a company that presses palm leaves into biodegradable, disposable dinnerware. Another provides battery-powered rickshaws – even solar-powered ones – to drivers to take the “drudgery” out of the job and so that more women can become drivers.

Kate Cochran

Photo credit: Lisa Bontje for Upaya Social Ventures.

Through a sampling of baseline and follow-up surveys, Upaya has found that 80 percent of job holders with their entrepreneurs are indeed climbing out of poverty.

Last year, Upaya also began offering accelerator programs. They just finished one on skill-building, and they’re currently accepting applications for an agribusiness one for 2018.

With the success they’ve seen just over the last seven years, Cochran said she feels there is “a lot of potential to be affecting tens of thousands of families,” especially as they begin to look at expanding beyond India. By 2020, she’s hoping to add another country, and maybe three or four in 10 years.

But, she noted, the impact could be even greater if more investors joined them in the early stage investment space. Cochran said that Upaya is typically the first investor, with a relatively small investment of about $50,000 to help “de-risk” these ventures. Meanwhile, bigger name investors tend to wait until the later stages.

“There are a lot of great entrepreneurs who could use this early stage hand-holding,” she said. “We want to send out this message like, ‘Come on in! The water’s fine!’ We’re not exactly to ourselves, but we are lonelier than we’d like here.”

She also hopes to see their teams on the ground grow to outnumber their Seattle staff.

“If in 10 years from now, I’ve been able to help drive that growth I’ll feel really satisfied,” she said.

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Member Events

March 15: Mona Foundation // Fashion for Girls Education and Equality

March 15: Landesa // Seed the Change

March 20: World Affairs Council // On Behalf of Themselves: Syrian Women Organize for Justice

March 22: Splash // Just Add Water

April 7: Mobility Outreach International // 2018 Steps to Healing Auction & Gala

April 21: OneWorld Now! // Get Global Youth Conference

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Career Center

Highlighted Positions

Community Giving and Special Events Officer, Agros International

Administrative Assistant, Seattle International Foundation

Senior Consultant, FSG


Check out the GlobalWA Job Board for the latest openings.

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GlobalWA Events

March 22: Networking Happy Hour with Friends of GlobalWA, WGHA, and World Affairs Council

April 2: How IDEO’s Design-Thinking Methodology Supports Innovative Solutions to Global Challenges

April 19: Coffee and Gender Reception

September 26: Microsoft Workshop – MSFT Products for Nonprofits (details soon)

SAVE THE DATE: GlobalWA 10th Annual Conference: December 6

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A Conversation with Robert Reich on Globalization and The Common Good

Robert Reich speaks with Meena Rishi, PhD.

Robert Reich speaks with Meena Rishi, PhD. Photo: Nathan Sharpe/WACSeattle

Supporters of Global Washington and World Affairs Council met on Monday, March 5, with Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton. A political commentator, professor, and author, Reich previously served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

In town to promote his new book, The Common Good, Reich was scheduled to address a sold out Town Hall event that evening. At the invite-only gathering at Global Washington, Reich answered wide-ranging questions posed by the audience, and moderated by Seattle University economics professor, Meena Rishi, PhD.

Rishi kicked off the conversation with a provocative question. While Reich’s new book mourns the erosion of the common good, she asked whether the rules of the game were ever really fair.

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Celebrating Jim Parke

buildOn Founder & CEO Jim Ziolkowski reflects on the passing of Jim Parke, a founding leader of the buildOn Movement. As CFO of GE Capital, Jim Parke was one of the earliest supporters of buildOn, playing a crucial role in helping the organization get off the ground. He remained a passionate force in the buildOn Movement until the end.

Read more: https://www.buildon.org/2018/02/celebrating-jim-parke/