By Kaitlin Marshall

American Red Cross

Since 2011, the situation in Syria has escalated from a series of peaceful demonstrations to civil war. Nationwide protests against President Bashar Al-Assad were met with violent crackdowns at the hands of the government and the Syrian army. In January 2015, the death toll surpassed 220,000 and has since been estimated to be as high as 310,000. As Syria has plunged further into violence, the country’s infrastructure has been left in ruins. More than 11 million Syrian refugees have fled their homes to find safety abroad. What began as an isolated conflict in one country is now a crisis that requires the world to come together to give displaced Syrians a new beginning. Continue Reading

Welcome to the November 2015 issue of the Global Washington newsletter.

IN THIS ISSUE

• Letter from our Executive Director
• Question of the Month
• Featured Speaker – Sally Osberg: Social Entrepreneurs: Our R&D for a Beyond Better World
• Featured Speaker – Mark Suzman: The Most Important To-Do List for 2015
• Featured Speaker – Kiran Bedi: Agenda For Women
• Welcome New Members
• GlobalWA Member Events
• Career Center
• GlobalWA Events

Letter from our Executive Director

The word “disruptive” is often used to describe new technologies or services that can change our lives. Washington state has a rich history in disruptive businesses — Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks, to name a few. Disruptive innovation seems to be in our DNA here in the Pacific Northwest, and it also influences how we tackle the world’s most complex challenges, from malaria to income inequality.

We call this “Disruptive Development,” meaning solutions that have a transformational impact on a society to improve lives, and it is the theme of the 2015 Global Washington Conference on December 10. We will examine trends in international development and spotlight some of the most disruptive interventions. Non-profit and for-profit organizations such as Mercy Corps, PATH, Global Good and PwC will discuss breakthrough technologies and approaches. Disruptive grantmakers from the Gates Foundation, Lemelson Foundation and Tableau Foundation will present new models of philanthropy that aim to advance inventions.

I hope you will join us to add your voice to the conversation. Below you can read more from our keynote speakers, and you can learn more about the conference here.

See you on December 10^th!

Kristen Dailey
Executive Director

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Question of the Month

Have you seen the agenda for our annual conference on December 10? What session and/or speaker are you most excited about?

Please click here to respond.

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Featured Speaker

Social Entrepreneurs: Our R&D for a Beyond Better World

By Sally Osberg

The quintessentially human drive to set things right is what propels change and gets us beyond better, bringing an end to injustice, conflict, and poverty. How? By imagining a far fairer and better world and deeply understanding the problem before developing a solution.

Andrea and Barry Coleman couldn’t forget what they saw during a trip to Somalia in 1986: hemorrhaging patients being carted to clinics in wheelbarrows, while abandoned and rusting vehicles littered the roadsides.

This signaled to the Colemans a health care delivery system in deep disarray. It wasn’t simply the medical supplies that were lacking—vaccines, for example, or bed nets—but the vehicle mechanics and maintenance protocols required to transport those essential supplies to patients, often in remote areas.

Andrea was a former motorcycle racer and Barry a journalist who covered the sport. With their expertise, the Colemans knew what it would take to build an effective health care transport system for Africa’s rugged roads and terrain. Driven by the conviction that such a system could actually be achieved, they created Riders for Health.

From food insecurity to lack of access to health care to growing environmental threats—if we’re going to solve the world’s most pressing problems, we need social entrepreneurs like the Colemans every bit as much as we need great institutions and great global leaders.

Working on the front lines, social entrepreneurs fight disease, poverty, and injustice with their innovative approaches. They are proof that health care can be delivered efficiently and equitably; that sustainability not only trumps resource depletion, but makes for better business in the long run; and that we’re all in this together.

We need these change-makers; we need their agency—the creativity, discipline, and drive they bring to challenges confronting humanity and the planet. But what is it that makes them so distinctive and so indispensable?

First, they are entrepreneurs. Like their counterparts in the business world, social entrepreneurs are determined to drive change with their innovative ideas. Both aim to disrupt a status quo they see as sub-optimal. For the business entrepreneur, this might be a product or service that doesn’t work well, but is the only option on the market. Social entrepreneurs, however, aren’t just concerned with inconvenience or inefficiency; they target problems that cause outright harm, especially for poor and marginalized populations.

Andrea and Barry Coleman didn’t want to put new vehicles on the road just to improve the way medical supplies were transported. Instead they aimed to permanently change the health care delivery system across the developing world—providing reliable health transport by placing vehicles on preventative maintenance schedules, eliminating breakdowns, reducing costs, and improving efficiency.

Within every social entrepreneur is an unwavering belief that big, seemingly intractable problems offer unsurpassed opportunities for change. Instead of cursing the darkness, social entrepreneurs shine a light of possibility that shows how even our toughest problems can be solved. The Skoll Foundation provides support for many of these change-makers, and we’re proud to count ourselves as their partners.

Strategy guru Roger Martin and I explore learnings from Riders for Health and other world-changing social entrepreneurs in our new book, Getting Beyond Better: How Social Entrepreneurship Works. Their stories, their approaches, and their impact on the world deserve to be better known and understood so that business, government, and citizens the world over can join them in creating a far better and fairer future for everyone.

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Featured Speaker

The Most Important To-Do List for 2015

By Mark Suzman

The saying goes that if you have too many priorities, you actually have none at all. I wholeheartedly agree, even if I’m not always able to practice this with my own daily to-do list.

The same principle holds true when taking on complex issues at an international scale. At the Gates Foundation — where I lead our work in policy and advocacy — we are big supporters of targeted efforts to tackle the problems at the root of human suffering.

In the coming months, all eyes will be on global leaders as they finalize a new global development agenda — the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — that aims to do just that. This effort builds on the remarkable progress the world has made since the predecessor Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) put forward a shared vision in 2000 of where we wanted the world to be in 2015.

We support the bold vision of the SDGs, which is consistent with the “big bet” that Bill and Melinda Gates laid out in their annual letter last January. By focusing on the most urgent global health and development challenges, Bill and Melinda predicted that “the lives of people in poor countries will improve faster in the next 15 years than at any other time in history.”

As progress on the current MDGs has demonstrated, the world community is capable of taking on big challenges. The MDGs included just eight goals, which helped focus the world’s attention on the most urgent problems — extreme poverty, deaths from preventable causes, gender inequality, and lack of access to education for children everywhere.

These ambitious but achievable goals — with measurable, time-bound results — were the glue that bound together national and donor governments, donors and international development agencies, civil society, and the private sector. By establishing universal alignment around a shared set of clear and resonant objectives, the MDGs galvanized financial support and ensured that everyone was pulling from the same end of the rope

In significant part because of these unified efforts, extreme poverty, hunger, and child mortality have all been cut in half since 1990, with much deeper progress in many individual countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

But it’s critical that the global community stay focused on these urgent and largely preventable problems. Nearly 7 million children under age 5 are still dying every year, many from preventable causes. Hundreds of millions of children are still chronically undernourished. And millions more people are dying needlessly every year from preventable infectious diseases.

There is unanimous agreement that we must finish the job on the world’s big challenges. The recently-published “zero draft” of the SDG framework underscored this, stating that “poverty eradication is our greatest global challenge.” To be sure, there are many perspectives on how we accomplish this.

The MDGs consisted of eight goals, supported by 21 quantifiable and time-bound targets. As the SDGs have taken shape, there are 17 goals and 169 targets. At one level, this expansion represents a welcome and overdue democratization of the goal setting process — reflecting a comprehensive set of aspirations in areas from fisheries and forest management to job creation to violence against women. At another level, however, the range of targets pose an inevitable challenge in terms of prioritization and focus: no country is going to be able to treat all of them with equal urgency.

We believe it is important to embrace and celebrate the broad framework and spirit of the global goals — in a way that ordinary citizens can understand and and use to hold their governments accountable for implementation. To that end, we actively support a number of efforts — such as action/2015, Global Citizen, and Project Everyone — to elevate awareness about the importance of the new global development agenda. And we support coalitions promoting the SDGs in more than 60 developing countries.

At the same time, given our own priorities and experience as a foundation and the mandate from our founders to focus on the needs of the poorest, our focus and resource investments after September will in large part continue to focus on the “unfinished agenda” of the current MDGs. Nearly all governments have affirmed that this is an important and shared priority. To sustain and build on the huge momentum of the past 15 years, there are a series of actions that we believe need to be addressed in coming months:

· Focus on the most impactful targets. It’s important that the global community agree on what targets we need to focus on to cut maternal, child, and newborn deaths by two-thirds by 2030.

· Agree on a basic “social compact.” Recognizing the long-term benefits of investing in development, rich and poor countries must come to a consensus that investing in development — maternal and child health, family planning, nutrition, infectious diseases, agricultural development, education and sanitation — is a shared responsibility between donors, developing countries and the private sector.

· Bring more ambition to financing development: At the upcoming Third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa, finance ministers from rich and poor countries must identify the necessary financing sources and policies — including the right mix of increased and appropriately targeted donor aid, increased domestic resources from developing countries, and a greater role for the private sector that enable us to lay the conditions for inclusive growth and eradicate extreme poverty.

· Protecting the poorest in middle-income countries. As more countries like Pakistan, Ghana and Nigeria transition to middle income status as measured by per capita GDP, but still retain very large pockets of deep poverty, we must ensure that we don’t leave large gaps in financing for basic services that are at the heart of our health and development efforts.

· Optimizing natural resources. As African countries reduce their dependence on aid from wealthy countries, we must support their efforts to maximize income from natural resources for human development priorities.

If the world comes together — as it did 15 years ago — around a shared set of global goals for sustainable development , I’m optimistic that we will see the lives of millions of people improve faster in the next 15 years than at any other time in history. This is why we are enthusiastic about the SDGs. Well-intentioned people may disagree about how best to prioritize the goals and targets, but we all can agree that the SDGs are the foundation upon which wealthy and poor countries alike can work together to achieve a more just world for everyone.

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Featured Speaker

Agenda For Women

By Kiran Bedi

Just a few days ago, we organized convocation upon the successful completion of a vocational course for women in the villages of Haryana.

It was sheer joy hearing the beneficiaries of the course recount what they had done since they had become skilled. Each was self-confident and financially almost self-reliant; and in many cases, even supporting the family financially and running the home. Many had put their children in better schools, started small businesses, saved some money, and earned a great deal of confidence.

They recalled how it all started.

They shared with us how they dared to venture out of home, stealthily in most cases. They would switch off their mobile phones so that their husbands did not get to know they had come for training, as one of them narrated. She would tell her husband that the device had run out of battery and there was no way to recharge it, as the village had no electricity.

The same woman said that her husband would not allow her to even leave home, while he himself was posted outside the city, and after his death, the skill of stitching and tailoring that she had learnt now had come to her rescue. She now was the family’s lone breadwinner, sending her two children to school, and looking after her ailing mother-in-law.

Learning to step out

She now runs a small shop to sell designer garments, employs other women, and trains them free of cost. Before this convocation, the students had been asked to present whatever cultural programme they liked. They presented a small skit. They scripted it and acted it out. It showed a family where the daughter was not allowed to step out of the house but told to stick to cooking and cleaning. One day, an NGO worker visits the family and asks the girl how she spends her day.

The girl says she does nothing much. 

The social worker invites her to learn how to stitch, tailor, and design clothes. She says she cannot until her father allows her.

The social worker approaches her father, and sure enough, he declines to give her permission, saying his honour would be hurt if he allowed his daughter to step out of the house. When the social worker goes into the merits of the daughter’s being skilled and ensures her father that no way the family honour would be hurt, he relents. This was based on a true story, but not all stories end this way.

The play was written and enacted by the women of the village. It reveals what is still the general condition, with some emerging exceptions no doubt but few and far between.  It exposes the huge restrictions that girls and many women of today are living under. They are still being held back, even when an opportunity to learn is next door. Imagine how it must be when the opportunities are far.

The most harmless domestic animal

What do we do? How can India moves forward fast enough, if fathers, husbands and brothers continue to be so closed-minded, insecure, and selfish? It hurts me to see girls held back in 2015 only because of gender, place and lack of opportunities; opportunities that many of us got decades ago.

I am reminded of a story I read long ago. Titled “The Most Harmless Domestic Animal”, here’s how it goes in the words of a daughter: “When I breathed for the first time, you told my father: ‘Start saving, it’s a girl.’ At 5, you told me, learn to read and write, so that a boy will come for you. At 10, you told me: ‘Save yourself, you are a girl.’ At 15, you told me stay home, learn to cook, wash, and remain silent and obedient. At 20, you told me don’t come back to us. Years went on and I kept my promise, nobody ever had a complaint. I was the most harmless domestic animal man ever had in history.”

Collective effort required

Girls are products of home and school. Both nurture her. What if she is deprived of these, of if none lays the foundation for her growth?

We have a duty, each one of us here, to make individual and collective effort to give our new generation of girls easy, secure and assured access to opportunities for a robust India. We need to create measurable systems where the local administration with the help of people’s representatives takes on the challenge to address these social issues at every level starting from panchayat, to reach out through dialogue. Credible NGOs at the grassroots, working with women in rural areas, need to be co-opted. Only then will I say that our India is inclusive society, the India of our dreams

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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!

American Red Cross
The American Red Cross Northwest Region brings together local volunteers to care for neighbors, trains hundreds of thousands of people each year in life-saving skills, and responds to a local disaster almost daily. With offices located throughout the state, they serve the people, businesses and communities of Washington and the Idaho Panhandle. The ARC Northwest Region chapter is part of a larger organization which provides emergency relief services around the world. redcross.org/local/wa/northwestregion

AmeriCares
AmeriCares is an emergency response and global health organization committed to saving lives and building healthier futures for people in crisis in the United States and around the world. americares.org

Camber Collective
Camber Collective is a strategy consulting firm that helps organizations navigate complex change and achieve high performance against both financial and mission-related goals. It believes strategies rooted in a deep understanding of people and communities are most likely to enable organizations to thrive. cambercollective.com

Health & Hope Foundation
Health and Hope Foundation is a team of passionate volunteers from varied walks of life who share the desire to embrace other cultures, create meaningful connections, and affect lasting contributions which help break the cycle of poverty in the developing world. healthandhopefoundation.org

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Member Events

Nov 18: Shoreline Community College // Cambodia: A Country of Contradictions

Nov 19: Oikocredit Northwest // Microfinance and Microbrews

Nov 20: Upaya Social Ventures // Bollywood Diwali Party

Nov 20: Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce // Toast of Seattle

Dec 3: Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association // Digital Health and the Influence on Healthcare: Wearables, Telehealth, & Treatment

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Career Center

Highlighted Positions

Investment Analysis Officer – Global Partnerships

Country Director, Various Locations – Mercy Corps

Operations and Development Associate – One by One

For more jobs and resources, visit https://globalwa.org/resources/careers-in-development/

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GlobalWA Events

November 19: Networking Happy Hour

December 10: GlobalWA 7th Annual Conference

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By Kaitlin Marshall

Credit: Malaria No More

Two months have passed since the United Nations ratified the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which aim to eradicate poverty by 2030. The goals are lofty and include everything from equality of the sexes to ending hunger. Data that accurately reflects the progress being made towards achieving the SDG’s is going to be critical if each objective is to be met by the target date. As many as 350 million people in need, however, are virtually invisible to the international community because they are not represented by statistics. A third of the world’s births and two-thirds of the world’s deaths and their causes, for example, go unreported, and statistics about the number of people living in extreme poverty are out of date.

Technology and innovation are critical to enhancing data collection and analysis to the extent necessary to close the data gap. This is a time rich with opportunity to develop and harness new ways to use technology to capture and transfer data. From monitoring infectious diseases to supporting refugees along their journeys, a myriad of organizations are catching on to the power of data. Continue Reading

By India West Staff

Seattle, Wash.-based nonprofit Landesa, an organization that strives to improve land rights in India and many other countries globally, was named the 2015 Hilton Humanitarian Prize winner by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. (Landesa.org photo)

The 20th annual award went to Landesa, which, as part of the award, will receive $2 million in unrestricted funding and join the Hilton Prize Coalition.

Read more at indiawest.com.

By Emma Schwartz of NetHope, a GlobalWA member

Today, over 1.8 billion adults in developing countries still lack proof of identity. Without official ID, this population is unable to access essential services such as healthcare and social welfare benefits and exercise fundamental human rights like the right to vote and the right to education.

A new report from the World Bank and Accenture identifies a comprehensive strategy and implementation roadmap for developing nations seeking to build or expand citizen identity programs, regardless of a country’s level of technology infrastructure. The report, titled Identification for Development – Integration Approach (ID4D), shows that developing nations can reap the benefits of universal ID by gradually moving toward the use of standard requirements and by deploying interoperable technologies.

Read the full article at solutionscenter.nethope.org.

Read more here.

Welcome to the October 2015 issue of the Global Washington newsletter.

IN THIS ISSUE

• Letter from our Executive Director
• Question of the Month
• In the News: The Injustice of Food Insecurity
• In the News: What are the “Fundamentals of Food Security,” really?
• Featured Organization: Adara Development
• Changemaker: Christopher Shore, World Vision
• Welcome New Members
• GlobalWA Member Events
• Career Center
• GlobalWA Events

Letter from our Executive Director

Today is World Food Day, which serves as a good time to reflect on the conditions of hunger worldwide. While rising rates of obesity and diabetes plague the U.S., people in other parts of the world are dying from hunger-related causes. The issue of food security is more complex than simply sending our surplus overseas. But with our level of innovation and the ability to mobilize resources, we should be making progress towards reducing global hunger.

And we are. According to the United Nations, the proportion of people who are undernourished in developing countries has fallen by almost half since 1990. Increasingly, people have more income to buy food and fuel local economies. Small-holder farmers are being recognized as central to the solutions. But there are still 795 million people worldwide who go to bed hungry.

Last month, the United Nations solidified the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Goal #2 is to end hunger by 2030. It will take a multitude of solutions to make this happen and several Global Washington members are working to achieve this target. There are also U.S. government programs such as Feed the Future and proposed reforms to food aid to support local procurement. I encourage you to read on to learn more.

Kristen Dailey
Executive Director

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Congratulations to GlobalWA member Landesa, recipient of the 2015 Hilton Humanitarian Prize

Read the press release.

Question of the Month

Have you seen the agenda for our annual conference on December 10? What session and/or speaker are you most excited about?

Please click here to respond.

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In the News

The Injustice of Food Insecurity

By Kaitlin Marshall

In 1996, the World Food Summit defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.” Though the definition of food security is broad, the concept can be broken down into three specific pillars: availability, access and safety. A lack of sufficient quantities of food available on a consistent basis, an absence of resources to maintain a nutritious diet and unsanitary living conditions are all causes of food insecurity. Today, there are approximately 795 million people who are undernourished because of one or more of the aforementioned conditions. The global food and agricultural system must be reformed to nourish the world’s hungry.

The Challenge

From the 1960s to 1980s, the “Green Revolution” swept across Asia and Latin America. The immense effort to improve farming methods helped to double food production and saved hundreds of millions of lives. Following the Green Revolution many governments and donors, believing that the developing world now had an adequate food supply, turned away from the issue of food security. The approaches that were successful for farmers in Asia and Latin America, however, failed in Sub-Saharan Africa. Even certain places that did reap the benefits of the Green Revolution are now plagued by food insecurity because the new farming techniques were not sustainable long-term.

Population growth, rising cost of living, dwindling natural resources and climate change have put a strain on agricultural productivity, causing food prices to rise. Millions of families are at risk for poverty, malnutrition and hunger. In developing countries, 12.9 percent of the population is undernourished. Poor nutrition causes nearly half of the deaths of children under age five each year.

The majority of those affected by food insecurity are smallholder farmers. Most of these farmers struggle to get by as they combat drought, pests, unproductive soil and other obstacles. Even after a successful harvest, a lack of reliable markets and supportive government policy make profits elusive.  Three-quarters of the world’s poorest people get their food and income by farming small plots of land. Improving the food and agriculture sectors of developing countries is essential to eliminating hunger and poverty.

Smallholder Farmers – The Key to Food Security

Agriculture is the single largest employer in the world, providing livelihoods for 40 percent of today’s global population. 500 million small farms worldwide provide up to 80 percent of food consumed in a large part of the developing world. When farmers grow more food and earn more income, the positive effects are immense. Secure farmers are better able to feed their families, send their children to school, and invest in their farms. This results in the farmer’s communities becoming more prosperous and stable. Helping farming families increase production in a sustainable way will be critical to reducing global hunger and poverty.

 What Needs to be Done?

There is much work to be done if we hope to reach Sustainable Development Goal 2 of ending hunger and malnutrition by 2030. Global development professionals must listen and work with farmers to understand how to best address their specific needs. Increasing farm productivity will require a comprehensive approach that includes access to heartier seeds, more effective tools, improved farm management practices, locally relevant knowledge and reliable markets. As climate change and population growth continue to strain natural resources, the world must embrace sustainable practices that grow more with less cost. To keep up with the ever growing demand for food, the world is in need of innovative yet lasting solutions to end hunger. Several Global Washington members are working tirelessly to support farmers in the developing world, bolster food production and ensure that the world’s hungry achieve food security.

Global Washington Members Working in Food Security

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private foundation in the world and is dedicated to improving the quality of life for individuals globally. Agricultural Development is one of the largest initiatives of the Foundation. The Foundation supports research to develop more nutritious varieties of stable crops grown by farming families, efforts to increase access to global markets, and more.

Grameen Foundation – The Grameen Foundation believes that all of us – even the poorest among us – can reach full potential if given access to the right tools and information. The Foundation works with governments and the private sector to empower farmers with relevant, timely and actionable information and financial services. Through the use of human networks and mobile technology, the Foundation is helping smallholder farmers improve their livelihoods.

Landesa – Landesa partners with governments and local organizations to secure legal land rights for the world’s poorest families. When families have secure rights to land, they can invest in their land to sustainably increase their harvests and reap the benefits — improved nutrition, health, education and dignity. Secure land rights are a critical, but often overlooked, factor in achieving household food security and improved nutritional status in rural areas of developing countries.

Lift Up Africa – Lift Up Africa supports programs that encourage self-reliance and provide solutions to disease, hunger, unemployment and lack of education. They strive to use local labor and materials whenever possible and concentrate on basic needs such as clean water, health care, adequate food supplies and dependable energy sources. Lift Up Africa aims to assist with projects that lead to independence and community ownership; to provide a hand up and not a hand out.

Literacy Bridge – Literacy Bridge is dedicated to empowering the world’s most underserved communities with life-changing knowledge to reduce poverty and disease. This is done through the Talking Book, an innovative low-cost audio computer that provides life-saving information in the form of actionable instructional messages. The ultimate goal of the agriculture messages is to increase crop yield through the adoption of best practices in farming. Farmers who had access to the Talking Book had an average increase in crop yield of 48 percent.

Marine Stewardship Council – Marine Stewardship Council aims to transform the world’s seafood market by promoting sustainable fishing practices. Half of the world’s seafood comes from developing countries, where millions rely on fish as a vital source of nutrition and income. The council’s vision is for the world’s oceans to be teeming with life, and seafood supplies safeguarded.

Mercy Corps – Mercy Corps believes, even in the world’s most challenging places, people have the power to transform their own lives when they have the right resources. The organization responds to food shortages by providing rations and working with local suppliers to speed delivery, save money and boost local economies. In addition to emergency responses, Mercy Corps is invested in building future food security. Mercy Corps helps farmers manage their land, increase their harvests, as well as helps connect them with new markets and technologies.

One Equal Heart Foundation – One Equal Heart Foundation supports the work of the Tseltal Maya in rural Chiapas, Mexico, as they build healthy and sustainable communities. In Chiapas, most families are food insecure with almost three-quarters of indigenous people suffering from malnutrition. It is the leading cause of death and illness in Chiapas and children are especially vulnerable. Foundation partners respond to the short-term needs of malnourished children by tracking their growth and development while they are treated with nutritional supplements.

Oxfam America – Oxfam America tackles the injustice of food insecurity and hunger by unlocking the potential of small-scale farmers – particularly women. Helping small-scale farmers be more productive can lift families out of poverty and end the cycle of food insecurity that threatens communities and nations. Oxfam’s agriculture and food security programs and advocacy promote locally sustainable solutions that meet the needs of small-scale producers, particularly women. Through focused and targeted advocacy, they also tackle the underlying policies and power imbalances that keep people in poverty.

PATH – PATH strives to deliver measurable results that disrupt the cycle of poor health. In contrast to many other health-related issues, malnutrition is completely preventable. That’s why PATH develops and promotes inexpensive and innovative health interventions aimed at making sure mothers-to-be, babies and children get the nutrients they need.

RESULTS – RESULTS is a movement of passionate, committed everyday people using their voices to influence political decisions that will bring an end to poverty. They work to effectively advise policy makers, guiding them towards decisions that improve access to health, education and economic opportunity. With every hour of their time, their impact is multiplied through advocacy – whether helping change policy to support millions of families putting food on the table or helping raise billions of dollars for the most vulnerable children.

The Borgen Project – The Borgen Project believes that leaders of the most powerful nation on earth should be doing more to address global poverty. They’re an innovative, national campaign that is working to make poverty a focus of U.S. foreign policy. By meeting with U.S. leaders to build support for life-saving legislation and effective poverty-reduction programs, they mobilize people across the globe behind efforts to make poverty a political priority, including food security.

U.S. Fund for UNICEF – UNICEF does whatever it takes to save and protect the world’s most vulnerable children. Recognizing that the health, hygiene, nutrition, education, protection and social development of children are all connected, they work to ensure that children not only survive, but thrive. UNICEF battles food insecurity by tackling childhood malnutrition, stabilizing high food prices and providing short and long term responses to community food crises.

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In the News

What are the “Fundamentals of Food Security,” really?

By Jim French, Senior Advocacy Advisor for Agriculture, Oxfam America

Bahati Muriga, 2014 Tanzanian Female Food Hero. Credit: Kwetu Studios for Oxfam

What are the necessary actions to create a just, sustainable, and resilient food system for everyone?

This Friday, October 16 is World Food Day – a day when people around the globe consider the essential role that bountiful, nutritious, and accessible food either does or doesn’t play in their lives. Unfortunately, for the majority of world’s population, having adequate, nutritious food is not a certainty.

Each year around the time of World Food Day, the World Food Prize  is awarded to a person or persons who have made a significant contribution to improving the quality, quantity, or availability of food in the world. Plant breeder and 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Norman Borlaug , established the award, and each year the ceremony is accompanied by a three day international symposium attracting almost 2,000 guests from around the globe to Des Moines, IA.

Since 2010, Oxfam has worked to make sure that the innovations, concerns, and voices of small-holder farmers are represented at the symposium. This year will be no exception as Tanzanian Female Food Hero, Bahati Muriga , arrives to speak in this Midwestern city thousands of miles away from the Horn of Africa and surrounded be fields of ripe corn and soybeans.

The theme of the 2015 symposium is Fundamentals of Food Security . I have been thinking about that theme and considering what “fundamentals” there are when it comes to creating food security. I suppose too many of the people attending the Prize conference it means good seeds, fertile soil, labor saving machinery, and good agronomic practices. Being a farmer in Kansas myself, I would acknowledge that these things are necessary.

But are there other parts of the food system just as fundamental to creating a world where everyone is well-fed?

Some questions come to mind: What do good seed, fertilizer and tools mean if climate change contributes to unpredictable weather, and poor harvests? What do the components of producing food mean if the market is rigged, and a farmer can’t meet her costs? What do the means of production mean if a farmer is never sure that her land will not be taken away in the next season?

These are the questions that the majority of the world’s farmers face each year – those small-holder farmers producing up to eighty percent of the food in in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.[1] And it is in the rural areas of these regions where the greatest poverty is also concentrated.

Food production doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is built on knowledge, markets, infrastructure, investments and policies. So building a food secure world means more than buying the right seed, fertilizer or tractor. It means concentrating action where there is the greatest number of farmers and where the greatest concentration of hunger exists.

So in this World Food Day season, and when bountiful crops of corn, soybeans, and sorghum are being harvested in Iowa and my state of Kansas, it is my hope that our focus on fundamentals will include these three steps for building a productive and sustainable global agriculture system:

STEP 1:  Take action on climate change.  And while we are doing that, countries like the US must honor its commitment to the Green Climate Fund set up to help poor countries prepare for climate change and cut their emissions. So far, 28 countries have pledged a total of $10.2 billion to get the Green Climate Fund up and running. On behalf of the United States, President Obama has pledged a total of $3 billion to help establish the Green Climate Fund , and has requested $500 million in his current budget. Congress now must follow-through on the first installment of this pledge.

STEP 2: Reform food aid. When disaster strikes and chronic hunger occurs in specific regions, food aid should be delivered in a way that does not disrupt the markets and livelihoods of farmers within the region. One of the most efficient and effective ways of fighting hunger is procure food from local and regional sources. In the US, the bulk of food aid comes from US commodities and half of the money spent on aid goes to shipping and overhead. We can do better, by passing legislation like the Food Aid Reform Bill of 2015.

STEP 3: Focus on small-holder farmers. Those that produce the majority of the world’s food each day but face the greatest challenges of poverty and hunger – should be empowered. And more importantly, a focus on women farmers should be a priority. For example, across Africa, eight out of ten people who work in farming women, says the World Food Program. [2] In Asia, six out of ten are women.  The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that if “women farmers had the same access to resources as men, the number of hungry in the world could be reduced by up to 150 million.” [3]

Right now, US policies that govern foreign agricultural development have prioritized gender and increased the focus on small-holder agriculture through Feed the Future administered through USAID. There is a unique opportunity to build on and make Feed the Future permanent by passing the Global Food Security Act of 2015  in both the US House and Senate.

Yes, food security needs seeds, soil, and technology. But without women farmers, like Tanzania’s Female Food Hero Bahati Muriga, feeding the world will be an almost impossible task. So on this World Food Day, don’t just thank a farmer. Take the actions necessary to create a just, sustainable, and resilient food system for everyone.

[1]http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/nr/sustainability_pathways/docs/Factsheet_SMALLHOLDERS.pdf

[2]https://www.wfp.org/our-work/preventing-hunger/focus-women/overview

[3]Women in Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap for Development, FAO, 2011

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Featured Organization

Adara Development

By Kaitlin Marshall

Adara Development partners with communities in remote areas of Nepal and Uganda to improve people’s lives through health and education. Adara has been in Nepal since 1998, working in the isolated district of Humla throughout that entire period. Nestled in the Himalayas in the northwestern part of the country, Humla is plagued by poverty and can only be reached by small aircraft or by hiking. “We’ve been working there since the very beginning,” said Debbie Lester, Adara’s Clinical Programs and U.S. Country Director. “We do a lot of basic health, sanitation and hygiene programs in Humla. It really started right at the bare basics.”

Forty percent of Nepali children have their growth stunted by malnutrition, and in Humla malnutrition is an even more serious problem. “As Humla is in such a remote and mountainous part of Nepal, malnutrition is a huge problem there. There is a 60% prevalence of stunting, and a 4.4% prevalence of severe acute malnutrition,” said Pralhad Dhakal, Adara’s Nepal Country Director. In the winter, temperatures frequently fall below zero and food shortages are common. To alleviate malnutrition in Humla, especially during the harsh winter months, Adara launched food security initiatives in 2004 firstly through providing families with nutritious porridge for the children.

In 2013, Adara focused on providing farmers with what they need to build and maintain a greenhouse. “What we do is a lot of different training on greenhouse construction and repair, and we supply the necessary materials to farmers,” explained Angjuk Lama, Adara’s Humla Program Manager. The greenhouses allow the farmers and their communities to supplement their diets with fresh vegetables during the winter when nutritious food is scarce. To date, Adara has assisted in the construction of 239 greenhouses and repair of about 49 that have been damaged by snow.

Adara works with farmers in each target village and provides them with the necessary materials and technical assistance to build a greenhouse, as well as the technical training. “We provide materials like the plastic sheets, garden pipes and watering cans, and then the seeds to grow in the greenhouse” said Lester. While Adara continuously improves the design of their greenhouse technologies to meet community needs, there are a number of materials that the farmers provide for themselves. “We always believe in partnering,” said Lester. “The farmers bring their labor and also core materials that are available to them. We insist that farmers construct the greenhouses themselves in partnership with Adara.”

Educating the villagers to rely on themselves is a critical component of Adara’s model of collaboration. Every village is visited regularly by Adara’s agricultural assistant. “He trains the villagers on how to use, manage and repair the greenhouses and solar dryers to ensure that they are used properly,” said Lester. Since 2013, Adara employees have led eleven training sessions to educate the farmers of Humla.

In addition to teaching the farmers how to construct and care for their greenhouses, Adara is supporting the Humli people with tree plantation and fruit orchard development. The organization also provides key technologies that allow the farmers to harvest the most from their greenhouses and orchards. Solar dryers, for example, allow farmers to “dry out their food for the cold winter months…it’s easier and more hygienic to dry vegetables and fruits without losing nutrients [this way].” Having nutrient-rich food to last through the winter has resulted in lower levels of malnutrition in children in the villages where Adara has a presence.

Adara will continue working with the Humli people to create systems that strengthen infrastructure and lead to sustainable lifestyle improvements. “There’s some new roads going in that are bridging access to Humla,” said Lester, “so that could change the food security issues going forward.” As roads are introduced, access to food increases. These foods, however, include such items as white rice “that aren’t as nutritiously dense as some that you may grow yourself.” Adara is committed to Humla for the foreseeable future, no matter what changes may come.

“The great thing about the areas we work in is having that really long-term investment and commitment, because when you are fast tracking through programs you often lose that relationship piece,” said Lester. For the Humli people, knowing that Adara is not going anywhere has led to a trusting relationship. “That goes a long way in terms of what you can achieve together.”

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Changemaker

Christopher Shore, World Vision

By Kaitlin Marshall

There are approximately 795 million people worldwide who are undernourished due to lack of a secure food supply. A lack of sufficient quantities of food available on a consistent basis, an absence of resources to maintain a nutritious diet, and unsanitary living conditions are all causes of food insecurity. World Vision partners with communities to address immediate food needs and to help people learn to grow a sustainable food supply. In 2014, the organization provided $263.9 million in food assistance to 8 million people in 35 countries. At the forefront of World Vision’s efforts is Christopher Shore, the organization’s Chief Development Officer of Economic Development, Resilience, and Livelihoods.

Shore, who holds degrees in finance and business, has spent the last 25 years working in microfinance and economic development. Since joining World Vision in 1997, he has prioritized transforming the economic status of food insecure populations. “One of the basic definitions of development is that people are food secure,” said Shore. Otherwise, “we don’t have development happening.”

Shore focuses his team’s work on building improved and resilient livelihoods for the world’s 500 million small-holder farmers. Despite depending on agriculture for their living, small-holder farmers are often the least food secure population. Degraded land, unpredictable markets, and erratic weather patterns caused by climate change threaten to hinder the crop production and profits of farmers on a daily basis. “Their economic returns are so low,” said Shore, “that they do not create a buffer to be able to deal with shocks. Any shock can decapitalize them, leaving them even more vulnerable, and more food insecure.”

A crucial component of creating sustainable farming practices is teaching farmers how to adapt to climate change. World Vision’s environmental projects include reforestation, soil quality improvement, and improving water irrigation. “The farming system has to, [for example], be able to cope with the ups and downs of rainfall,” said Shore. The farmers “have to have boosted their productivity enough so that the normal variations in prices aren’t going to wipe them out.”

In addition to preparing farmers to handle environmental changes, World Vision is equipping them to handle market fluctuations. By providing agriculture and business education and microfinance opportunities, Shore has developed a model to help smallholder farmers lift themselves out of poverty. One of World Vision’s tactics for teaching financial expertise is inviting smallholders to join savings groups. As the groups save, they lend the money to each other and charge interest. The savings groups build financial capital and human capital because the farmers learn financial literacy. “They learn how to save, they learn how to borrow, they learn how to do the lending, and they understand those financial processes,” said Shore. Through the savings groups, farmers earn more money and realize they can work together to improve their agricultural prowess. World Vision also assists smallholders through financial services and access to microfinance lending. Under Shore’s leadership World Vision has built one of the largest networks of microfinance institutions in the world, which is increasingly focused on agricultural lending.

All of Shore’s strategies, from the savings groups to microfinance lending, are helping World Vision reach one goal: “to move smallholder farmers completely out of poverty.” Farmers, according to Shore, are critical to the global issue of food security because their productivity has the potential to increase massively. “We can help them be more productive, more profitable, more resilient, all at the same time.”

Shore describes himself as an economic development guy who began understanding the issues of climate change and realized how much the environment affects smallholder farmers. By working with farmers on environmental and economic issues, he wants to provide smallholders with the greatest economic transformation of their lives. “This sounds absolutely audacious, but our goal really is to end poverty in those places we are working, said Shore. “We’re aiming to use market mechanisms to make that happen.”

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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!

The Mifos Initiative
The Mifos Initiative aims to speed the elimination of poverty by coordinating a global community that builds, supports and uses Mifos X, a free and open source platform that enables financial service providers to more effectively and efficiently deliver responsible financial services to the world’s 2.5 billion poor and unbanked. www.mifos.org

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Member Events

October 15-25: Tasveer Seattle // South Asian Film Festival

October 22: Shoreline Community College // How to Believe in Universal Human Rights Without Being a Moral Imperialist

October 24: NPH USA // Gala Dinner and Auction

October 24: Women’s Enterprises International // Harambee 2015 – 15th Annual Dinner and Celebration

October 25: Living Earth Institute // Annual Fundraiser Dinner

October 29: Global Partnerships // Annual Luncheon

October 29: Sahar // Annual Fundraising Dinner: A New Day, A New Voice

November 4: International Foster Care Alliance // Appetizers and Wine Fundraiser

November 7: Water1st International // 2015 Give Water Give Life Benefit

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Career Center

Highlighted Positions

Software Developer, Lead, Mobile Health Innovations – Grameen Foundation

Application Development Manager – SightLife

Monitoring & Evaluation Manager – Splash

For more jobs and resources, visit https://globalwa.org/resources/careers-in-development/

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GlobalWA Events

October 22: Networking Happy Hour

December 10: GlobalWA 7th Annual Conference

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By Kaitlin Marshall

October 16 marks World Food Day, a day to bring people together to demonstrate their commitment to eliminating hunger within our lifetime. World Food Day was first observed in 1979, and was established to celebrate the anniversary of the creation of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Various events and campaigns are hosted by governments and non-profits on World Food Day to engage people in action against hunger. In North America, for example, such happenings typically include food drives and packaging events. Around the globe, people participate in advocacy marches to encourage people to participate in the fight to end hunger and malnutrition. Continue Reading

By Allison Coble, Senior Director of Programs, Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute

Washington DC– October 6th, 2015– The Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI) will honor International Foster Care Alliance [IFCA] as an Angel in Adoption™ at an awards ceremony on October 6 and gala on October 7 in Washington, D.C.

International Foster Care Alliance [IFCA] is being honored for its excellent accomplishment in connecting foster youth and foster care alumni between the United States and Japan.

The Angels in Adoption™ Program is CCAI’s signature public awareness campaign and provides an opportunity for all members of the U.S. Congress to honor the good work of their constituents who have enriched the lives of foster children and orphans in the United States and abroad. This year, more than 150 “Angels” are being honored through the Angels in Adoption™ program. Continue Reading

Wendy Prosser, Program Manager for GlobalWA member VillageReach

Many people in global health talk about how Coca-Cola supply chain practices could be applied and adapted to health commodities to ensure that vaccines, malaria treatment, family planning commodities, and many more essential medicines are available at the last mile health facilities. And they have a point—I have seen Coca-Cola in pretty much every village I’ve been to in Africa throughout my almost 20 years of going to these remote places.

However, that cannot be said for the south part of the Equateur Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Continue Reading