This Is Our Moment

Chicago, IL
November 28, 2007

I want to speak about three things: challenges, hope and opportunity. These three things are always linked and, in today's world, they have special implications.

Shamala, 29, demonstrates her skills as a tailor inside her home in Somarampet outside of Hyderabad, India. After receiving a loan from the CARE-supported self help group Indira, Shamala was able to build her own home and start her own tailoring business. (2006 Ami Vitale/CARE )

At the same time, something very troubling is happening. Two centuries ago, per capita incomes were fairly consistent between countries. That is no longer the case. Most Americans enjoy a higher standard of living than any previous generation, with an average per capita income of nearly $44,000.

But for too many of our sisters and brothers, the situation is worsening. While we pull ahead, they drop further and further behind. Per capita income in Honduras is $1,120. In Cambodia $430. In Ghana, $450. Even in India with a booming economy, the per capita income is only $730, reflecting the growing inequities between the rich and poor within the country.

So while our world is getting flatter, it is also getting more unequal. Some of you may know the book "The Bottom Billion," by the noted economist Paul Collier.

"Picture a billion people stuck in a train that is slowly rolling backward downhill. By 2050 the development gulf will no longer be between a rich billion in the most developed countries and five billion in the developing countries; rather, it will be between the trapped billion and the rest of humanity."

We are watching this train wreck. We can, and must, do something about it. When I was at the Gates Foundation, there was something that Bill Gates used to say that is rather simple but also profoundly true. If the world was scrambled up and we lived next door to people whose children died from malaria or during pregnancy or were chronically hungry, we would act very differently. We would act with urgency. We need to act as though these statistics involve our neighbors. Because, in this ever connected world, they do. 

These are some of the challenges, but let me highlight a few more.

One out of every six people lives on less than $1 a day. These are the people whose living standards are declining, while the rest of us are getting richer. These are the people who have to make agonizing choices every day: Which child will go to school? Which sick family member will get medical care? Which daughter or son will leave home in search of work far away?

And most of these people are women.

No matter how you measure it, women and girls bear the brunt of poverty. Consider these facts:

• Seventy percent of people living in extreme poverty are women and girls.
• Women work two-thirds of working hours, but earn only 10 percent of the world's income.
• One woman dies every minute of every day during pregnancy or in childbirth.
• Nearly two-thirds of children out of school are girls.

If you believe that the measure of any society is how it treats its most vulnerable, these are not only sobering and daunting statistics, they also present a compelling argument for why improving the lives of women and girls is core to our mission to end extreme poverty.  

When we improve the lives of those who are most marginalized, most excluded from opportunities in a society, ultimately everyone benefits.

In fact, women are our world's greatest hope for ending poverty. Here are some reasons why:

• Each extra year of primary education that a girl receives boosts her wages later in life by 10 to 20 percent.
• Children of mothers who attended at least five years of school are 40 percent more likely to survive past their fifth birthday.
• It has been estimated in a recent study that crop yields in Kenya could rise by more than 20 percent if female farmers had the same education and decision-making authority as men.
• And we have data from around the world about the incredible repayment rates in our women's savings and loan programs of nearly 100 percent. But as important is the fact that women use their financial resources to improve the lives of their families in long-lasting ways.

When you give a woman the chance to start a business, or learn how to read, or participate in politics – that one act creates ripples of change. It can lift entire families and communities – and, I believe, nations – out of poverty.

Bharthamma Balamalu, also from Hyderabad, India, states, "Before if I ever knew something, I didn't have the courage and confidence to speak up. I had ideas, but people never used to listen to me because I was alone. Now that I am in the group, people support my ideas." (2005 Lynn Heinish/CARE)

She never attended school, was married at age 14, and had two sons. When she was 23, her husband was killed in an automobile accident and she was forced to learn his farming business. She joined a women's savings group and, in the past decade, has taken out several loans allowing her to purchase fertilizer and pesticides, hire a tractor and laborers and dig wells. She also organized the women to pave the road and then fought for a month with local officials so they would get paid for the work they had done.

She told CARE she was thinking of running for local office. These are her words exactly: "I am 100 percent sure I will win because there is no competition for me here." This is a woman who had to fight for everything she has ever achieved.

"Before," she said, "if I ever knew something, I didn't have the courage and confidence to speak up. I had ideas, but people never used to listen to me because I was alone. Now that I am in the group, people start to support my ideas. Before, I was leading only my house. Now, I am leading so many people."

As significant as her words are, there's something else that gives me even more hope. It's a signal of where things are headed. None of the women in Bharthamma's group went to school. None of them. Every one of their daughters does.

I have told you about the challenges. I've told you about women like Bharthamma as our best hope for ending poverty. Let me now tell you about the opportunities.

In order to achieve real impact, one has to think boldly and to make a commitment. So CARE is putting a stake in the ground and making some big bets to strengthen the impact we can have on improving the lives of women and girls and their families. We have selected three ways in which we believe we can significantly contribute by the year 2015.

That is the target date set by U.N. members, including the United States, for the Millennium Development Goals: to cut in half the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day.

Our commitment to communities will focus on three of the most pivotal periods in the life cycle. Birth, childhood and adulthood. We are going to:

• Make motherhood and being a newborn safe by reaching 30 million women and their infants with health services in order to reduce rates of maternal mortality and child malnutrition in 10 countries.
• Help girls learn to become leaders by ensuring that 10 million girls receive a quality primary-school education and develop their skills and capacity to be leaders in their communities.
• Launch a campaign for universal access to financial services for women and their families, reaching 30 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa, 70 percent of them women.

These initiatives will be grounded in our 60-plus years' of experience and integrated with our core programs working with communities in health and nutrition, education, water and sanitation, agriculture and natural resources, and emergency relief. And our approach continues to support work on both the underlying causes as well as the consequences of poverty and we do this through a lens of social justice and equity. 

Now, the three goals I mentioned are big goals but working in partnership we think we can achieve them. So let me take a minute to tell you why we think we can.

The death of a woman in childbirth is one of the most inexcusable deaths on the face of the earth. In countries like Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, a woman has a one-in-six chance of dying from pregnancy-related causes, mainly bleeding to death. Compare that with the risk of an American woman, who has a 1 in 30,000 chance of dying due to pregnancy. So that means the world is willing to literally let women bleed to death when we know there are solutions.

New mother Yolanda Loayza Pillaza rests with her 3-day-old infant, Louisa, at the regional hospital in Ayacucho, Peru. (2007 Nathan Bolster/CARE)

Our second goal is ensuring that 10 million girls gain an education and opportunities for leadership. The issue here isn't only limited resources. Yes, poor families do struggle to pay for school fees, supplies and uniforms. But there are other reasons girls are denied an education. Families often rely on them to be caregivers, homemakers and laborers. When schools are too far away, or inadequate, parents have little incentive to send their children, and they may worry about their daughter's safety. Then there are barriers as basic as schools lacking toilets, so that girls have private places to take care of basic hygiene.

A female student works at the chalkboard at a school in Gaza, a small village in the Shomali Plains just north of Kabul, Afghanistan. CARE recently funded the construction of a library at the school. (2006 David Rochkind/CARE )

The Kenyan government eliminated fees for primary schools, enabling 1 million children to attend school for the first time, many of them children orphaned by AIDS.

We will draw from these approaches and link up with partners to ensure that 10 million girls get an elementary school education. And that they have other opportunities, such as attending secondary school, participating in mentoring programs, and becoming peer educators. These girls will grow into women who will be leaders.

For our third – providing financial services to 30 million people – we will lead a global coalition of public and private entities. CARE began village savings and loan groups in Niger in 1991. Since then, we and others have replicated them throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. This is the kind of program in which Bharthamma participated.

To reach our target, we intend to capitalize on our existing commercial partnerships and to support ventures by financial institutions, which are increasingly looking to this sector as viable. 

We are excited about these new major initiatives and the impact they can have on millions of lives. To reach our goals, we will draw upon our field experience and expand our partnerships with the private and public sectors, including corporations, governments, and other non-governmental organizations. And we will continue engaging Americans as advocates. So far, more than 50,000 Americans have joined the CARE Action Network to help shape policies that fight global poverty. These collaborations have an impact well beyond what CARE alone can achieve.

Admittedly, ending poverty is an ambitious goal.

Once upon a time, people said a lot of things were too ambitious to be done.

We all know that once upon a time, in May 1961, John F. Kennedy pledged that the U.S. would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Skeptics said it was impossible, but on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong took a giant leap for humanity.

Once upon a time, in the 20th century, smallpox killed nearly 500 million people. Through successful vaccination campaigns, it was eradicated in 1979.

Once upon a time, American women fought for the right to vote. They earned it in 1920.

Once upon a time, Rosa Parks said no more. Nine brave students in Little Rock broke the color barrier in school. And now black and white Americans have joined together to create a fairer society, with opportunities for all.

Each of these victories was achieved for one reason: because people believed they could do it.

As Helen Keller said, "No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit."

Today, we too have an opportunity to alter history. Consider the unprecedented events of the last few years:

• Wealthy individuals like Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates have invested extraordinary amounts of money to end poverty. These are people who know how to achieve results.
• There is increased political will. I mentioned earlier that U.N. member states have signed on to the Millennium Development Goals. Our own government has provided unprecedented amounts of resources to fight killer diseases like AIDS and malaria.
• Many high-profile celebrities are using their fame to highlight international humanitarian causes – people like Bono and Angelina Jolie and our own CARE ambassadors.

This has increased visibility for AIDS, Darfur, refugees and other issues that haven't typically been well-covered by mainstream media.

And, this generation of young people are extremely committed to global issues. High school and college students are very well-informed about how their counterparts around the world are living, and are working to make their lives better.

Kate Vyborny, a 2008 Rhodes scholar, is a good example. The University of Georgia graduate is headed to Oxford to work on development policy. She told reporters "I'm really dedicated to doing something about global poverty and this is going to help give me the tools to do that." There are millions of young people around the world just as ambitious, compassionate and hard-working as Kate.

Last and perhaps most important, people in communities around the world give me hope that we have entered a different phase in our ability to make a difference. Just one more example:

In 1994, two sisters in Peru took a skills training course with CARE and learned to weld. Maria Landa later received a loan through CARE to help develop her welding business. Today, her company is recognized as the best in Peru and Maria was selected by Fortune magazine to participate in this year's Most Powerful Women summit. In the aftermath of the August earthquake in Peru, her company manufactured 1,000 tents for survivors.

"These are girls who can do it," says their proud father. "CARE opened the doors for my girls to do great things. They are setting an example that girls can get out of the house and achieve whatever they set out to do."

So – this is a time of great opportunity. This is our moment.

Thank you for your support of CARE and the people we serve. I invite you to continue contributing your skills, your ideas, your resources, your voices so that one day we can say to future generations: once upon a time, we were part of the movement that ended poverty.