::: Victory Over Poverty - organization CARE's efforts on behalf of poverty eradication

GoodLetter, Feb 21, 2002

When you consider the impoverished circumstances of over a billion of the world's people, it becomes remarkably clear that figure-skating is nothing more an insignificant game. But in the Olympic spirit of peace and justice, a group that first made its presence know after World War II is still giving people the tools they need to rebuild their lives.

Dear GoodLetter readers,

Half a century ago, millions of heavy cardboard boxes filled with food and supplies -- known as CARE Packages -- helped families in Europe and Asia survive during the lean years following World War II. Those parcels provided sustenance for the body and salve for the spirit as people began to rebuild their homes, their communities, and their countries.

Since then, one thing remains constant: the non-profit aid organization CARE is still changing people's lives. But what we're doing today is substantially more complex than delivering crates of food and blankets. Through agriculture, education, health, and small business development programs, CARE works with entire communities to address the underlying causes of poverty, not just its symptoms. CARE has joined the United Nations and others in an effort to reduce by half the number of people in the world living on less than $1 a day -- currently 1.2 billion -- by 2015.

I work for CARE at its Atlanta-based headquarters. My trips around the world to see the actual work CARE does and witness the effects of global poverty are like splashes of ice-cold water to the face, stark wake-up calls about the daily challenges faced by nearly half of the world's people. Yet, wherever I go, people's resilience and kindness seem like such a contrast to the images of hopelessness we see on television. I recently visited communities in Peru, South America's second-largest country, and was again reminded that my work with CARE is important. I wrote the following journal entry during the last night of my trip:

The past couple days, I have been visiting with a group of 185 community health volunteers living around the northern town of Otuzco, population 12,240. Before heading back to the capital Lima, my last stop was in the small community of Los Angeles, just one of many across the country where one in five children dies from a preventable disease before they turn five.

Today I made the rounds with one local volunteer, Teodora Reyes, a 38-year-old childless widow born and raised in Los Angeles, a potato farming community of 50 families set in the highland clouds. Every morning, Teodora gets up with the sun, maps out her actions for the day from behind her small wooden desk, and sets out on foot with the goal of saving lives through health education.

The morning air was brisk as we walked to her first of five stops of the day. We heard whispers from inside the ancient two-story home made of hardened mud and wood. A rattle and creak broke the silence as the young mother of five opened the front door and stepped out onto the narrow porch with a smile. A few months ago, Teodora had referred her to the local health center where a doctor safely delivered her baby. Teodora continually monitors the health of this mother and her children. Her message today was about the prevention and treatment of common childhood illnesses like diarrhea and pneumonia.

"We take our work very seriously," Teodora said to me on our way to the next visit. "Before the project started five years ago, five women died every year from at-home pregnancies gone wrong." Since volunteers like Teodora started their weekly home visits, no Los Angeles mothers or children have died in pregnancy or from preventable disease.

Six years ago, CARE started this pilot project in partnership with the Ministry of Health. Now, there's a health center in Otuzco, and volunteers like Teodora have been trained with basic health skills and armed with information. And last year, CARE stepped back and handed over the project to the health center and the community volunteers, who now manage it successfully on their own, an approach that the Ministry of Health plans to replicate nationwide.

As I left Los Angeles, Teodora said: "It's easy to say you are going to do something for your community without pay. It's another thing to do it. The best pay is a mother's thanks for helping her children."

The night I returned to Lima, I spoke with Ana Maria Robles, manager of CARE's New Horizons for Girls' Education project, who told me that the health project is only a part of the solution. For example, as the child survival rate increases, there still aren't opportunities for children to look forward to, especially girls in rural areas who usually are forced to drop out to do household chores or because their parents cannot afford to keep them in school. This lack of education hinders girls' ability to develop skills and confidence.

Since 1998, Ana Maria and her staff have been fostering awareness of issues associated with girls' education and spearheading the creation of FLORECER, a solutions-oriented network of 25 government ministries, local and community organizations, and international donors and a model for other developing countries. She spends a lot of personal time on advocacy efforts and relationship building at the highest levels of government, it's paying off. This past October, Peruvian lawmakers gave the war on poverty a major boost, approving a bill that will ensure universal enrollment for girls in quality basic education by 2006.