Long Beach, CA
October 23, 2007
I am so honored to be a part of this impressive gathering. Your conference pledge speaks directly to why I stand before you today: "I pledge to use my voice to empower myself and others."
Nelida Inga Aguilal holds her one day old baby boy. The Center De Salud in Tambo, Peru is a success story for CARE. Ninety-four percent of the people in the community now use the clinic and since the introduction of the Femme Project, for maternal health, infant deaths have dropped dramatically. (2006 Jessica Wunderlich/CARE)
Just like us, they work very hard. They, too, want the best for their families. They, too, juggle the complexities of life – how to get an education, how to earn a living. They, too, have dreams and goals. And they overcome extraordinary obstacles to achieve them.
But you may not know how important it is to them to know that we care about them.
This was never clearer to me than a few years ago, when I was visiting a home in India for women and children infected with HIV. The women knew I was a doctor and were sharing their stories with me. When it came time to go, one woman reached out and pulled me toward her so that I could hug her. And, then, she started to cry. Through a translator, she explained. Every doctor she had ever met had refused to touch her. She said that I, an American woman, was the first doctor to make her feel good about herself. That simple gesture helped to restore her self-worth and her sense of dignity.
It is an understatement to say I was humbled and deeply moved. I never would have imagined 30 years ago, as a young woman training to be a doctor, the ways that women like her would change my world and what they would teach me. About leadership. About courage. About compassion.
I stand here on behalf of them and our other sisters around the globe. If we want to end extreme poverty and provide hope for our future, we must invest in women, and change the policies and the practices that hold them back. We cannot make progress as a world if we allow ourselves to be robbed of the potential of half the people on this planet.
Did you know that 70 percent of people struggling to get by on less than $1 a day are female? That more than two-thirds of people who can't read and write are women? That women produce half of the world’s food, but own only one percent of the farmland?
Students are pictured at Sharin Hezar, an all girls school that was built with funding from CARE in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. (2006 David Rochkind/CARE)
We know what works. And all of us here are in the very privileged position of being able to do something to make a difference.
I would like to thank Maria Shriver, both for bringing us together, and for her personal contribution to this effort. As you heard earlier, Maria and Meredith Corporation have pledged to raise $200,000 for maternal health programs in Nicaragua and Zambia.
The death of a mother in childbirth is one of the most inexcusable deaths on the face of the earth. Each minute, a woman dies during pregnancy or in childbirth. In countries like Sierra Leone in West Africa and in Afghanistan a woman has a one-in-six chance of dying from pregnancy-related causes. Compare that with your risk or mine of one in 30,000. We are willing to let women die when there are simple and cheap solutions that would keep them alive. This is not only a public health travesty; it is a violation of basic human rights.
It doesn't take a lot to prevent these deaths. Ten dollars can buy clean birthing kits for six women. For $120, we can equip a community volunteer to teach other women about maternal and child health.
Maria, your pledge is a powerful part of the legacy you are building. On behalf of the women and children whose lives will be saved, I want to thank you.
This brings me to all of you. Consider how quickly we would reach Maria's goal if each woman in this room contributed just $10. If some of us gave $100, or $1000, we would be there by the end of the day.
There's one more thing I'd like to ask of you. CARE's logo is a circle of handprints. It's an image that reminds us to reach out to each other … to work together, hand in hand.
We have a booth in the exhibit hall where you can ink your hands and place your palm prints on a banner. Maria will carry a portion of this banner to Zambia to give to women there. Your handprints will send them a message: There are people who may live half a world away, but they care for you as they would a sister, or a neighbor.
In this interconnected age, we are all neighbors. We are all sisters and brothers. And we owe it to one other – and to ourselves – to remember that the power is in our hands. That is a legacy we would all be proud to embrace.
