I’m not quite sure how a long-time-albeit-small-potatoes CARE donor like me rated a scholarship to attend the organization’s annual conference in Washington, but an email arrived a couple weeks ago saying that CARE needed another person to lobby Connecticut’s congressional delegation and would I be interested? If it weren’t for the scholarship, I couldn’t have accepted the invitation, but because of it, before you could say, “inside the Beltway,” I was on a plane to DC. I was suddenly transformed from a CARE supporter into an amateur lobbyist on issues that affect families in the developing world.
CARE’s president and CEO is an inspiring leader. A physican, HIV researcher and—like my daughter, Esme—a Barnard College alum, Dr. Helene Gayle pointed out in her opening remarks that CARE’s annual conference proves to legislators that constituents are willing to lobby on behalf of voiceless, oppressed people around the globe. (Most attendees foot the bill for their conference fee, travel and lodging themselves.) Many lawmakers also realize that reducing global poverty isn’t just a moral imperative. Poverty destabilizes societies and directly impacts US national security.
This year’s conference was the biggest ever, drawing over 900 supporters from every state in the union. A day of workshops and panels, highlighted by an inspiring call-to-action by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, educated conference attendees on three key legislative initiatives that CARE would like to see passed in the House and Senate.
Conference attendees broke into groups based on our congressional districts and boned up on facts and figures. We each got to choose one of the three legislative issues to present to our elected leaders or their staff.
The first issue CARE policy experts presented dealt with global food security, seeking to reconfigure US food aid programs toward empowering farmers in developing countries—over 80% of whom are women—rather than using the current emphasis on shipping huge volumes of food grown in the US to countries experiencing food crises.
The second effort sought to exert pressure on countries to stop practices that force very young girls into marriage, often with men two and three times their age. Such marriages doom girls to lives of poverty by cutting off any chance for further education and putting them at grave risk of unsafe teen pregnancies, domestic abuse, and HIV infection.
The third focus was on providing support for cost-effective, simple programs that combat death and disability due to easily preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth.
The Connecticut CARE delegation consisted of about a dozen people. We met with Senator Christopher Dodd, House Representatives Rosa DeLauro and Jim Himes, plus a legislative aide from Senator Joe Lieberman’s staff. We described how the bills we’d learned about attacked global poverty and asked each lawmaker to co-sponsor them, if he or she hadn’t done so already. If already sponsors, we asked each of them to push Senate and House leadership to get the bills passed.
I was surprised by the focus and intensity that our congressional leaders and their staff gave to us. While all of them see lobbyists of various types on a regular basis, we were well-prepared, committed citizen advocates who weren’t expecting anything for ourselves and didn’t represent interest groups with deep pockets. I think it might have made a refreshing change for them.
My conference experience was wonderful! I was especially moved by the presentation of CARE’s “I Am Powerful” award to a brave, entrepreneurial African woman named Goretti Nyabenda. I was energized by the performance of female drummers at the Tuesday night dinner and was heartened by the sharp, compassionate, and often amusing insights of three African first ladies who were interviewed afterward.
The conference held some interesting surprises for me. I hadn’t expected the gender diversity of the group; I thought mainly women would attend, but there were a good percentage of men, too. The racial diversity of the group was also impressive and the accents I heard suggested that countries of origin were also varied. Our Connecticut group leader was a Dutch World War II survivor who credited US aid for her very existence. Perhaps the nicest surprise was the presence of very young advocates who were daughters of adult attendees. One girl from a Connecticut town lobbied with our group. She provided a poignant reminder of the inherit horror of child marriage. “Look at me,” she said to a Senate legislative aide. “I’m just ten, but I could be one of those girls forced to marry when I should be in school.”
The motto for one of CARE’s signature campaigns is “I Am Powerful.” The women and girls helped by this program are among the most oppressed, disadvantaged people on the planet and yet, with the help of organizations like CARE, they are able to bring prosperity to their families and communities. In an odd parallel, I felt incredibly empowered by being asked to participate in the democratic process of this amazing and richly blessed country of ours. With all the educational and economic advantages I’ve experienced because I was lucky enough to be born in a developed country, I still never expected to feel so much new power at the CARE conference. I was given the privilege of advocating for those who have no way to engage with the powerful. I’m already starting to save so that I can be back at the 2011 CARE conference “on my own dime” and with my husband in tow!
