Speaking of new opportunities, we gave to a new organization this week. I got the lead on this group from my friend Michelle, who told me that she had heard about it though the advocacy of a Minneapolis-based hip hop artist named Dessa, who's music Michelle appreciates. The group is called CARE, which is an acronym for Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere. They are a large group that works worldwide to end poverty and hunger using an approach which aims at attacking not just hunger, but the root causes of hunger as well. They also focus on the special needs of women and children in the poorest areas of the world since women and children make up a disproportionate number of the disadvantaged in these areas. The CARE website describes their work like this:
CARE tackles underlying causes of poverty so that people can become self-sufficient. Recognizing that women and children suffer disproportionately from poverty, CARE places special emphasis on working with women to create permanent social change. Women are at the heart of CARE's community-based efforts to improve basic education, increase access to quality health care and expand economic opportunity for all. CARE also delivers emergency aid to survivors of war and natural disasters, and helps people rebuild their lives in the aftermath.
Basically, there are a number of initiatives that CARE works toward in the places that they are active. These things include trying to improve the educational opportunities for local women and children, trying to improve the health of mothers and their families, trying to improve economic opportunities in the area, especially for women, trying to end gender-based violence and trying to improve water use and management in the area. By attacking all of these areas in a holistic approach, the group is able to create lasting success stories that promote an upward spiral of quality of life. As more people are educated and given better opportunities, they want to bring others up with them, and want their children to have still better opportunities. Following this pattern, whole communities have been lifted out of poverty and set on the path of self-sufficiency.
When I completed my online donation, the receipt included a sample story showing an example of the work CARE does and the approach they take to doing it:
Hansaben and Pooja's story:
When Hansaben's family began migrating to harvest salt from the Gujarati desert, she had to quit school. "There were no schools in the desert," Hansaben said. "Our only skill was working with salt." CARE's solution: bring the schools to the children. CARE and local groups dug pits and covered them with burlap, creating makeshift classrooms where the earth is cool.
"I tell others to study hard and become something in their lives, just as we are doing," said Hansaben said. "We want to take advantage of this opportunity to help carry the family workload in other ways."
It's a rare opportunity for girls in some of India's poorest communities, as parents often yank daughters from school early to help at home or with labor such as the salt harvest. Half the women here are illiterate, twice the rate of men.
That's why CARE also supports schools at the edge of the desert, the next step for girls from the salt pans. There you'll find 16-year-olds such as Pooja, whose henna-covered hand holds a blowtorch. She's learning to weld and work with metal, the kind of skills that — though traditionally off limits to girls — can break the cycle of poverty for her family.
"We were thinking that if boys can do it," Pooja said, "why not us?"
From a management stand point, CARE does pretty well, although not quite as well as Feed My Starving Children, who we often work with. CARE uses 91% of donated funds for relief efforts with the remaining 9% going toward administration and fundraising. As such, it is still a pretty responsible group. Given their far-reaching methods and their success rate so far, this seems to be a great option for giving to alleviate hunger and raise the quality of life for women and children in the impoverished parts of the world.
For more information on CARE, go to:
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