Global Issues
Q&A: ‘Responding As We Would To A Friend In Crisis’
Working with grassroots organisations is the only viable way to genuinely help people, according Yifat Susskind, the newly appointed Executive Director of the New York-based women’s organisation MADRE.
Susskind, born in Israel, became a women’s activist in the Israeli Women’s Peace Movement - witnessing first-hand the important role women play in bringing peace to their societies.
We 'build long-term relationships with women’s organisations, and by doing that, build the long-term viability of the global women’s movement,' Susskind told IPS.
Excerpts of the interview follow:
Q: How do you face unexpected disasters, like the earthquake in Haiti? A: MADRE actually has been working in Haiti since 1994. Part of the reason why our work after the earthquake was so effective and so strong, is that we were not just flying into a crisis… starting to build something from nothing - we were able to respond when the earthquake happened the way you respond to a friend that is having a crisis.
These were women that we worked with for many years and we had ongoing progress with them, and so we were able to activate those networks that we’d built over many years and respond immediately and very effectively considering the size of our organisation, which is small.
Our intention is to continue to work in Haiti for many more years. So we tend to not just jump from one crisis to another, we build long-term relationships with women’s organisations, and by doing that, build the long-term viability of the global women’s movement.
Q: How exactly do you help your partner organisations? A: We do a combination of things. One of the things that we do is that we try to raise money, but that’s only one part of our programme. What we do is, work with community-based women to build the programme that they want to have. And we do that because we recognise that women at the grassroots level have a kind of expertise and a first-hand understanding of the crisis that they face. Outside experts don’t have that knowledge.
Not only do women have that understanding of the situation they are in, they also understand very well what they need to change that situation. It’s not that they don’t know, it’s that they don’t have the power to make that happen. That means that they don’t have the money, or they don’t have the training, or maybe they never were sent to school, so they don’t know how to read. They have a lot of obstacles to accessing policy-makers, accessing media, accessing police.
One of the things that we are doing for example is advocating to make sure that there is a seat at the table for grassroots women to represent their own issues in the community policy-making arena. For example in Haiti, we made sure, and this was a very hard battle.
Q: What is MADRE’s source of income? A: The majority is from small foundations. But what’s more interesting I think about MADRE… is that a very large proportion of our income is not from grants. That is unusual for an international organisation like MADRE, as the most important part of our funding comes not actually from foundations, but from individuals. That is, mostly women but also men, in the USA and around the world, who see what we are doing and understand the power of what MADRE’s work is, and who send money - sometimes it’s a little bit of money, 10 dollars a month, 50 dollars a year, and sometimes more. But really that’s the most valuable part of our income. It’s the part that comes from individuals who see themselves as part of MADRE and part of the social movements that we are supporting.
Q: What do you think of the creation of the new U.N. Women? A: I think the U.N. Women is a good idea. We were happy to see the agency created. The question that everyone has right now is whether U.N. Women is going to be just a shell, that governments can point to to say that they address the problem, or whether it is going to actually have the capacity to address the problem. And having the capacity to address the problem depends first of all on funding.
I’m sure you know that right now the budget for UN Women is about 500 million dollars, and that they haven’t even been able to meet those pledges.
Meanwhile the World Bank is estimating that it will take, I think the number is 83 billion dollars, to meet the MDG3 [Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women] target, which is only one part of what needs to happen to promote gender equality in the world.
The disparity between the resources that everyone knows are needed, and the resources the governments are willing to commit, is very very great. And I think it’s a reflection of the fact that there is not a lot of political will on the part of governments to address gender inequality and women’s human rights. So it will continue to be a fight. We have one victory, they have agreed to create the agency, that’s good. But it’s going to be an ongoing battle to get the resources that are needed.
© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service