NEWSBYHELENE GAYLE

Helene Gayle is part of Change.org's Changemaker network, a network comprised of leading voices for social change. This post was submitted especially for Blog Action Day 2010.

For women around the world, we all know juggling our careers, families and friends can be a struggle. But for Ellema Sorra, age 25 living in Ethiopia “There is no free space. Wherever I go, there’s a job to be done,” she says. Between raising four children and a host of other duties, it's no wonder. In addition to cooking, she milks the cows twice a day and walks two to three hours every day to fetch water from a nearby town.

Having access to clean drinking water and a toilet and practicing good hygiene can make all of the difference in a woman’s or a young girl’s life. At CARE, we focus our efforts on empowering women and girls in the poorest parts of the world and we know that impacting even a single one of them, can send a ripple effect through their entire community.

For Ellema, receiving training on water and sanitation from CARE was just the spark she needed.  She gathered five women and convinced them to help her build the village’s first latrine.  After a week of digging, they finished the job. “I decided I should be the model in my village so I took the initiative first,” Ellema said.  Now, 8 of the 12 villages in her community have built their own latrines.  The elders have even created bylaws encouraging people to use them.

We know that lack of access to safe water and sanitation is the biggest killer of children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa. What’s less known is that clean water and the ability to wash hands boosts school attendance for girls and can even bolster self esteem and dignity.  Women and girls in Ethiopia who have access to a hand washing station or latrine were three to five times more likely to see themselves as having greater equality in their household.

Helene Gayle is part of Change.org's Changemaker network, a network comprised of leading voices for social change.

Many young girls daydream about their wedding days, but few ever imagine being married at age 12. Tragically, that was the fate of Elham Assi, a girl in Yemen who was married to a man nearly twice her age. According to police and her mother, we learn that she bled to death after being forced to have sex with her husband.

Yemen is hardly the only country where this human rights violation is common. Worldwide, more than 60 million girls are married before age 17  — often to men twice their age or older. In poor countries around the world, governments condone or tolerate this practice, sometimes even after they have enacted laws against child marriage.

The problem isn't just religious or cultural, but the pressure of extreme poverty. Yet, child marriage also directly perpetuates poverty by cutting short a girl's education and reducing her chances of contributing to her family's income. Early marriage also puts girls at higher risk of injury and death in childbirth  — a girl under the age of 15 is five times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth than a woman in her 20s. As in the case of Elham Assi, they're also more likely to become victims of domestic violence.

Helene Gayle is part of Change.org's Changemaker network, a network comprised of leading voices for social change.

Climate change has the potential to wipe out the last 25 years of development gains in some parts of the world. As the number of natural disasters has doubled within the last 20 years, the world's poorest people are already experiencing the effects of climate change. More than 1.4 billion people live in extreme poverty on less than $1 a day, and 70% of these people are girls and women.

Climate change acts as a multiplier of existing threats to food security, education, health, natural resources and the day-to-day struggle for survival. Greenhouse gas emissions create more extreme weather patterns, shift seasons and change the amount of rainfall and average temperatures, causing crops to fail and water supplies to dry up or run over.

CARE has worked on climate change for decades and is helping lead the charge with one of the largest adaptation program in the world. We have a three-part approach:

1. Reduce poverty and help communities adapt. Our adaptation programs help communities withstand drought and floods through simple, cost-effective activities like harvesting rainwater, planting dense mangroves to protect crops from storm waves and using more resistant seeds in their fields. For example, seasonal floods are becoming worse in Bangladesh. CARE helps the women most affected by climate change adapt — sometimes by making a change as basic as raising ducks instead of chickens, so their food supply can swim instead of sink the next time there's a flood.

Early warning systems and community-based disaster response plans are also critical adaptation strategies. For every dollar we invest in disaster risk reduction and preparedness, roughly seven dollars are saved in disaster response.

Helene Gayle is part of Change.org's Changemaker network, comprised of leading voices for social change. In an interview with Change.org, Ms. Gayle explains what makes her passionate, and what causes she most supports.

Change.org: What cause or causes would you most like to promote as a Changemaker, and why?

Empowering women and girls with the resources to help lift their families and communities out of poverty. This includes access to education, financial resources and health care, which is particularly critical during and after pregnancy and childbirth. We have seen the impact of investing in women and girls. For example, every extra year that a girl goes to school will increase her later wages by 10-20%, and reduce the risk that her children will die in infancy.

Change.org: If you could ask 1 million people to all do 1 thing to advance causes that matter to you, what would it be?

Give! There are many ways to give to end global poverty. By donating as little as $11, CARE can provide a family a mattress during an emergency. For just under $50, you can send a child in Afghanistan to school for an entire year. Through your email-signature, you can sign petitions asking your congressional members to support and enforce policies at home, and abroad, against gender-based violence and child marriage. And through word-of-mouth, you can educate others about the importance of empowering poor women and girls in the fight to end global poverty.