You can help us win by donating $10 anytime after 3pm today, (Thursday, Oct. 29th) and donating $10 anytime before 3pm tomorrow (Friday, Oct. 30th). Then tell 10 of your friends to do the same. That's it!
Other fun and easy ways to help out:
Post the cause on your Facebook page and update your status
Talk about it on your blog or Twitter
Remember: the contest counts individual donations, not the total funds raised. So if you have $20 to give, spread it out over two days so that it counts for twice as much.
There are also chances for you to win!
The first 3 fans to recruit 10 people to our cause who also donate will receive MADRE t-shirts, become MADRE administrators for the cause (which gives you insider abilities to recruit participants, promote the campaign and more), and indefinite bragging rights.
If you are the biggest fundraiser for the day (3pm Oct. 29th to 3pm Oct. 30th) you win a chic MADRE reusable shopping bag with surprises inside!
What are we raising money for again?
MADRE created the Afghan Women’s Survival Fund to enable women who are threatened with violence to escape to safety. The Fund provides cell phones to link partners in the rescue network and covers the costs of emergency medical care, food, shelter, local and international transportation, clothing and other personal effects for women who are forced to escape quickly.
Today’s challenge is clear: every time that you and your friends give until 3pm Friday, Oct. 30th through America's Giving Challenge increases support for Afghan women and our chance to win an additional $1,000 for these women!
Last week, MADRE's partner organization, the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), launched a new radio broadcast: the Al Mousawat Radio. For two hours each week, women will have control of a new corner of airspace not run by religious or ethnic groups and not influenced by the state.
The radio station presents an incredible opportunity for OWFI to reach out to women who have felt isolated and alone, who haven’t been a part of the progressive exchanges that OWFI facilitates and who might be ready to join in the conversation.
The programming is designed to relate to women’s everyday struggles against sexual violence and discrimination, while showing an alternative to the fundamentalist mindset of mainstream media. The central message of Al Mousawat Radio is that the women listening are not alone.
In addition to stories of leadership and empowerment, Al Mousawat Radio will air international music and news. It will serve as a connection between Iraqi women and youth and the progressive community around the globe.
Yanar Mohammed, OWFI's director, wants to know: what are you listening to? What artists/songs do you think Al Mousawat Radio should share with the women and youth of Iraq?
Yesterday, MADRE Policy and Communications Director Yifat Susskind appeared on GRITtv, hosted by Laura Flanders, to discuss women's rights under occupation in Afghanistan. To watch the video, click on the image below. A later segment in the video also features Malalai Joya, an Afghan women's rights activist known for her bold stance against warlords in Parliament.
Below is a statement we released today on the 18th consecutive annual vote by the UN General Assembly condemning the US embargo on Cuba. This was the first vote addressed to the Obama Administration.
Today, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on a
resolution calling for an end to the US embargo against Cuba. For the
18th consecutive year, a nearly unanimous grouping of nations came
together to condemn this 47-year-old policy, now continuing under the
Obama Administration.
MADRE joins the General Assembly in
condemning this embargo, which has for nearly half a century prevented
Cuba from purchasing necessities such as food and medicine. Even in
the wake of Hurricane Ike in September 2008, which hit Cuba and Haiti
with particular force, the US was unwilling to budge on lifting the
embargo to allow in aid supplies.
The resolution gathered 187
votes in favor with only three nations—the US, Israel and Palau—voting
against it. The Marshall Islands and Micronesia abstained. Meanwhile,
there is worldwide recognition, even among traditional US allies, that
the embargo is a failed and harmful policy that contravenes principles
of international law.
President Obama has taken some piecemeal
steps to shift US policy towards Cuba, such as relaxing regulations
around family travel and remittances. In so doing, he has promised a
“new beginning” in US-Cuba relations.
The trade embargo
represents a direct obstacle to any “new beginning.” As a senator in
January 2004, President Obama stated that it was “time to end the
embargo with Cuba.” MADRE urges President Obama to recall his original
convictions and take concrete steps to end the embargo now.
There are two moments we need to recognize today. First is the International Day of Rural Women, a day that acknowledges the contributions of rural women worldwide to their communities, economies and families. Second is the third annual Blog Action Day, uniting bloggers around the world to promote key issues of social change. This year, the topic at hand is climate change.
Many of MADRE’s environmental justice projects with community-based women’s organizations worldwide have been situated in the overlap between these two issues. Our work with our sister organizations has not only recognized that women disproportionately feel the impacts of climate change, such as mounting food insecurity and intensifying natural disasters. We have also emphasized this crucial fact: women have the solutions.
Women make up the majority of small-scale farmers worldwide and possess invaluable expertise in sustainable means of local food production. More and more, people are recognizing the grave danger presented by the current food system’s reliance upon industrial agriculture. Estimates compiled by GRAIN show that the links in the chain of industrial agriculture—including chemical fertilizers, destruction of natural biodiversity, transportation, processing, storage, and more—are responsible for nearly half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
There are just a few hours left until 3pm EST today, the cut-off point in our effort to win $1000 for the Afghan Women's Survival Fund as part of the "America's Giving Challenge" on Facebook. We've been mobilizing all of our friends and allies to help us get the word out there--and you can help us! The message below from Vivian Stromberg, our Executive Director, has more information. Thank you!
MADRE has entered "America's Giving Challenge," an online contest, for a chance to win $50,000 for our Afghan Women's Survival Fund. During the next few weeks, the group with the highest number of individual donations wins.
We were already excited for this chance to raise support for a critical program to save women's lives and defend their human rights. And then we saw our competition. Right now, an anti-choice project ("Make Abortion UNTHINKABLE") is poised to win.
In a single week, over 300 people have made donations to a group whose
goal is to destroy women's right to reproductive choice. We can't let
them win.
Today is a crucial day in the contest. From 3pm EST Wednesday until 3pm EST Thursday, the group that receives the most individual donations wins $1,000. And we just learned that the anti-choice group is trying to win today's competition too.
So we need your help!
Donate $10. Ask you friends, family and coworkers to donate $10. With your help, we can prove just how important women's rights are, both in the United States and around the world.
The number of abortions worldwide has decreased, but little
has changed in the estimated number of unsafe abortions that occur on the same scale, especially in developing countries.According to a new report by the
Guttmacher Institute, "70,000 women die each year from the effects of unsafe
abortion -- an estimate that has hardly changed in 10 years."
Even though the report acknowledges that total abortion rate declined for a period of
time, unsafe abortion practices remain a key threat to women’s health on a
global scale.
According to the report, about 40% of the
world’s women live in countries where abortion laws are highly restrictive.The report reminds us that "restrictive abortion laws are an unacceptable infringement of women's human rights and of medical
ethics."
By Miguel Macias, Guest Blogger and assistant professor at the department of Television and Radio at Brooklyn College.
Miguel, a youth media producer and MADRE volunteer, recently traveled to Bogota, Colombia to lead a multimedia workshop. The participants were young people affiliated with Taller de Vida, a MADRE sister organization. Below are his reflections on the experience, featuring a video produced by one of the participants.
I forgot about the dogs on the roofs. I used to look at them from the top floor of the house that Taller de Vida has in Usme, Bogota. And wondered about their lives. How much time did they spend on the roofs? did anyone ever walk them? is the culture gap between American and Colombian dogs bigger or smaller than the one between humans? As the taxi cab arrives to Usme I see the dogs on the roofs again. I forgot about them. The same way I forgot about the two policemen on one small motorcycle. About the thousands of Colombians trapped in the capital's omnipresent transit system where buses want to be trains and streets want to be tunnels. I forgot about the food, the watered down coffee, the local beer.
The memories start to arrive quickly. But for some reason I am not amused or excited... it feels like I was here a few days ago. Not a few years ago. A few years ago I was in Bogota for a week, teaching a group of students how to produce video. My time in Bogota consisted of trips back and forth from a neighborhood in the middle of Bogota, to Usme, a former small town that now has been absorbed by the huge city. This time I come back for two weeks to teach multimedia. I am not expecting to see a lot more of Bogota. So my taxi rides to Usme become my time to look at the city. Its small stores, its chaos, its military and police, students and professionals. In one of those taxi rides someone explains to me that the city is organized in different areas or "estratos" according to the average income of the neighborhood. The idea seems logical but extremely strange. Class is one of those things that North Americans don't like to talk about. Here... they don't need to talk about it... they are told what class they belong to. It's part of the reality so... why not put it on the table?
The first day of workshops is conducted at the top floor of the building Taller de Vida has in Usme. I look out of the window, watered down coffee in hand, and I see the dogs on the roofs.I try to remember the names of the students who will be taking part on the workshop. This will be a tough one. I realize as soon as I ask them to tell me some stories in writing. Some of the students are barely twenty years old and they have already been a part of an armed group in Colombia. Or two. My instinct pushes me to push them to give those stories away. So I can publish them. So I can surprise the readers of the world. With their stories. But when it becomes evident that these students are not particularly interested in remembering, or telling me amazing stories, stories of losses, of cruelty, unknown stories and experiences, I also realize that I am not interested in pushing them to talk to me. It's their choice, not mine.
Memory is a funny thing. I am fascinated by it. Perhaps because my own memory is always influencing what I do. Teaching these young students from Bogota I wonder about their memories. And I wonder about how those memories shape who they are. One of the people I met in Bogota told me: "I've met people who have gone through horrible things, and they are fine. No psychological consequences... that I can see". But can it be that these young people are immune to the kind of things they went through? Some of them certainly look like it. That is... assuming that the kind of things they went through are actually horrible and traumatic for them. Maybe these realities are just the norm for them. Maybe they grew up with them and never saw this environment, this political violence the country has been involved in for so long, as extraordinary. Nothing extraordinary.
I took a bunch of memories back from my two weeks in Bogota. Most of them will be posted soon on the web in the form of stories the students created. In the end they did give me their stories... maybe not the ones I was expecting. But they did give me their stories. It was hard work... not all of them knew how to put their memories on the paper... but they did it. One of the students I worked with, Jorge Quesada, produced a video about the circus-like artists who perform in front of the stopped cars when the traffic lights turn red in Bogota.
But I also came back with the feeling that I had missed something. I try to figure things out around me. Analyze, calculate, analyze more, explore the look of the people around me... analyze even more. And I left Bogota without the conclusions that I usually reach. Maybe I needed more time. Maybe I need to come back and have the opportunity to ask more questions. And maybe I will. Because I still feel there is a story that needs to be told. There is a messy body of memories, history, experiences, opinions, years, interpretations, conflicts. And I want to deconstruct it. Understand how the consciousness of this conflict is built. And maybe then I'll feel that I gave something significant back to those Colombians who gave me their trust.
Today is a day that has embedded itself in the public consciousness of many people living in the US—but too often for the wrong reasons. Today, school children will be taught about an explorer who “sailed the ocean blue,” but many will be denied the knowledge of the destruction he wreaked upon his arrival. Parades will be held and people may take the day off work, all the while disregarding the cruelty of celebrating the decimation of Indigenous Peoples.
These are not long-forgotten tragedies, as some might flippantly argue. Their impact carries on to this day. Indigenous Peoples continue their generations-long struggle, fighting against unjust laws that force them off their lands and advocating for the preservation of Indigenous cultures and communities.
We do such a movement a grave injustice when we continue to blindly honor Columbus, perpetuating a historical dishonesty that ignores the price that Indigenous Peoples have paid.
Take today as an opportunity to learn more about the histories of Indigenous Peoples in this country and elsewhere, and about the global Indigenous Peoples’ rights movement. These resources can get you started.
In response to international pressure, Guinean military leader Capt. Moussa Camara has agreed to set up an independent commission to probe the attacks by his solders on participants of a pro-democracy rally last month. Human rights groups say 157 were killed, and women were especially targeted in the violence.
Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had stern words for Kenyan leaders following his three-day assessment of the country's political leadership. Annan said he expects the International Criminal Court to prosecute those responsible for the post-election violence that began in December 2007 and left 1,000 dead.
Blogger and author Judith Warner discusses findings from a new Census Bureau report showing that the more choices a mother has, the more likely she is to want to work outside the home. Full-time stay-at-home moms are disproportionately low-income and without college degrees. The high cost of child care makes staying home the only "choice" for many of these women.
Wednesday marked the official eighth anniversary of U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan. The New York Times has an interesting interactive graphic showing the buildup of troops there. (More reading: a blog post from Diana on women's rights in Afghanistan, plus a video with commentary from Robert Greenwald, the filmmaker behind Rethink Afghanistan.)
More than 2 million babies and mothers die each year from complications in childbirth, according to a study released by the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics world congress this week. Many of these deaths could be avoided with basic improvements in health care and training for care providers.
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