Americans for UNFPA Student Award Winner – Bridging the Divide

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading Fatima’s blog and enjoyed the glimpse into UNFPA’s work to improve the health and rights of women in Uganda and Rwanda.  As Fatima showcased, UNFPA’s in-country work is largely dependent on the local needs and really calls on community involvement to build programs that succeed.

As the Americans for UNFPA staff delegate, I had the pleasure of traveling with Fatima and delegates from across the United States. 

Fatima, 2008 Student Award Winner, had a powerful impact on the other delegates, and even more so, on the many women we had the privilege of visiting.  She was able to draw connections, beyond the surface, with many of the women we met – as a Muslim, Somali-American, and student.

Our leadership delegations consisted of eight women, and one man, ranging from age 18 to  60+.  Each delegate brought a unique perspective from corporate executives to an oilfield engineer.

Fatima’s blog offers a sampling of the insightful comments she shared with her fellow delegates daily.  Unlikely many delegates, her college research afforded her the opportunity to visit UNFPA funded fistula programs earlier this year in Eritrea.  From that trip, she was able to share with us an in-depth perspective on fistula – a problem affecting so many women in Africa.

Fatima’s age and position as “Student Award Winner” particularly offered significant hope to the young women we met.  The youth population in Uganda/Rwanda is nearly double that of the U.S. [25% percent of Uganda’s total population is currently between the ages of  15–24 living; compared to 20% in Rwanda and only 12% in the U.S.]

What that means is that, literally, everywhere we went we met young people who were impacted by the work of UNFPA.  From job training programs for women who have been trafficked to HIV prevention and reproductive health services, I was overcome by the young and hopeful faces we encountered. 

And, for our team of delegates, Fatima was able to connect to these young people in a unique and profound way. 

One situation in particular comes to mind.  When we visited the REACH program in rural Uganda we went to a school with about 700 students, many of whom were also Muslim.  They were immediately drawn to Fatima, I think because she didn’t seem as “foreign” as the rest of us.  At the end of our visit, she was asked by the headmaster to share some words of advice with the students.  Needless to say, she was able to connect with the girls, I think because in her they could see a role model.  In sharing her personal story with them, she was able to inspire.  And her insights about the importance of education and stopping FGC (female genital cutting), certainly hit home with both the delegates and students.

I hope that the many readers of both Fatima’s blog and Marie Claire continue to stay involved with Americans for UNFPA.  And for those of you who've caught her travel bug: our upcoming delegations are to Laos in October and Nepal in March 2009.  And for U.S. College students, keep an eye out for news about the 2009 Student Award—applications will be available in December. 

For me, this trip has brought to life the obstacles and challenges facing women in Africa, and given me a deeper understanding of the programs available to tackle these problems.  By sharing this experience with Fatima, I very much hope that readers of her blog understand the importance of US support for the work of UNFPA.

Thanks for traveling along with us.  And, thanks to Fatima for sharing her wisdom with the delegates and with the many young people we met along the way!

Abby Miller

Development Manager 

Rwanda and Uganda from a Donor's Perspective

Jim Cowan from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania joined a trip organized by Americans for UNFPA to Rwanda and Uganda last summer to meet the people involved in UNFPA programs. This is his story:

On this trip to Uganda and Rwanda we visited health facilities supported by UNFPA and listened to women talking about their lives. They spoke with an intimacy, honesty and openness that ordinary tourists would never get to see, and they told us things that ordinary tourists would never get to hear.

The women that I talked with were living in cultures where large families are expected, and access to all forms of health care, including reproductive health care, is limited. They told their stories in a simple, direct fashion, and on more than one occasion I found it hard to even listen, let alone talk later about what I'd heard. Even now it's hard to write it down.

I met sex workers who sold themselves nightly for "50 cents with a condom, $2 without," a woman who was taken aside by the Rwandan interahamwe during the genocide of 1994, thrown on the ground with one leg tied to one tree and the other leg to another tree, raped repeatedly and left for dead, a women who was thrown out of her home by her husband when she confronted him about keeping his positive HIV status a secret and who had no choice but to turn to prostitution to support herself and her three children.

I also met strong, charismatic, educated women working effectively to change traditional views on family size, on the education of women, on female circumcision, and to make health knowledge and health care available to even the poorest people. Meeting these often poor and often uneducated women in rural health centers, in the offices of their women's associations, at a widow's agricultural association, and in hospitals and orphanages, also showed me their determination to make their lives better. Even more humbling was their desire to improve the lives of others they could touch.

It was very clear that modest but consistent funding transformed these women's lives. They went from a feeling that theirs was a waste of life and waste of the human spirit, into a life where there was some hope. The source of the hope was very practical: immunizations, prenatal care, childbirth services, family planning services, nutrition counseling, adult education - women who could read using their spare time to teach women who had never gone to school. The hope held by all these women was that they could be healthy, could earn a living, could plan their families, and most important of all, they could hope to be in control of their own lives.

I was reminded of Loren Eiseley's story, "The Star Thrower." Eiseley is walking on a beach after a storm where thousands of starfish are stranded on the beach, dying. Eiseley walks along, picking up starfish after starfish, throwing them one by one back into the sea. A man asks him what he's doing and what difference it makes, pointing to the starfish in Eiseley's hand. Eiseley throws the starfish back into the waves so it can live, and says, "It makes a difference to that one."

The biggest problem in Africa is the grinding poverty I saw almost everywhere. It's too large a problem for any one person to solve, and too large for all of us to solve in the very near future. But on this trip I learned that there are unlimited opportunities to help people and that there are countless people who desperately want to be helped.

Americans for UNFPA is truly helping some of the poorest, most defenseless women in the world. That help always makes a difference. Help always makes a difference to someone.

If you are interested in traveling with Americans for UNFPA, contact us at info@americansforunfpa.org.