Q&A: ‘Responding As We Would To A Friend In Crisis’

Cleo Fatoorechi interviews YIFAT SUSSKIND, MADRE Executive Director
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 1 (IPS) 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.