On March 8, CARE kicked off its 2011 Conference and International Women's Day Celebration in Washington D.C. with a tribute concert by recording artists India.Arie, Michael Franti, American Idol alum Crystal Bowersox, Sarah Darling, and, in an exclusive U.S. premier performance, Idan Raichel.

Breakfast and Welcome Plenary

CARE's annual conference opened on March 9 to a packed Washington Hilton ballroom of 1,100 advocates from across the country.The room was charged with excitement for a stellar line-up of influential speakers and issue experts including CARE President and CEO Helene Gayle, Melinda Gates, Mrs. Laura W. Bush, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah and Ambassador Melanne Verveer.In addition, CARE staff from nearly 40 countries—from Egypt to Afghanistan—participated in the conference and shared their unique in-country perspectives.

Dr. Gayle began the breakfast plenary by welcoming the youngest participant,10-year-old Maya, who sold eggs from her chickens to raise money to attend the conference, and the oldest participant, 90-year-old Eileen Meader.This year's conference had record-breaking participation with 1,100 advocates from 49 states.

''We know that empowering women is the single most effective means we have of fighting poverty,'' said Dr. Gayle. ''Today is about working towards a world that acknowledges the power and potential of women as a matter of fact: a world in which the only limit for a woman is the reach of her dreams and how far she's willing to go to make them reality.''

''In many places around the world, myths hold back half of society,'' explained Dr. Gayle.''Myths yank girls out of school.Myths cause hunger.Myths mean that women don't get the health care they need.Myths kill.''

CARE unveiled a unique report, ''The Top 10 Myths about Women & the Heroes Who Bust Them,'' in honor of the 100^th anniversary of International Women's Day.

''Change comes when people stand up, speak out, and refuse to accept things as they are.Myths come tumbling down because women in the most unlikely places see their own promise, even when others doubt it, and dare to fulfill their potential, no matter what stands in their way,'' added Dr. Gayle

Dr. Gayle motivated the crowd as they headed into a day of training on CARE's three priority issues: keeping the foreign aid budget intact, empowering girls through education and financial opportunities for women.Helene noted the timeliness of advocates' efforts on Capitol Hill as budget talks remain front and center among members of Congress.

Following Dr. Gayle's remarks, Ambassador Melanne Verveer thanked the advocates and CARE Country Directors for all their tireless work and for advocating on behalf of poor women and girls everywhere.Ambassador Verveer fully supports CARE's mission to empower women as she has witnessed the resiliency and the strength of women across the world to be the ''agents of change'' in their communities.

''No country can get ahead by leaving half of their population behind,'' said Ambassador Verveer.''Women and girls are the world's greatest untapped resource, and investing in them is one of the most powerful forces for international development.''Ambassador Verveer acknowledged the importance of CARE's work in girls' education and access to financial tools for women as significant ways to alleviate poverty.

Legislative Issue Trainings

Following the breakfast plenary, participants met with their lobby groups and began to learn about CARE's legislative priority issues.Maya, the 10-year-old who sold chicken eggs to raise money to attend the conference, sat with a group of advocates from Maine.Among them was another young girl named Kiran.Maya and Kiran met at last year's conference and became fast friends.They both advocated against child marriage and have since become pen pals.This year, excited to be together again, they both decided to focus on education.

''My favorite part [of the conference] is learning about issues and meeting with members of Congress,'' explained Kiran.She said she likes talking to her representative because ''it makes me feel like I'm important.''

Luncheon Plenary

Luncheon keynote speaker Melinda Gates, co-chair and trustee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was met with a standing ovation when Dr. Gayle introduced her to a packed ballroom. Gates addressed the 1,100 CARE advocates and supporters on the importance of investing in women and girls in developing countries.

"We're not just haggling over a line item in the budget," Gates told the crowd when discussing critical foreign assistance funding. "We're talking about saving millions and millions of lives."

In preparation for the more than 300 planned Hill visits the following day, she urged the advocates to share amazing stories of humanitarian aid and the lifesaving impact it has had in developing countries with their members of Congress.

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah closed the luncheon session by stressing the importance of sustainable development.''The best way that we can serve our interests in the developing world is to create the conditions where our assistance is no longer necessary,'' explained Dr. Shah.

He praised CARE's achievements and our deep connection to the communities in which we work.Dr. Shah also encouraged CARE's advocates to push their representatives to oppose cuts to the foreign assistance budget.

Our assistance is not just a line in a budget, it is a reflection of who we are as a country,'' said Dr. Shah. He added that significant cuts to foreign aid would ''effectively end six decades of bipartisan tradition of U.S. leadership in global development.''

  The Girls Matter break out session was one of the most lively gatherings at the conference. With a room packed to the brim, students and Girl Scouts sat on the floor to hear CARE's Basic and Girls' Education Unit Director Sarah Bouchie, USAID Senior Gender Advisor Caren Grown and Girl Scouts of America Senior Vice President Laurie Westley talk about one of the most fundamental elements for global development: the education of girls.When you put a girl in school ''you tell the entire community that she is worth it, and hopefully while she is there she can help to… start to change some of the perceptions about what girls should achieve and how girls and boys should be treated'' said Bouchie.

I Am Powerful Dinner

by Dr. Helene Gayle, CARE president and CEO

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 percent 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 programs 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 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.

2. Protect the environment, conserve and reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Plowing fields and "slash and burn" agriculture releases carbon in to the atmosphere. Pesticide and fertilizer use releases nitrous oxide – 200 to 300 times more effective in trapping heat than carbon dioxide. CARE promotes climate-friendly agriculture – minimum tillage, building barriers to prevent hillside erosion and planting nitrogen-rich trees on farming plots – to help conserve land and reduce greenhouse emissions.

Deforestation is responsible for 20-30 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. Reforestation preserves existing biodiversity, takes away carbon from the atmosphere and, after 30 years, builds a natural repository for greenhouse gases. CARE and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) alliance currently has pilot projects in Mozambique and Tanzania to help protect the coastal marine and forest area's unique biodiversity while developing more diverse, sustainable and profitable agriculture and fisheries for communities dependent on natural resources. Our Mi Bosque project in Guatemala helps communities to grow forests and manage natural resources. Within the last two years alone, Mi Bosque worked with more than 2,000 community members to reforest 239,833 hectares across 132 communities. The average plot of land in the project area has experienced a 150 percent increase in productivity.

3. Seek a global solution through policy change

Policy choices will determine whether we can make poverty history despite climate change, or if climate change will make poverty even more pervasive than it is today. CARE is engaged with over a dozen global climate change alliances, including the 500 NGO-member strong Climate Action Network. Together with our partners, we are working to mobilize public and the U.S. government support to:

• Reduce emissions to keep global temperatures as far below a 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit increase as possible (right now, the global average temperature has risen almost 0.8 degrees Celsuis or 1.44 degrees Fahrenheit); and
• Ensure adaptation funding reaches and responds to the priorities of women and highly vulnerable populations.

Unless action is taken now to help the most vulnerable people adapt to climate change impacts, it will not be possible to ensure the food security of a growing (and migrating) world population.

We must – and can – do more.

Here's what you can do to help:

• Donate to help poor communities get the information and tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty and adapt to our changing climate;
• Learn more about the CARE/WWF Alliance;
• Join CARE at our National Conference in Washington, D.C., on May 11-12 to advocate for pro-poor climate change policies.

Thank you!

We’ve seen the images, heard the statistics and given what monetary donations we can. We’ve spent nights on our knees praying, days filled with thoughts, and minutes counting our blessings.

The much awaited COP 15 in Copenhagen, Denmark is finally here and from today, Monday 7^th December till Friday 18^th December, the world will witness with full stare the commitment of our leaders…better still If I may borrow the words of Connie Hedegaard, whether our leaders are ready to “move the world from an era of talk to an era of change”.

Since the inter-sessional climate talks in Bangkok, I have seen increased interest by Africa and for that matter my country Ghana, in the governance of climate change. Ghana government and other NGOs in Ghana such as Friends of the Earth, Civic Response and SEND Ghana have expressed the need to pressure the developed countries to take on emission reduction commitments that are required to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change that threatens the survival of humans as a species.

Over the past couple of months, my government has undertaken what one may call necessary baby steps in the governance of climate change especially in the vein of having a participatory climate change governance system in-country. The genesis of this participatory process has involved information sharing on the issues of climate change and subsequent discussions to pick up from the Ghanaian citizenry their ideas on addressing climate change. Workshops and seminars have been held for variant citizenry groups such as NGOs, traditional authorities and media. The culmination of all these workshops was a national forum held on 2^nd December that informed citizens the position that Ghana was taking to COP 15. Among other things, the main highlight from the national forum was that Ghana along with the other countries of the African Group was going to COP 15 to ask for the developed countries to take on emission reductions of at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2020.

Coming from a country that is experiencing impacts of climate change and may experience worse, I am hoping that developing countries can actually make the Annex 1 countries especially USA to feel the heat for the need to take action. It is a welcome thought that Presidents and Prime ministers of certain countries will be present at the COP 15 but let us hope that they do more good than harm; it is either they are instrumental in helping come out with a good legally binding deal or by their presence, rather draw attention to themselves and let focus be lost in the negotiations and thus they delay the process.

We all know how great an orator President Barack Obama is, and I for one am worried that USA may be playing the “Obama-mania” card with his Excellency’s presence at the COP. Serious negotiations under COP 15 may become arrested due to the presence of “Pollywood celebrities” such as his Excellency President Obama. For those of us from developing countries, the possibility of this stunt spells double doom as a USA is not prepared to take on serious commitments and may by this act delay what the negotiations could achieve.

I am not familiar with the USA system of governance but it is interesting to note that when it comes to Climate change negotiations, the President declares his inability to contribute anything concrete until a bill is passed through the senate; however, when about 30,000 soldiers had to be sent to Afghanistan, there was no waiting for the senate to decide, the President just announced it…this leaves me to wonder, how devastating does USA want Climate change and its impacts to become before they get serious?

As a working partner of the CARE “Southern Voices Project”, I am by this asking the developing country delegates and negotiators to pressure the developed countries to take on deep emission reduction commitments and also asking the Annex 1 countries especially USA to “STEP IT UP”…if greenhouse gas emissions continue, it is not Mother Earth who will die but rather the human race who will as Mother Earth adjusts other components in her system in accordance with the GHG concentration in the atmosphere to ensure a balance.

We owe it to the generation yet unborn to save our climate …we can, so we must!!!

We are parents who hold our children on our lap while listening to conference calls about the latest developments in fighting poverty. We are individuals who hold corporate jobs and sneak to an empty cubicle to call our politicians on pending humanitarian issues being voted on in Congress that day. We are students, who arrange to be absent from class for 2 days so we can travel to DC on our own dime to attend the CARE National Conference and lobby with our officials about hunger and gender-based violence. We are retirees that use our free time to meet with Senators in our home district to make sure they know that their constituents want action for the mother in India, Africa and Asia who has to choose which child to feed that night.

Yesterday, Congress passed H.R. 2410, a bill that includes authorization for an Office for Global Women's Issues. The Prevention of Child Marriage provisions, also provisions for Food Security are included in that bill. These are the issues which CARE advocates took to Washington, DC last month.

Yesterday, I felt a personal connected to this legislation. It could be because I’m a CARE advocate or maybe because I'm a woman, but I think it is because I am human.

Thank you fellow volunteer CARE advocates for leading these double lives. The joy of yesterday happened in part – because of you.

There's so much to say about the importance of advocating for women and girls around the world who don't have the power to speak up for themselves.  There's so much to be said for hundreds of people who, despite a rampant economic crisis, set aside time and money to travel and stand up on behalf of those girls and their communities. But what you don't expect from attending this conference is the impact it will have on you, as an advocate.

Real quick – I forgot to tell you something exciting about Day 1 of the CARE Conference. My first year, 2007, I noticed that there weren’t many Black women here and I really, really was concerned about that. I know so many Black women that are concerned about poverty, and CARE is an organization about women, so why weren’t they here? I sought out to change that.