WHITE HOUSE & STATE DEPT. PROPOSAL
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From: Ann S.
Date: Friday, March 1, 2013, 3:16 PM
Subject: White House & State Dept. Proposal
ID: 273450

Grace and I have just finished the White House & State Department Proposal. If you want to be part of the organizations endorsing this let us know. Namaste!!! Ann & Grace

Proposal for Grassroots Participation in National and International Activities on the Status of Women, Including the Upcoming 57th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, March 4-15, 2013

Introduction

This paper represents the views of a diverse group of women who have been involved for decades in issues affecting women and girls in the U.S. and around the world. We applaud the Obama Administration’s efforts to improve the status of women and girls through Executive Orders 13506 establishing the White House Council on Women and Girls; 13595 directing implementation of an “Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security;” 13623 on Preventing and Responding to Violence Against Women and Girls Globally, and most recently, the Presidential Memorandum of January 30, 2013, “Coordination of Policies and Programs to Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women and Girls Globally.”

As representatives of a coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) addressing the status of women, we are urging that the Obama Administration include improving the status of women and girls among its top priorities and strengthen its efforts to improve the status of women at home and abroad over the next four years through:

1. Increased involvement of NGO’s and state and local governmental bodies addressing the status of women in White House coordination of initiatives within the U.S. and in other nations on cross-cutting issues affecting women and girls; and

2. Increasing grassroots involvement in developing and implementing Obama Administration initiatives through the Circle Method. These two recommendations are discussed below.

Active White House coordination through the Council on Women and Girls and increased grass-roots involvement will facilitate:

• Implementation of the 12-point Platform for Action, developed after 20 years of intensive effort and completed after the fourth world conference on women in Beijing in 1995, as well as other UN initiatives to advance the status of women; • Building consensus among NGO’s and government agencies addressing the status of women for regional conferences of women around the world, and developing the resources needed for the regional conferences and a future world conference on women. On March 8, 2012, a joint statement was issued by UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon and General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser calling for a resolution for a 5th world women’s conference, later describing the timeframe as, “when the time is right.” We support this approach, noting that the last world conference was held nearly 20 years ago. • Increasing grass-roots involvement to develop leadership capabilities of women and girls across the world leading to lifetimes of empowerment, economic self-sufficiency, increased education, better health, and strengthening democratic processes. • Increasing grants to NGO’s and state and local agencies focusing on women. Most of these organizations are underfunded and overworked. Streamlined grant-making processes are essential. • Grants to grassroots women’s NGOS, which are underfunded and understaffed but carry out the majority of services by and for women who are not being served by general service grants.

At the Vancouver Peace Summit for Nobel Laureates in 2009, His Holiness the Dalai Lama said, “The world will be saved by western woman.” As a Nobel Laureate, We are asking President Obama to take his place in history as the first President to put his personal prestige and the prestige of the Office of the Presidency behind opening all the gateways to fulfilling this prophecy.

We look forward to a dialogue and constructive activism with the Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Liaison, the Office of the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, the Ambassador at Large, U.S. Department of State, and others to further the President’s agenda.

Part I: Increased Involvement of NGO’s and State and Local Agencies Focusing on Women in Active White House Coordination of Initiatives on Improving the Status of Women and Girls Within the U.S. and Between the U.S. and Other Nations.

The White House Council on Women and Girls provides an excellent vehicle for top-level Administration coordination of cross-cutting issues. Lodging leadership of the White House Council on Women and Girls with the Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Liaison, currently Ms. Valerie Jarrett, signals the President’s seriousness in addressing issues of concern to women in the U.S. and around the world.

• Increasing involvement of NGO’s would develop leadership skills, provide a means to connect local interests and agendas with Obama Administration initiatives, and develop stronger linkages with women and girls around the world. • There are many cross-cutting issues of critical importance shared by women in the U.S. and around the world, including violence against women and girls; poverty, sex trafficking, which has reached epidemic proportions, more than doubling since 1995; and sustainable supplies of nutritious food and better diets to control diseased, of critical importance with childhood obesity and diabetes at record levels. Trafficking of women and girls has skyrocketed from 18 million in 1995 to a staggering 42 million this year. It is critical that the US, as the world greatest importer and consumer of sex slaves, take the lead in eliminating this form of 21st century human bondage. • Greater self-sufficiency through entrepreneurship and other life skills. The well-known adage that teaching a person to fish, rather than giving her a fish, leads to a lifetime of self-sufficiency is on-target. Studies have found that micro-credit programs in the third world are the most effective means to lift families out of poverty. While the kinds of skills needed for self-sufficiency may differ in countries where computers are plentiful vs. the third world, strategies for acquiring life skills do not.

Food Sustainability and Security: An Example of How White House Coordination by the Council on Woman and Girls can Have Great Impact

An excellent example of how working together with a grassroots organization makes a big difference is the joint project of the US Departments of State and Labor working with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). CIW is directly involved with farm workers based in Florida, many of whom are part of the migrant stream that travels through the harvest season. The joint project is ending slavery in the fields for the first time in history and stopping violence against women farm workers.

Food sustainability and security are major issues across the world and unless these problems are addressed, mass starvation could result. To underscore the critical importance of this issue, rural farmers control 20 percent of the world’s biodiversity, and women are 70 percent of the rural farmers in the third world.

At last year’s NGO sessions, women from all over the world discussed barriers that undermine self-sufficiency and sustainable supplies of nutritious food for healthy diets. The needs of farmworkers also must be addressed, especially since large-scale agribusiness is spreading beyond the U.S. Among the many problems identified are the following:

• In the U.S. women farmers described discrimination by Department of Agriculture staff, including demands for sex before their applications for loans and subsidies would be considered, requirements that a male co-sign their applications, lower amounts than men receive when they can obtain agricultural assistance, and isolation in rural areas from support systems to sustain them. • Women in Japan cited problems stemming from widespread radioactive contamination of soil and water, including adequate supplies of uncontaminated milk. • Women in Latin America and Africa cited corruption of political officials in their countries who are aiding and abetting transnational corporations in land-grabbing, often through “front companies.” Tenant farmers are then forced to purchase genetically modified and other seeds that are infertile and unsuited to local conditions. Another tactic is contaminating and diverting water from farms owned by locals. • In many countries, including Peru, educational institutions ignore the time-tested methods of indigenous women farmers and the use of seeds developed over hundreds of years that reliably produce nutritious food that indigenous peoples have eaten for generations. • Government programs designed to assist farmers exclude small rural farmers. • Language barriers isolate rural women farmers in their own countries (South Africa recognized seven official languages), making assistance more difficult. • Marketing products is a serious problem. • The broader issues of domestic violence and sexual assault among rural women in the U.S. must be addressed more systemically. According to the Director of the Wisconsin Rural Women’s Initiative, the number of suicides among rural women in Wisconsin has almost reached the level of male suicides in that state.

Developing networks of women to support each other across geographic boundaries is a powerful tool in addressing these issues, for example:

• The U.S. Department of Agriculture can be charged with creating networks of women farm owners by having Extension Agents send lists of women farmers within each area served by the agents, along with resource materials such as those described in the next section on the Circle Method. • Women farmers and farm workers in the U.S. and other developed countries are more likely to have telephones and computers to connect with others in their country and have no language barriers, so they can take the lead in assisting rural women elsewhere. • Increasing the number of cell phones and computers in the third world through assistance programs would enable rural women to form networks in their regions, countries and around the world. One cell phone and computer in a village, which is fairly common in India and numerous African countries, would make a big difference. • Assistance programs could fund more interpreters who could operate in rural areas, traveling from place to place to teach rural women farmers and help with problem-solving. • Expansion of language training, including the language spoken by government officials and English would reduce isolation of rural women. • In the United States materials written in Spanish and other languages would provide women domestic and farm workers with information on their rights and course of action when violated. • Adoption by government agencies of addressing violence against women as a priority and financial support to provide continuity to programs such as those operated by a small program in Wisconsin to train facilitators and bring together rural and farm women for support in overcoming the obstacles they face are important first steps.

Networks of women farmers and women farm workers would be a powerful vehicle for empowering rural women, providing the means to increase their voter participation to elect political officials who respond to their needs and to access local, national and international media to get out information on the misdeeds of transnational corporations. Women who live in nations where these transnationals are based could pressure their governments to correct these practices when public exposure is insufficient to do so.

The example of linking women farmers at home and abroad illustrates why the White House Council on Women and Girls is a powerful vehicle for empowering women across the entire spectrum of issues in the Beijing Platform and other UN initiatives to improve the status of women and girls.

Part II: Using the Circle Method to Increase Grassroots involvement in Developing and Implementing Administration Initiatives for Women and Girls. We are proposing a powerful means to increase grassroots participation in Obama Administration initiatives at home and abroad: the Circle Method, as described below. The Circle Method develops leadership skills and taps into creativity to overcome barriers to the empowerment of women of all ages. Circles provide the mechanism to implement Obama Administration initiatives to improve the status of women and girls, as well as building democracy through expanded participation in public life.

The Circle Method allows for true democratic representation and participation in policy-making, collaboration in finding and carrying out solutions, peace-making, and building networks of networks of grassroots women and organizations to interact with governments and the United Nations. Organizations that teach the Circle Method have brought shared leadership and circle processes around the world and to United Nations meetings and worldwide gatherings.

The Circle Method is nonsectarian and politically neutral, and an important building block for utilizing and expanding networks of women and girls activated by two Obama campaigns for President. An informed and active electorate is essential to a robust democracy in the U.S., as well as building democracy around the world providing the means to leave a lasting legacy of freedom, peace and prosperity that will benefit generations world- wide.

We are hopeful that the upcoming meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women will produce a resolution for wider participation of women in implementing the Beijing Platform, such as Regional Forums. We urge that the Circle Method be adopted as part of such a resolution, and that it be used by the White House Council for Women and Girls and government agencies involved in Council initiatives.

We welcome interaction with Obama Administration leaders in implementing the initiatives undertaken to date. Please refer to Attachment !, “Who We Are” for information on how to contact us.

The Circle Method

We are recommending the Circle Method, an egalitarian structure and process, to ensure grassroots women’s participation on all levels of governance. It allows for every woman’s voice to be heard in a non-threatening and non-polarizing setting. Women’s voices, which have not been heard in traditional settings, are heard and listened to with respect. Women who live the problems know the issues and often have the solutions. Including their voices in policy-making and granting procedures is critical to empowering women. The Millionth Circle website, representing a large and growing global women’s network, is www.millionthcircle.org. The following material was drawn from the website. The vision of the Millionth Circle movement is as follows:

A proliferation of circles with a spiritual center becomes a worldwide healing force by bringing feminine values of relationship, nurturing, and interdependency into a global culture in which hierarchy, conflict and competition, power over others and exploitation of the earth’s resources are dominant values. Our aim is to celebrate the millionth circle as an idea whose time has come.

“Millionth Circle” refers to reaching a “tipping point” where a sufficient number of people using this method create a consciousness shift in decision-making that empowers everyone. The terms “spiritual” and “sacred” in Millionth Circle literature refer to processes used by indigenous people for millennia: creating a center, often referred to as an “altar” focused on transpersonal and transcendent values of com-union among all the participants sharing the common purpose of achieving consensus for the greater good of all (see “Create sacred space” below). It is important to note that circles following the principles below have been growing worldwide for over 30 years. began.

Noted Jungian psychiatrist and author of 11 books Jean Shinoda Bolen describes the effect of women’s sacred circles as follows, “There is a deep sense of being connected to one another, at an archetypal level…that makes it possible for most women to identify with other women across national, racial, and religious boundaries, without ever meeting. I believe that if women are in circles that support them to believe what they know to be true, and to act with courage and wisdom, the circle becomes a transformative vessel for personal and cultural change. This is especially so for circles with a sacred center.”

Circle Principles are as follows:

Create sacred space: Physically preparing a space to accommodate the participants in a circle, usually with a centerpiece or altar. A simple candle on a table suffices—the candle symbolizing enlightened thinking and connecting with one’s “inner light” to the highest wisdom.

Listen with compassion and for wisdom: This includes listening without a personal agenda, suspending judgment, being curious and finding the underlying meaning in others’ statements. Also, it is listening for wisdom as it comes through each participant.

Speak from your heart and experience: Speak one at a time. This includes saying what is true for you and speaking to the center of the circle, not to another individual. Offer experience and feelings to the circle, not advice. Speak on at a time, using a tool familiar among indigenous peoples—a “talking stick”—when needed to ensure that all are heard.

Invite silence and reflection when needed: Listening to our own inner guidance before speaking and requesting silence and reflection in the circle when we feel it is needed.

Take responsibility for your experience and impact on the circle: This includes demonstrating self-respect and self- restraint. Self-monitor to ensure that our needs and expectations are being met. Participants are responsible for ensuring that their contributions add to the positive experience of all in the circle.

Keep the confidence of the circle: This refers to our confidentiality agreements. What is spoken in the circle, stays in the circle to help ensure a safe environment for sharing experiences and feelings.

Make decisions, when needed, by consensus: Each circle determines through discussion among equals how decisions will be made. We believe that using consensus as a decision-making model produces the best results, since everyone becomes a stakeholder. . These guidelines can be used as a starting point for group agreements in any circle. Shared leadership, decisions by consensus and full participation provide the ideal setting for citizens to fully engage with governmental and non- governmental organizations at every level. In this safe and democratic setting greater understanding of differences leads to unlimited creativity in finding solutions and forming collaborative actions and networks in carrying them out. This movement is worldwide and dedicated to the inclusion of all women and girls in bringing forth our feminine gifts in changing the world. Circle is the best setting for empowering women and girls worldwide.

The circle method will reap benefits at every level:

• Meetings between US women and government officials, including meetings with NGOs under the auspices of the White House Council on Women and Girls, such as meetings with agencies, for example, with officials of Department of Labor on workplace issues; • Developing consensus among US Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) for effective and successful U.S. leadership of efforts to improve the status of women in the US and around the world. Expanding networks of women across the country will build a groundswell of private and corporate support for the Administration’s initiatives. • Meetings at CSW and at the Regional/Cross-Regional levels envisioned as an alternative to or leading up to a global meeting complete with internet and cell phone hook-ups as part of expanding participation in the age of the Global Economy and Global Village. We have many other innovative ideas on how to involve women around the world at greatly reduced cost. • Circle Principles used in peacekeeping, UN Security Resolution 1325, allows for women’s voices to be heard and respected. Women as keepers of the peace in their homes and communities are needed in both local and high level meetings. Government-sponsored peace-keeping circles would support lasting peace.

For a listing of events featuring the wisdom of circles at the 57th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, March 4-15, 2013, please see www.LightPages.net/UN.cfm or e-mail Jeanie@LightPages.net. All events are free and open to the public.

Attachment 1

Who We Are

This position paper reflects views of grassroots women’s organizations, state and local agencies on the status of women, and individuals who seek the means to be of service to our country by empowering women and girls worldwide and forming structures for full participation locally, nationally and globally. These organizations include: The Millionth Circle Initiative, Gather The Women of Southwest Florida, Circle Connections, International Public Policy Institute, Women of Spirit and Faith, We Are Enough, Pathways to Peace, One Voice Alliance of Women (OVA), Human Trafficking Awareness, Wisconsin Rural Women’s Initiative, US Women Connect.

Principal Authors

E. Grace Heller retired in 2001 after a 35-year career in the Federal Government where she served in leadership positions in the Executive and Legislative Branches focused on policy development, implementation and assessment of domestic programs, particularly poverty and civil rights programs. Ms. Heller led development of position papers for the UNCSW and OECD when she served as Policy Director for the Women’s Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, during Alexis Herman’s tenure as Director. She served as Senior Executive to Ida Castro, Chairwoman, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in the second Clinton Administration. She can be reached at star.7grace@yahoo.com.

Ann Smith served for 17 years as the executive director of Women’s Ministries of the Episcopal Church USA and executive director of Global Education Associates. She attended the United Nations third and four UN World Conference on Women and the UN Commission on the Status of Women for the past 29 years. She represented the National Council of Churches and Anglican Communion in meetings with President Clinton’s Interagency Council on Women. She has served on the Connecticut Permanent Commission on the Status of Women and now serves as director of Circle Connections and We Are Enough Campaign. She serves as Regional Coordinator for Gather The Women and on the board of Earth Child Institute and Interfaith Action. She can be reached at annLsmith@comcast.net