Hillary and Chelsea Clinton took the stage at the
10th Anniversary of the Clinton Presidential Center today to discuss the progress of their
No Ceilings initiative.
Hillary
began by explaining that the objective of
No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project is to gather data
to measure the progress of women and girls from the time of her speech
in Beijing to the target date of 2016, the 20th anniversary of that
speech. She framed three questions:
- What was the agenda?
- What has been accomplished?
- What is left to do?
She
noted that progress has been made extending elementary education and
some secondary education to girls, more needs to be done to confront
infant mortality, and a great deal must be done for women to be
perceived as members of the
formal labor force and to be included in the
formal
economy. Identification of barriers to inclusion is essential.
Provision of child care so that women can fully participate in a
transformed workplace is a goal.
Chelsea then explained that
Beijing was a long time ago ("Don't remind me!" Hillary added). She
stressed the role of technology and said that Facebook is the largest
community of women in the world and that progress must be measured via
data.
An example Chelsea offered is the impact of ebola. She
called it a caregivers' disease which results in caregivers, largely
women, also contracting the disease and succumbing in high numbers, but a
tangential effect, she pointed out, was the reduction in available
women to perform midwife duties and care for newborns resulting in
increased infant and maternal mortality.
Key to today's discussion
were questions of what works and what models are scalable and flexible
enough to be modified as needed for different cultures and environments.
Hillary
spoke about micro-loans and how that model has been successful in
preventing dreams from "dying in bank parking lots," as a young woman once
told her. Barriers here include husbands who want to control the
assets once the women get the loans.
Guest speakers were local.
Annette Dove talked about "Changing Steps" which is meant to inspire
and mentor young people from disadvantaged homes to reach higher
education goals. Dove spoke of an "imagination gap" that needs to be
closed in such communities.
Pierre Ferrari spoke about
Heifer,
of which he is CEO and which provides livestock after training.
Chelsea mentioned that her late grandmother, Dorothy Rodham, gave her a
heifer for Christmas every year, Ferrari said the organization donates
1.5 million animals a year mostly to women who, he said, do 70% of the
labor. Training includes care of the animal (the asset) and handling
the profits. Ferrari said 85% of the decisions are made by women
and that data shows that once they have proven their economic skills in
the home, the husbands of the women tend to support their participation
in the larger economic community.
Hillary, at this point, mentioned the book
Beatrice's Goat,
a true story for which she wrote the foreword. Beatrice of the story
went on to study in the U.S., interned for Hillary in her Senate
office, and eventually got a master's degree from the Clinton School in
public policy.
Hillary also said that the barriers to women's
progress is often surprising. Chelsea offered the recently reported
forced sterilizations in India wherein the mothers-in-law are often the
ones forcing the daughters-in-law to be sterilized after the requisite
number of sons have been produced. One cannot help but notice the
proprietary role the mother-in-law takes in such a case coming right on
the heels of the livestock discussion. Daughters-in-law are not goats.
Anna Strong from Arkansas Children's Hospital spoke of several programs offered through the hospital's auspices including
HIPPY
(encouraging parents to begin teaching children at home), a health
center run out of an elementary school, and an advocacy group for
children and families. Hillary added that HIPPY began in Israel during
the wave of Ethiopian immigration. As FLOAR Hillary had the founder
visit Arkansas.
I lost the feed, and sadly did not get the name of
the next excellent speaker who spoke of a single-parent scholarship
fund model that began with two funds and has been replicated to 62 funds
(eminently scalable). She noted that the funds make a permanent dent
in poverty and raise the overall education level in the state.
The key word for the day was, as I said earlier,
scalability.
All of these programs can be replicated with necessary modifications.
The key, as Hillary, Chelsea, and other speakers emphasized is what
works. No single formula works everywhere. Hillary stressed that
policy decisions should be based on evidence that a program or policy
works (or does not work) and not upon ideology.
The Q&A that
followed consisted entirely of people's own creative ideas and models
that they wanted to share rather than questions. Well, after all, it
was a Clinton event and people are used to CGI formats where you bring
forth your ideas and projects.
There was a moment, and it was
adorable. We all know that in addition to this No Ceilings initiative,
Chelsea and Hillary also have an anti elephant-trafficking effort and
Too Small to Fail
to encourage parents to help their pre-schoolers be ready for reading
and numbers. Part of that effort involves talking to babies and
exposing them to words. At one point, Chelsea, in response to a remark
by Hillary, referred to "what Grandma said." I don't think she even
knew she did it, and Hillary did not seem to notice either. In case you
wondered what title Hillary bears most proudly, it is, obviously, the
one by which her daughter now refers to her. It is also clear with
whom Chelsea spends much of her time conversing lately. Earlier, she
had said she was "shameless in appreciation of her daughter and her
mother." Yes, Chelsea, we see that! We also agree!
Here is an account of this and other 10th anniversary events thanks to Ruby Cramer who never fails to share! Thank you, Ruby!
Most
speakers at the Clinton reunion in Little Rock reminisced about the
White House years. At her event here, Hillary Clinton talked about
women’s issues, and how to move forward. “You’ve got to be willing to let go of what doesn’t work.”
posted on Nov. 15, 2014
Bill and Hillary Clinton attend Clinton Foundation event in Little Rock, Arkansas celebrating 25 years since the 1992 presidential election victory. Saturday, November 18, 2017. (KATV)
Hillary Clinton
