Ritu Sharma is a woman with a vision to succeed in changing legislation enabling the world's poorest women to pull themselves and their children out of abject poverty. Her organization is called Women Thrive Worldwide: www.womenthrive.org. She will be discussing how having a heart and a vision for helping impoverished women and children around the world can move legislative mountains.
Photographs provided on Diva Maverick Mavens are courtesy of Catherine Lahti, "Women Thrive Worldwide"
Angelia Miller is the founder of Diva Maverick Mavens www.divamaverickmavens.com a new bread of feisty, non-conformist adventure loving adrenaline-high entrepreneur. The tag-line is: Empowering Women by Interviewing Empowered Women...Inspiring "You" to Take ACTION! Casting exceptional dynamic talent for fresh content is the mission of Diva Maverick Mavens.
Tell us a bit about your background I read you are the first born in your family of East Indian Heritage in America? Can you tell about your families background and heritage of violence and poverty in Punjab, India?
Ritu Sharma:
My family both of my parents came from Northern India and they were both born in Lahore, Pakistan. And actually they remember walking across the border from Pakistan to India during the Partition in 1947. They didn't have much to carry with them. They both came from pretty poor backgrounds and their families ended up settling in an area of what became then India. Both of my parent's families had some incredible violence in them especially my father's family. His father was an alcoholic and a very violent man. My dad has told me some really heralding stories about what happened to his sisters and his cousins. My Dad lost his mother when he was just a year old. She was married when she was fifteen and she had a baby every year until she was about twenty-one. My Dad was the sixth child and when she was pregnant with her seventh child she had a back street abortion and died within 24 hours so I never had a grandmother on my father's side or on my mother's side either. My Mom's Mom was an educated woman and this was very unusual in the 1930's in India. She had a masters degree and I think she suffered from a very deep depression and when my Mom was about seven years old she poured kerosene on herself and lit herself on fire and committed suicide. My Mom witnessed this event which had a hugh impact on her life. From either side of my family there was a very intense history around women and what happened to them. I grew up just knowing that I wanted to do something about this to make a difference.
What was your first experience with poverty and suffering to actually see there in front of you?
Ritu Sharma:
I was very lucky to be born in Canada and raised in the United States. The first time I really experienced poverty was when my parents took me back to India when I was five years old and I vividly remember driving through New Delhi. In those days it was pretty much total mayhem gridlock congestion. You really couldn't move the car anywhere and I'd look out the car windows and there were people living on the streets. I remember asking my parents: what are these people doing, why are all these people lying down everywhere on the sidewalks and on the streets? My parents said that's where they live and that was very shocking to me as a young child. And I will never forget also the people who were handicapped or maimed. They would come to the car windows and beg for money and I always wanted to roll down the window and give them money or give them candy or whatever I had. My Mom would say you can't do that. We don't have enough coins to give everybody and if you open the window and give a coin to someone the whole car will be surrounded by people. It was a very strange and very scary experience as a young child to realize there are places in the world where people live on the streets and they come up to your car windows and beg for money.
How did you come honor your impulse to be fearless? I know you had two paths before you. You could taken a traditional job or you could follow your heart and follow its direction. Could you tell me more about this?
Ritu Sharma:
I think like most immigrant parents my parents really wanted me to get a good education. That was absolutely important to them and I am so grateful for that. They wanted me to get a very good high paying job--really make it in America, really achieve the dream. They achieved so much of the dream in this country and I was the beneficiary of that. They really wanted my brother and I to take it farther and achieve more than they did. I think that's true for all parents anywhere. My Dad would always ask me, "What's your mission in life...What do you think you're here to do?" At the same time he would tell me you've got to make good money and become an investment banker. He would say, "Each of us is hear for a reason so What's your reason?" He loved to ask us these questions around the dinner table. I remember answering these question over the years as I was growing up. I was always clear inside of myself that I'm here to make a difference. I'm here to make the world a better place. I'm here to do something to help other people and I don't know exactly what that is but I know that's why I'm here. I'm not here to become an investment banker. I'm pretty sure of that and as I grew up and began to explore the world a bit. I had the opportunity to go to an international school in the UK in Whales called the United World College of the Atlantic and this was an amazing place. This was a school where they would take kids between the ages of sixteen and eighteen so at this age you are still pretty malleable but old enough to be away from home. There are 360 students from 65 different countries and you're living together and eating together and schooling together-exciting times. The outward bounds school was designed for outdoor activities like Cliff Climbing and Kayaking so you were really pushing yourself to your limits and that was an incredible experience. I was only one of 4 Americans that was there and to be with kids from all over the world left a lasting impression on me. There were kids from Africa, Asia, Israel,Italy, Palestine and all over the place. I got to see how they viewed Americans both positively and negatively and that was really eye opening. I really came to understand what a powerful actor our country is in the world. There was so much energy and passion directed towards us, Americans again good or bad but I didn't observe that sort of passion being directed towards the Irish or Swedish students. I came to understand that our country had a hugh impact on the rest of the world in ways that other countries do not. That was sort of an awakening in me that you know if I want to do something to help maybe I ought to be doing something about how my country conducts itself in the world. After I came back home to the states in Washington D.C. to study at the university, I wasn't so happy with my university but I just fell in love with Washington and politics and the whole intrigue of the place. Through internships, work experiences and friendships, I realized this is a place where people are here to change what our government does and they're successful at it. You can get the US government to do the right thing. You can get congress to pass a law that benefits people. You can get the state department to pass a bill that assists poor people around the world and since that time I never really looked back. I knew this is where I want to be. This is what I want to do.
What age where you when you came to this realization?
Shama Ritu:
I was probably about twenty, twenty-one years old.
Statistically speaking, seven in ten of the world's poorest people are women. Can you discuss this statistic?
Ritu Sharma:
One of the things that we know that anywhere there is poverty women are the vast majority of the poor. It's because of the discrimination that women face in many countries they're held back from going to school and they're most often the victim of violence. There are so many obstacles in the way of women and girls that it makes since that they are the vast majority of the world's poorest. I see many kinds of statistics and this is one of the most powerful ones that seventy percent of the people who are poor on this planet are women and their children. There is no equality in poverty. Poverty does discriminate and it discriminates against women much more so than men.
What are the challenges your facing with US International Aid?
Ritu Sharma:
The biggest challenge we are facing with US Aid is that the whole system that governs the way we deliver our aid around the world was developed in 1961 and I don't know of any program that was developed in 1961 that still functions well today. It was a system that was set-up during the cold war which was a very different world with very different problems. This was before our climate changes and the Aids epidemic that transcend borders. Our world is much smaller place than it was in 1961. A lot of our aid is designed in government buildings in Washington D.C. rather than in the communities that we are trying to help around the world. There are many many good people that work in government aid but their hands are tied; they don't have the flexibility to go to these communities and ask people what they need. Women Thrive has been working with other organizations to modernize this whole system to make the system more responsive to the people we are trying to help.
Tell us about some of the worst areas around the world for violence and poverty against women and children and how can we help?
Ritu Sharma:
Violence transcends borders; it's something that women experience in all countries. Violence is much more accepted in some cultures. In Africa, eighty to ninety percent of women have experience violence in there homes and there is a real acceptance of it. Every country has signed the Declaration of Human Rights. Violence against women is a human rights issue. Everyone deserves to live free of violence. We can get our government to do the right thing. No foreign diplomat wants to be called out about there human rights issues against women. The International Violence Against Women Act is legislation that increases the resources our country uses to assist protect women against violence in areas such as the Congo and Bosnia.
What advice can you give to women to make a difference in a global format?
Ritu Sharma:
The first step is to learn more about the issues and find ways to listen to the voices of women around the world. They can sign up on the website www.womenthrive.org and they'll get information about when they can speak out and be heard in Washington. The most effective thing you can do is take out a piece of stationary and write a letter to your congressman. If a letter is written by hand, that note will go straight through to a member of Congress. They get hundreds of thousands of emails and phone calls and they count the number of emails and calls received although emails and phone calls are perceived as important, one letter has the weight and value of ten thousand phone calls.
How often do you travel to get the personal perspectives of women and children in their countries of origin? And tell us about your website?
Ritu Sharma:
I try to travel overseas twice a year but since I have two small children it's hard to pick up and leave the country for 2 weeks at a time so for the past couple of years its been once a year. Many of the people in my office go overseas and they interview women in their villages and video tape them to record their voices. In the past year, I have gone overseas to experience how it is to live on a dollar a day for a few days at a time or a week at a time. At Women Thrive, our sole mission is to represent women in Washington D.C. so we are traveling overseas at least once a month with staff members in my office.
We have a shop the cause section on our website that partners with local women's cooperative to bring international products to support women worldwide. There is an educational section on the website to take a quiz and learn more. You can sign a petition to assist women and children around the world. The most important thing is to just do something. When we learn about these issues, we often feel helpless. Just do something, you can transform what is done in Washington to assist impoverished women and children abroad.
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