By Sara Sykes
Women for Women International
In the Women for Women International headquarters office in Washington DC, I sit in a small office everyday.
I type on my computer.
I answer the phone.
I rush down the hall, eager to finish a task, brief someone, put out a fire. Sometimes, I go outside, walk to Starbucks, stretch my legs.
I discuss our programs. I talk about the women we help. I say things like, "By the end of our program, our women can bring their vocation to market" or "During our program, our women meet in small groups and learn about human rights."
I talk about our sponsorship program. I say, "For just $27 a month, you can help improve the life of a woman survivor of war" or "For just $27 a month, you can have a sister across the world."
I say these things, I believe in what we do.
Then, I had the opportunity to travel to Rwanda and DRC with our founder and CEO, Zainab Salbi.
I am not just a believer anymore. I am so much more than that. Being able to witness, firsthand, the impact of our programs on women, their families, and their communities amounts to more than I can ever sum up into a catchphrase, a passing conversation, a blog on a website. Maybe Chris, a South African who traveled with us to both Rwanda and DRC, had something when he said, "I have traveled with many journalists, and they are always looking for the worst. Women for Women showed me the best."
It is so easy to find the worst around us. Don't our friends and loved ones say that it's easier to harp on the bad things, more difficult to pick out the good things? It is so easy to go to a place like Rwanda, find a genocide victim, despairing over her slain children, her murdered husband, the machete marks on her back. It is so easy to go to DRC, find women used as weapons of war, living in IDP camps, seven starving children spilling out of a tattered tent no bigger than a small car, their starving bellies swelling out of their ripped clothes.
But when you look, when you really look, you will find the best.
You will find our women.
When you really look, you will see our women in Rwanda. Genocide survivors working on a pineapple cooperative with their sisters, singing as they harvest their crops. Smiling at each other, sharing and learning from one another, the babies on their backs dreaming what babies dream. You will see a woman using her sponsorship funds to send her children to school, buy a cow, equip her home with electricity. You will see our CIFI graduates building a kitchen garden together. You will hear a woman say how Women for Women helped her to "not despise herself."
When you really look, you will see our women in Congo. Pens pressed to crisp new blue notebooks. The letter a repeated across the page, a look of determination, white chalk on a blackboard. You will see women sharing their stories. Allowing their voices to be heard above the violence that's been committed against them, an outlet of healing. You will see women who are no longer isolated victims on their own islands of despair, but banned together, rising above the rubble and rampage. You will see women cherishing their sponsorship letters, keeping them under their heads at night, bragging about the photo they received from their sister. You will see heart, and soul, and hope. You will hear a woman say, "My dream is my children going to school."
Returning to my small office in D.C., I go back to my computer, the phone, rushing down the hall, the occasional trip outside.
But everything has changed.
The world looks brighter, throbbing with a new heartbeat around my own. Now I can say it all the best way I know how. I can reach in, see our women dancing, singing, gathering, sharing, learning, healing and hoping. I can pull it right out and share it with you, the only way I know how--the best.
I learned it from our women.