That is the task that has me today in Washington, D.C. In addition to my roles as a board member of ONE and CEO of CARE, I have spent the last ten months serving as co-chair of the CSIS Commission on Smart Global Health Policy, along with Admiral William Fallon. This afternoon, we’re releasing our final report, a bipartisan document with clear, feasible recommendations for a long-term, strategic U.S. approach to global health.

The Final Report of the CSIS Commission on Smart Global Health Policy can be found here.

Signing the final report are twenty-five opinion leaders from diverse backgrounds in business, finance, Congress, media, philanthropy, government, and public health, who have come together to affirm the importance of global health and offer a pragmatic plan: to maintain our commitment to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria; to prioritize the health of women and children; to strengthen prevention and preparedness for health emergencies; to improve the U.S. government’s organization and coordination; and to bolster the achievements of multilateral institutions.

Although we believe it marks a significant step, we do not claim that our report has every answer to the world’s health problems. From the beginning, the Commission process has been a conversation, which we have taken from Washington, D.C., to California, North Carolina, Kenya, and over the internet. Please continue that conversation by reading the report and offering your feedback at smartglobalhealth.org.

So while foreign assistance is a very small proportion of the overall budget, its effectiveness is both measurable and priceless. These investments are helping shape a world where no one dies from malaria, no more children are born with HIV and families are able to feed themselves and others through the use of sustainable agriculture techniques. But this future reality is possible only with continued strong support from the United States.

I recently traveled in Ghana as part of ONE’s new campaign Women ONE2ONE and saw firsthand how America’s investment in agriculture has lifted up entire communities visited a rice farm, supported by a U.S.-based nonprofit that receives funding from the United States Agency for International Development, that gave farmers — most of whom were women — greater access to seeds, fertilizer and training, which led to improved crop yields. These entrepreneurs are then able to invest in their communities, send children to school and provide a pathway out of poverty. This can happen all over Africa if we continue to make sustained and smart investments there.

You can read Sheila’s op-ed here.

Roger concludes:

The answer: We have to get moving. With the government and philanthropists and corporations and grassroots organizations all bringing a focus on reducing hunger through agriculture development, we have arrived at a moment of great opportunity. Or, rather, potential opportunity. Congress needs to act, to support the lead of the administration.

And we all need to crank up our impatience to bring the concerted action to the farms, particularly the small farms of Africa, that will generate the momentum and the optimism that this can be the singular achievement of our generation.

Well put.

Here’s how it works:

1. Choose a global development organization.
2. Make a promotional video about that organization (must be under 3 minutes).
3. Submit your video by March 26th.

The top 3 videos will then be featured on the YouTube homepage until the end of the month. You can get more details about YouTube Video Volunteers here, and if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s Jeremy Piven’s video:

I met an inspiring woman a few days ago in Accra, Ghana. Her name was Elizabeth*. She is a mother, a widow and she is HIV positive. This may sound pretty grim, but what I learned from spending some time with her is that Elizabeth and her two-year-old daughter Abigail* are getting the care they need here at the Tema General Hospital.

Elizabeth learned about her HIV positive status when she came here to be tested after her husband died a few years ago. She was pregnant at the time, which was actually a blessing, because it enabled her to begin antiretroviral treatment at a critical time for Abigail. Abigail takes a prophylactic drug to prevent infection of the AIDS virus.

I also spent some time with the nurses here who counsel the families who come into the clinic from up to a 15 kilometer radius to be tested. They shared other stories like Elizabeth’s, where women sought them out to be tested and then treated if their results were positive. When mothers have access to ARVs, they use them. And when they use them the chances of vertical transmission (when the virus travels inadvertently from the pregnant mother to her child) are minimal. At Tema, a mere 4% of babies whose mothers have begun treatment test positive. I was told that just a few years ago things were not nearly as hopeful.

Before the Global Fund and (RED) started distributing money to treat and prevent AIDS, there was very little incentive for the poor in Ghana to test because having HIV was a virtual death sentence.

Dr. Patricia Nsamoah, a senior medical officer and HIV focal person at TEMA, told us about the state of the clinic before they received Global Fund (RED) money.

“We’ve been testing HIV for a very long time, but basically people just didn’t know what to do if they tested positive for HIV,” Dr. Nsamoah said. “So when ARVs came, the Global Fund made it possible for us to have access to ARVs. You can at least see a patient, treat opportunistic infections, test for CD4, and at the point when they need the ARVs it is available and you can have a success story. Previously if you were working in the fever unit as the doctor in charge, what you did at the beginning of every morning was to sign death certificates because overnight by the time you came people had just died. But now a lot has changed… I’m telling you the clinic just grows bigger because people do not die.”

Today, Tema serves more than 2,200 people infected with HIV/AIDS in Ghana. These families are thriving and they are hopeful despite all they have endured. Abigail is a beautiful, curious little girl. She is confident with wise eyes that have seen the future.

*Elizabeth and Abigail’s names have been changed to protect their privacy.

Plugging the organization Vital Voices along the way, she writes:

“We are not victims.”

Yes, of course, many have been victimized by brutal regimes in some cases, or by cultural forces, or by men who have hijacked religion to justify actions that would be treated as crimes in our part of the world. But these women are not seeking restitution; they are seeking empowerment.

This is a crucial distinction that underscores the courage they display in the routine machinations we call everyday life.

Female judges kiss their families goodbye in the mornings and make peace with their maker just in case they don’t return. Parents send their daughters to school despite incidents such as the acid attacks on 15 schoolgirls and teachers in 2008.

I heard the “not victims” refrain a day earlier from another group of women — from Bahrain, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kenya, Brazil and Haiti — in Washinton to be honored by Vital Voices Global Partnership, a nongovernmental organization that works to empower female leaders and social entrepreneurs around the world.

Vital Voices, which grew out of the U.N.’s Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, focuses on advancing women as a U.S. foreign policy goal. Translation: Empowering women will lead to greater prosperity and world peace.

One cannot sit and talk with these women and escape inspiration. On one end of the spectrum is Afnan al Zayani, a CEO from Bahrain who leads the Middle East and North Africa Businesswomen’s Network. On the other is Rebecca Lolosoli, matriarch of Kenya’s Umoja Village, an all-women’s community she created to support women, girls, orphans and widows who had been abandoned by their families or were fleeing domestic violence, forced marriage or genital mutilation.

It sort of puts that bad hair day in perspective, doesn’t it?

But, again, they refuse to be victims.

The whole piece is worth a read.

Yet it wasn’t until last weekend that I witnessed the true power of Yvonne’s voice on the continent. To help celebrate her 25 years in the music industry, fellow South African musicians Lira and Sipho “Hotstix” Mabuse joined Yvonne in Sun City, South Africa. Lira and Hotstix helped warm up the crowd, but it was Yvonne who convinced three First Ladies and a handful of Ministers up to dance on stage and captured the audience with films from her travels to meet women across the continent.

After keeping first ladies and ministers up all night dancing, the next morning Yvonne brought them around a table for a much different purpose: a consultation on integrated preventative strategies to meet Millennium Development Goals 4, 5, and 6, which target the reduction of child mortality, maternal mortality, and the spread of infectious diseases.

Integration might seem like a bland topic to follow-up a concert, but considering the occasion – the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day- the discussion was anything but boring. Women across the continent are perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of integrated, comprehensive approaches to healthcare. Here in DC and in African capitals, programming and funding for health is often compartmentalized into buckets like HIV/AIDS, child survival and malaria; but for women, interventions like clean water, vaccinations, skilled birth attendants and insecticide-treated bed nets are all part of a single package to keep them and their families healthy. Although I was one of the only observers from the Washington, D.C. advocacy community, this conversation felt especially timely given the administration’s commitment to both an integrated and women’s centered approach in the Global Health Initiative outlined last month.

The forum kicked off with three presentations on integrated strategies. First, Debrework Zewdie, Executive Director of the Global Fund, talked about the Fund’s success at promoting integration and supporting health systems in countries like Ethiopia and Malawi, as well as its current financing challenge. She was followed by Sophia Musaka Monaco of UNAIDS, who spoke of the remaining barriers to achieving universal access to HIV/AIDS, treatment, prevention and care and warned that through disease specific interventions we are “treating our people like programs.” Finally, Dr. Eric Lugada presented on a pilot program that CHF International launched in Kenya last year with the help of Yvonne and a firm called Vestergard Frandsen launched last year in a Kenyan community. To tackle the three interrelated challenges of HIV, malaria and diarrhea, the program used a community-based model to deliver CarePacks, which include bed nets, “Life Straw” water purifiers, condoms and educational materials. You can read about it here.

After the presentations, a lively discussion ensued on the impact of poverty and disease on women and what needs to happen to make real progress in healthcare across the continent. The spectrum of topics reflected the diversity of the participants, ranging from greater accountability and spending by African governments and to better incorporating men into women and family health programs, to greater financing for integrated approaches through demand-driven mechanisms like the Global Fund. A need to address women’s health and utilize their role as leaders in their community was central to all these strategies.

The meeting concluded with a commitment by Yvonne to bring everyone back together in August for a second “Leading African Women’s Forum,” and to continue to offer up her voice for not just AIDS or malaria or child health, but for an integrated approach to address the health of women and their families. Ideas and opinions on all these topics will continue in DC and other hubs across the globe, but it takes often someone like Yvonne- a true global health diva- to bring them together and extend them to the communities where they matter the most.

As a war veteran, I know that choosing to forgo the benefits gained by investing in foreign development could ultimately result in increased spending in the form of military action or emergency aid in the future. By curtailing our investments to save a relatively small amount of money in the short term, we are simply putting off and increasing the eventual cost of leaving conditions like extreme poverty, illiteracy and widespread disease to fester and grow.

Instead, we should invest now in efforts that we know work, like funding for the fight against HIV/AIDS and malaria, helping poor countries put children in school and expanding trade opportunities so those people can escape pull themselves out of poverty.

While serving in Iraq, I witnessed on a daily basis the results of successful implementation of development projects organized and funded by the military and completed by our Iraqi partners.

You can read the full op-ed here.

Towards the end of the piece, Herman writes:

Bartels’s organizational skills and decades of administrative experience are greatly admired in Otuam. For one thing, she is literate, which many of the elders are not. She knows computers, having received a diploma from Strayer University in computer information systems. She has lived in the United States since 1979, when she was offered an embassy job during a visit, and has faced daily challenges they can’t even imagine.

Armed with such an impressive résumé, Bartels is a symbol of hope to younger residents. Twenty-five-year-old Kweku Acheampong, a student, asked for a private audience with her, with no elders at the table. Acheampong was tall and muscular with golden brown skin, alert eyes and a trim moustache. He came with nine friends in tow.

Acheampong stood respectfully and cleared his throat. “We have been waiting for you,” he said. “We have been waiting for years. Why do you think this town has no water? Why is there no library? No Internet? Why does the elementary school have no toilet, and 250 kids use the bushes? Why are our roads so bad? Why does our clinic have only nurses and not a single doctor? Why can we not move forward? It is because the elders have been stealing the town’s funds, so there is no money for development. That’s why! This must change.”

Acheampong continued: “We, the youth of Otuam, want to make sure it will change! We stand behind you as our king. You are young, you are American, and you are a woman. The ancestors sent you here to change things. We want to join your council of elders to make sure no more money is stolen.” His companions grunted in approval.

“You are right,” Bartels replied. “I will get to the bottom of the corruption and appoint some of you to the council to collect the fishing and farming fees. Now that I have been gazetted, it is time to get serious about this.”

As a follow up to the article, the Washington Post hosted a Q&A with the author, which you can read here.

This week, I’ve got a new video on YouTube as part of their Video Volunteers partnership with ONE. It’s a little different from my usual work. While it’s starring me, it’s actually about a video I want you to make. Check out the video below and then join the Video Volunteers program by making one of your own. Create a video about a poverty-fighting organization people should know about – one that’s making a difference. At the end of March, we’ll pick the top three videos and they’ll go on the YouTube homepage and ONE.org.

Earlier this year, I was proud to join the global effort to help the people of Haiti. We all saw the devastation caused by the earthquake and came together to raise awareness and help the Haitian people get back on their feet. Now I’m asking you to do the same for organizations distributing AIDS drugs, getting children into school in some of the poorest countries on earth, tackling hunger, and much more.

Your video and your voice can raise awareness for one of the many organizations – some of them are listed right on YouTube, the rest in the partners section of ONE.org – who are on the front lines of the fight against poverty and disease worldwide. Check it out and get involved here. I can’t wait to see what you, and the creative people you know, come up with.

Thanks,

Jeremy Piven