After we sent out a call asking for messages of support for our partners at Midwives for Peace, who are celebrating the organization’s 5th anniversary, our MADRE members responded as they always do: with open arms. We got permission to share this moving display of support below. As always, we thank you all for everything you do for MADRE and for our partners worldwide. The solidarity you demonstrate makes it possible for us to move forward, together, every day.

Dear Midwives for Peace,

Your work is SO important to the health of mothers and babies, and to the mental and emotional well-being of parents-to-be and parents of newborn babies.  I was blessed to have the expertise, knowledge, support and love of two wonderful midwives during pregnancy and at the very long and complicated birth of my child, Evalín/Ilanit, who, thank God, is 10 years old and healthy, and so I know first-hand the immediate and lasting value of what you do.  Attached is a recent picture of us with our friend’s puppies!

Thank you for reaching beyond borders and differences to serve all populations.  My respect for you is great, and I will support you/Madre through donations when babies are born to my friends and family.

Shalom/Salaam and Mahbrouk/Mazal tov on your anniversary,

Sherry Pachman

Vermont, USA

“As an Israeli midwife, I always wanted to talk to Palestinian midwives, to see their experience and exchange stories—that’s how we learn. We are neighbors, and with neighbors, you should talk. It’s unnatural that we don’t talk. So I came to the first meeting of this group. That was five years ago. Now we are more than neighbors. We are friends.”

Gomer, the Israeli coordinator of our sister organization Midwives for Peace, told me this on my recent visit to the West Bank. I was there to celebrate the group’s five year anniversary, a truly remarkable milestone.

Israel and Palestine are at a political standstill. The level of despondency in the region is as strong as I’ve ever seen it. And the lack of confidence in progress is widespread. As you can imagine, under these difficult circumstances, collaboration can seem impossible. Yet the commitment of our sister organization of Israeli and Palestinian midwives remains strong. Through it all, they continue to work together to learn from each other and to safely deliver babies in the West Bank, despite the conflict that surrounds them. What an inspiration!

The anniversary meeting gave the midwives a chance to celebrate, reflect and share their plans for the future. In 2014, the group hopes to send representatives to the International Conference of Midwives in Prague.

And this August, they are planning a group trip to the beach. You might be wondering what a day at the beach has to do with breaking down barriers between Palestinians and Israelis, but consider this: some of the Palestinian midwives are refugees whose families came from coastal villages, yet they themselves have never seen the ocean. As Aisha, the group’s Palestinian coordinator, said to me, “the friendships we are building as midwives, as women, are opening doors in our lives and in our hearts that the conflict had tried to nail shut.”

I’m always so moved to see the collaboration and friendship between our Israeli and Palestinian sisters. Our partnership with Midwives for Peace is something I am proud of every day. I was so grateful to be able to attend their anniversary event, and I look forward to celebrating their next five years.

Sera Bonds, Founder of COHI, is a social justice, grassroots activist committed to working towards balancing the scales of access, equity, and availability in women’s reproductive health care. She has training in massage therapy, midwifery, a Bachelor of Arts degree in Women’s Studies, and a Master’s degree in Public Health. Her community organizing background ranges from reproductive rights to violence against women, to welfare and poverty issues to anti-war campaigns. She founded Circle of Health International, as U.S.-based NGO, with the hope of giving voice to conflict- and disaster-affected women’s reproductive health needs on an international scale.

She wants what we all want, what we all deserve: safety for her children, health for her children. Health and safety for herself, too. But now that she is a mother, that is an after thought.

Her eyelids heavy as they slowly open to begin a new day, she thinks almost immediately of her long list of tasks ahead of her. As do you. She rubs her belly, as big and hard as a mountain, she thinks, and places her strong, sturdy feet one after the other gently, quietly on the floor so as not to wake the ones still sleeping. As do you.

This however is where many of our paths diverge from the woman living in the economically developing world. Some of us mamas walk into our bathrooms and turn on a tap that brings us potable water, where we leisurely brush our teeth, wash our faces, and contemplate a new moisturizer. This mama dresses in the dark, and heads out alone for a walk of some distance to wait, with the other women, for clean water. Her baby heavy in her belly, she knows the time is coming for this new one to make its appearance. This thought, while it fills her heart with love, also overwhelms and ignites a candle of fear in her: what if this one is like the last one, she thinks. It lasted so long, it took all she had, and she was scared. She focuses on the way her fingers wrap around the plastic handle of the water container now heavy in her arms as she walks back to her home. I will focus on this load of water, she thinks. This, I can control.

This mama goes through her day, slowly lifting, filling, washing, holding, nursing, and breathing. In and out, she thinks, this I can control. As she lifts her toddler, her breath catches in her throat, her belly becomes tight, her back seizes a bit, and a gush of water pours out from between her legs. It is beginning, she thinks. This I cannot control. She breathes in and out. This I can control.

The midwife is called for, and she comes. She remembers this woman from before. One of her longest laboring women last year, it lasted two full days. She was frightened, she knows that birth is not something she can control. She greets the laboring mama with a warm, calm grin, and begins to attend her. This–the tending, the care, the support–that she can control.

This mama, the midwife thinks, she is already so tired. If this labor is like the last, she may not recover so quickly. She breathes deeply, this breathe, this she can control.

The labor begins to look very much like the last; prolonged, strong back pain during contractions, vomiting. The midwife makes a decision that this mama needs more care than she can provide in the small village where they live. This is a dreaded situation, for so many reasons. But one that before the most recent fighting in the region would have been different. The midwife tells the husband that they must transport her. They both sigh. Heavily.

There are few services available anymore in this war-torn part of the country much less an ambulance, a driver, and safe passage to the closest hospital. Her husband resists this. It will be so dangerous: the check points, the violent targeting of hospitals. The midwife breathes, the mama labors, the husband decides.

The ambulance arrives, the driver and the husband load the laboring mama into the vehicle. Her young children watch as she is taken away, no goodbyes. They are young, but most of them know that this thing, this bringing of babies, it is not something anyone can control. They are scared. Almost as scared of this as they are of the missiles and the rockets. Almost.

The drive is long, two hours, over bumpy roads with lots of stops and starts. Shelling is their soundtrack as they drive. There are two checkpoints. At one checkpoint, the soldiers are kind, they quickly look through the car, and wave them along. The second checkpoint is armed by men who have little empathy for this laboring mama and require her to get out of the car while they ask her husband a long list of questions and look through their belongings. The anxiety this mama is feeling is so high, she weeps, it is all she can do, and continues to breathe. This, she remembers, she can control.

At long last they arrive at the hospital, and find a room recently vacated by a soldier who’d been injured. There is dirt and blood on the floor, but this mama does not care. She is immediately seen by the on-call midwife volunteering with an international organization, and she cannot communicate with her through any language that they share beyond that of labor. The midwife recognizes the delay in labor to be a posterior presentation and has the mama labor on her knees, on all fours, and on her side. She is also able to administer a labor-inducing drug to intensify the contractions and to encourage the baby to move through the birth canal. Within two hours of arrival, the mama delivers a healthy baby girl, the intact placenta follows shortly after.

This mama lived. This we can control through access to transportation and medicine when needed.

On January 21, 2013, MADRE called on President Obama to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Throughout this week, we will be calling attention to instances in which CEDAW has made a concrete difference in the lives of women around the world.

On May 10, 2006, Colombia ended it’s previously total ban on abortion. Under the new law, abortion is permitted in cases of rape and incest, if the mother’s life is at risk, and if the fetus is no longer viable. Being allowed to abort in instances where the fetus cannot or has not survived is essential to women’s health and futures. The decision brought Colombia’s law in line with most of South America, where access to abortion is often difficult to come by but is largely legal when the mother’s health is at risk.

The case that changed the law was brought forward on the strength of Colombia’s ratification of CEDAW. CEDAW guarantees a number of other reproductive health freedoms and allows women to pursue their rights with the weight of international human rights advances.

Today is the 3rd anniversary of the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti that killed more than 300,000 people and left more than a million more homeless. Our partners at KOFAVIV have released a statement; we share it with you below.

A day like no other, an unforgettable day, a day of mourning, a day of pain, misery and torment. It is a day that we will never be able to forget, where we had to count the bodies of the thousands of our brothers and sisters who died in the January 12, 2010 earthquake. A day where hope had disappeared, a day where Mother Nature was in a fury against humankind.

January 12, 2013 marks 3 years since complete darkness fell on Haiti. We do not have the right to forget  the women who were fighting against violence endured by women in Haiti, especially the members of KOFAVIV who fell that day.  We salute the memory of these brave women, and we also want to take this opportunity to salute all of our friends and partners  who came to our aid :

MADRE, CNN, BAI/ IJDH, Massimo, Henry Mars, Digital Democracy, UNHCR, Heartland Alliance/We-Lead, Limye Lavi, IRC, Haiti Solidarite, Lambi Fund, Seksyon dwa Lom, Network, Beverly Bell and all of our other partners from the United Kingdom. We would like to thank all of our partners and we want to tell them that we would like to keep collaborating because the battle is not yet over.

KOFAVIV will keep fighting to forward the idea of a better tomorrow, to help victims get justice, and for impunity to end.

<< Men nan men san silans ak anpil tolerans nap kwape vyolans>>

Hand in hand, with a lot of tolerance, we’ll break the silence and put an end to violence

It is likely that you’ve heard about the recent horrific gang-rape in Delhi that resulted in the death of the 23-year-old victim.

MADRE and our sister organizations have worked for decades to confront the global epidemic of sexual violence. We struggle to prevent violence, and we stand with survivors demanding justice.

But this young woman did not survive the attack by six men that was so brutal it destroyed her internal organs. She died in the hospital; the six men involved have been charged with murder. She lived long enough, however, to do something highly unusual: she told the police what happened to her. “In retrospect it wasn’t the brutality of the attack on the young woman that made her tragedy unusual; it was that an attack had, at last, elicited a response,” wrote Sonia Faleiro in The New York Times. The attack did indeed elicit a response.

A silent wave of protesters, carrying signs, walked through Delhi, including Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. Thousands of women joined the march. The visual impact is overwhelming, astonishing. Their silence is a scream.

But women in India are raising their voices, too, being heard across continents, making demands and refusing to be ignored.

A woman who had lived in Delhi wrote a fiercely enraged piece on her experiences there:

I saw pictures of these young girls standing their ground getting beaten up, screaming in the cops’ faces. Learned pundits question why. What is the point of this protest anyway? What do they want? It’s a pity they can’t even see this basic point. They want to be treated as humans again. I read about the rape in Delhi and the anger in me has refused to go away. Memories of those years of harassment came flooding back. If you’re a woman in Delhi, you’ve been groped and violated five times a day since you were eight.

Faleiro wrote:

The steady thrum of whistles, catcalls, hisses, sexual innuendos and open threats continued. Packs of men dawdled on the street, and singing Hindi film songs, rich with double entendres, was how they communicated. To make their demands clear, they would thrust their pelvises at female passers-by.

If only it was just public spaces that were unsafe. In my office at a prominent newsmagazine, at the doctor’s office, even at a house party — I couldn’t escape the intimidation.

And two young women, like thousands of others, made their thoughts known today:

Galvanized by one young woman’s courage in speaking out, women in India are raising their voices in unison.

2013 is the year that women across the world can stand shoulder to shoulder, all of our movements together as one. Young women recovering from their exploitation as former child soldiers in Colombia; women and children in Haiti who survived sexual violence in the displacement camps in Haiti; women in Delhi and across India, demanding accountability for the rape culture that is killing their daughters, mothers, and sisters; women in the United States fighting to protect and expand access to reproductive health care; women in Nicaragua fighting for land rights for Indigenous Peoples.

The women in Delhi are not just speaking out - they are being heard. In 2013, let us raise our voices and support their demands; let us support one another’s needs and revolutions around the globe, trusting and investing in one another’s truths and futures, until the day we can all tell a different story of how we won the same fight.

On Sunday December 2, the hard work of KOFAVIV and MADRE staff and the incredible, overwhelming support that our members have offered to our partner Malya finally came to fruition at the 2012 CNN Heroes Gala. It was an amazing night. Seeing Malya and KOFAVIV’s work in Haiti honored was so rewarding, and being in the company of the other heroes was inspiring. I feel so lucky to have been a part of this special moment – and so thankful to our wonderful membership who made the night possible.

L-R: Malya's daughter, Malya, and Eramithe with Malya's 2012 CNN Hero award!

Malya on the red carpet with Maria Bello. Maria, who holds the honorary title Ambassador for Haitian Women, presented Malya's award.

L-R: Malya, Sahita, Eramithe, Malya's daughter backstage at the CNN Heroes Gala.

Malya and Pushpa Basnet, 2012 CNN Hero of the Year. Congratulations Pushpa! Your tireless dedication and hard work are such an inspiration to us at MADRE.

CNN's 2012 Heroes with Anderson Cooper

Malya and Anderson Cooper, all smiles at the 2012 CNN Hero awards.

I just got back from an amazing trip to visit KOFAVIV in Haiti. As always, time with the women and girls there is a fulfilling, inspiring experience. Headed off now to LA to meet up with our partners Malya and Eramithe, co-founders of KOFAVIV, who are in town for the 2012 CNN Heroes Gala! On Sunday, we’ll find out who will be CNN’s Hero of the Year! Many thanks to all who voted for and supported Malya through this process. We hope you’ll be watching Sunday!

Favorite picture from the trip: Malya and a young KOFAVIV friend regard each other skeptically.

More pictures from the trip below!

Read the rest of this entry…

Guest blogger Malya Villard-Appolon is a MADRE partner and co-founder of KOFAVIV, an organization by and for survivors of sexual violence in Haiti. She is a 2012 CNN Hero. You can vote to make her CNN’s Hero of the Year here!

When KOFAVIV does our outreach in the camps, we know we must involve the men in our activities. While we realize that it is men who are committing rape and acts of violence against women, we decided that it’s important to avoid pushing them to the side as we fight to combat violence. They need to be part of the solution. So, we created activities and human rights training sessions to do with a group of men.

Who are these men? They are men whose mothers, sisters, cousins and close friends are rape survivors. They decided that the issue of combating violence against women is important. They got together, created a team, and participated in our training sessions. After completing our training sessions, the men are able to hold their own outreach and awareness sessions with other men who are living in the camps. Men are also necessary to be able to convey our message to other men and to change their mentality.

Now, many men agree to come and participate in our training sessions at the KOFAVIV Center. They have the opportunity to sit with other men—their peers—and talk. It’s so much easier for men to talk to each other, while they’re sitting together or watching a soccer match. They can say to each other: “No to violence, no to rape, violence is not good for our country.”

So far, this activity has brought good results. After the earthquake, I had lost my home. The women of KOFAVIV and I spent 6 months living in the Champ de Mars camp. There was so much violence. Before we started our activity with men in the camps, we used to find around 30 to 40 cases of violence against women per month. After implementing our outreach and awareness work with men, we were able to see very positive results. By involving men in the fight against violence against women, we saw success. In fact, since our activities with men in the Place Pétion, cases of violence against women in this camp have been almost completely eliminated.

Our goal is to expand our outreach and education activities with men in other camps and neighborhoods. I know that by working with men whose family members are rape survivors, we would be able copy the success we had in Place Pétion in other camps as well. We would be able to get results that are good for the country and good for everyone.

It is election day in the US, and many people here are headed out to vote for their representatives. But everyone, everywhere in the world, can vote for our partner Malya for CNN Hero of the Year! You can vote every day, ten times a day, until the end of the month. Read her inspiring story in her own words below – and then go vote!

I’ve been involved with grassroots groups in Haiti since 1986. This is my story.

In the beginning, we would get together to discuss the immediate issues facing our community. If we didn’t have any water, we would figure out whose door we could knock on to get the problem fixed. When families couldn’t afford to send their children to school, we formed a committee to visit schools in the area to see if any could take on students free of charge. I’ve always been a part of local groups working to identify the issues that plague our community.

At the beginning, these groups were always made up of both men and women. Unfortunately, our voices as women were never heard. Even if we had good ideas for development, it was only the men who had the opportunity to lead.

So in 1991, all the women sat down, and we decided to create our own organization: Oganizasyon Fanm Progresist Matissan (The Organisation of Progressive Women of Martissant). OFPM gave us the chance to be independent and to think for ourselves. As women, we cherished the opportunity to join together and share our ideas for change in Haiti. We were able to create a lot of movement and develop many important projects in our community.

Then, in 1992, I was raped. That year, I met many other women who were also raped. I decided I wanted to protect rape survivors. To make sure that they did not go through what I went through. My new friends felt the same. Shortly after, we began to rally around the issue of preventing violence against women—organizing protests, rallies and sit-ins.

We were all rape survivors, and we all wanted to find justice. But we never found any justice. Many of the women who were part of this group had contracted HIV/AIDS and other diseases from their attacks—a lot of them died. We never found any justice. I knew something had to change.

In 2004, when we realized that nothing was happening to prevent rape or to protect survivors, we changed our strategies. Instead of just seeking justice, we created an organization to protect and support rape survivors. We created KOFAVIV. We opened a clinic where women could get examined and receive medical services. Between 2004 and 2010, over 3,000 women were helped through KOFAVIV. They received medical help and medical support. Today, we have expanded to provide legal and psychosocial services to the women as well.

Despite KOFAVIV’s success in reaching rape survivors, our struggles were far from over.

In 2010, the clinic was destroyed by the earthquake. KOFAVIV lost everything. But we did not stop working. We gathered under the tarps of the displacements camps to continue our vital work with rape survivors. After the earthquake, only 1,150 of the 3,000 women we supported were left. Some had died, others had left Port-au-Prince. Nevertheless, we kept meeting to talk about the escalating violence against women after the disaster. People lost their homes, they were scattered around camps. And violence was on the rise.

We started to meet more rape survivors, seemingly younger and younger—many just children. This was revolting to me, and to everyone else at KOFAVIV. Despite the disaster, we needed to keep fighting for these young girls. Our struggle was not over.

After the earthquake, MADRE helped us, providing health kits and other aid for the women and girls. In June 2010, I traveled with MADRE to Geneva to testify at the UN about the horrible situation that was happening in the displacement camps. We’ve found a real partner in our fight against violence against women with MADRE.

It hasn’t been an easy fight. There have been many setbacks. But I am determined to continue. I spent eight months on the streets after the earthquake. KOFAVIV kept fighting. I kept working. And I will keep working.

With MADRE’s help, we were able to rent a more permanent space for the KOFAVIV Center so that we can keep providing support services to rape survivors. But we want to buy our own space so that, whether I’m here or not here, the women of Haiti can still find the support they need at KOFAVIV.

For me, that’s why my nomination as a CNN Hero is so important. Winning $250,000 will keep the KOFAVIV Center active for many more years to come.

In solidarity,

Malya Villard-Appolon