We did it!!!

After 15 months of planning and advocating, Asia Pacific Breakthrough: The Women, Faith and Development Summit to End Global Poverty was more than an event, it was a vibrant, radiantly illuminating experience of a women, faith and development movement in action.

In the United States in May last year when I met with the co-founders of the Breakthrough Summit that had taken place in Washington in April 2008, I envisioned the potential of an Asia Pacific Breakthrough Summit that would draw attention, resources and new partnerships to provide increased funding and support for programs to benefit women and girls across the Asia Pacific.

When Her Excellency Mary Robinson, one of Breakthrough’s world leaders, told me that she would be speaking at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Melbourne I saw the potential of an Asia Pacific Breakthrough Summit that took place on the eve of the Parliament in order to influence the dialogue and discussions of the religious and faith leaders present at the Parliament.

In bringing the Asia Pacific Breakthrough idea back to representatives of women, faith and development agencies in Australia we attracted a strong coalition of organisations supporting the initiative including World Vision, Care Australia, Greenstone Group, Oxfam, Plan, Australian Bahai’s, Caritas Australia, The Global Peace Initiative of Women, UNFPA, UNIFEM, United Nations Association of Australia, World YWCA and the Salvation Army - as well as a corp of amazing volunteers from IWDA and our partner agencies.

We also very early on attracted significant funds from the Federal Government through AusAID and with the wonderful support of Parliamentary Secretary, Mr Bob McMullan, to support a secretariat.  This meant we could appoint a Breakthrough  Director to help organise the event and in this regard we were fortunate to attract the services of Kristi Mansfield and her staff at Greenstone Group.  We were also fortunate to attract significant funds from the Victorian Government as well as funding from the City of Melbourne

So, what happened?

• We catalysed almost $1.2 billion in new commitments for programs to be implemented by many organisations including World Vision, Oxfam and Care Australia to benefit women and girls in the Asia Pacific region
• We launched an Asia Pacific Women, Faith and Development Alliance
• We heard stories and strategies from women at the front line of work to empower their sisters in countries across the Asia Pacific and in Indigenous and refugee Australia We celebrated collaboration in many forms in the process of planning and partnering for Breakthrough and in the two days that the Summit took place
• We presented the outcomes from Asia Pacific Breakthrough to the Parliament of the World’s Religions and received a double standing ovation from the hundreds of delegates present.  The energy was electric and many people have sought to sign up for updates on the Asia Pacific Women, Faith and Development Alliance
• We’ve been approached by a European coalition to help them to replicate a European Breakthrough Summit next year on the basis of Asia Pacific Breakthrough
• We’ve been invited to present the outcomes from Asia Pacific Breakthrough at the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York in February and to use this opportunity to launch a global women, faith and development alliance movement

The Asia Pacific Breakthrough Summit was a groundbreaking global gathering to blow the lid on what women and girls face every minute of their day in their experience of poverty, injustice and oppression.  At the Summit, Dr Thoraya Obaid, Executive Director, UNFPA said:

“It would cost the world less than two-and-a-half-day’s worth of military spending to save the lives of 6 million mothers, newborns and children every year. …we will not achieve the Millennium Development Goals unless reproductive health and the rights of women and children are made a priority.”

It was a call to all of us to do everything we can every moment of the day to advocate individually, and collectively through the alliance, to change the equation of how women are perceived and how resources are allocated.

At the Parliament of the World’s Religions our panel collectively read the Asia Pacific Breakthrough Declaration to delegates and they rose up in unison in a sea of commitment to this intention. This Asia Pacific Breakthrough Declaration, which you can see on our website, ends with these words:We will work until it shall be.

Looking at the Asia Pacific Breakthrough image created for us by IWDA’s graphic designer, Anna Carlile, Viola Design, makes me feel like we are running hard and fast and breaking through those blocks and barriers to assume our full rights and humanity.

We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.
~ Emily Dickinson ~

Jane Sloane

Executive Director
International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA)
“When women benefit, the whole community benefits.”

UPDATE

The first video is up - more to come

Asia Pacific Breakthrough - Sister Joan D. Chittister, O.S.B..