As posted in the Economic Times 

Start with the last girl.

Imagine if someone gave you one billion dollars with one condition: use the money to create positive change in the world.  What would you do? That’s exactly what happened to us in 2006, when we received a fax that changed our lives. Peter’s father, Warren Buffett, had decided to award our small foundation with a pledge valued at approximately one billion dollars with that one, simple, enormous requirement.

As we determined where to focus our giving, we were reminded of Warren’s own investment philosophy: invest in companies that are undervalued in the marketplace but which have great potential for growth.

Adolescent girls—who are profoundly undervalued but have enormous potential—clearly met this standard.  Girls worldwide are less educated, less healthy and offered less opportunity than their male peers. But if given a chance, they will improve their own lives – and the lives of those around them.

We have just traveled to India to meet such undervalued girls. Through the work of our grantee partner, Apne Aap and the indefatigable founder, Ruchira Gupta we saw the realities of poor adolescent girls in Kolkata and rural Bihar. These girls are born into economic and social circumstances where their bodies become their only asset. Entering prostitution at the median age of 11, girls are thrust into lives of unspeakable violence. Their human rights are denied from an impossibly young age.  As we walked the streets of Sonagatchi, one of the world’s largest red-light districts, we saw what happens when girls and women have so little power. They become commodities, to be bought and sold.

While the girls we met shared these harsh truths, they also shared their dreams and hopes.  They described their powerful desire to remain in school to become teachers, doctors, actresses, and lawyers.  Behind these dreams was always a larger ambition of giving back to their communities so that the next generation can live better and safer lives.  And of course, not one of them named prostitution as an aspiration. As Fatima, a survivor of commercial sexual exploitation, told us, “What is the contract for this business where girls sell their dreams?”

Around the world, we’ve seen what happens when we invest in girls’ dreams. When a girl gains the assets of education, good health and a supportive community before she reaches the crossroads of puberty, her life path changes.  Her health and wellbeing improve. So do the prospects of her future family, if she chooses to have one. If invested in properly, girls can be leaders in building a world where every person has the opportunity to fulfill their highest potential.

It’s certainly not a world that prostitutes girls before they’ve had a chance to thrive, trapping them in that deeply exploitative form of violence, the world’s oldest oppression.

We have learned from both Gandhiji and his famous student, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., that no violence is inevitable, and that change starts with the most marginalized.  Gandhiji said, “Recall the face of the poorest and the most helpless man whom you may have seen and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he be able to gain anything by it?”

At the NoVo Foundation, we seek to follow that instruction – although in our work, we are led by the last girl. Others see her as a burden at best, a commodity in the sex industry at worst. We see her as a source of power to lead us all towards safer and more just communities and nations.

We return home with a renewed commitment to the girl effect, and we call upon our philanthropic peers in India to see that effect for themselves. Investing in girls — one of the most powerful, untapped forces on the planet — is an investment worth making.

The new NoVo Foundation Endowed Chair in Social and Emotional Learning to be invested at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) this Thursday, the first of its kind, represents an exciting strategic development in one of the most promising initiatives in education today.

Dr. Roger P. Weissberg, professor of psychology and education at UIC, will assume the chair with a lecture addressing recent efforts to establish the approach as an educational priority in Chicago and across the United States. Weissberg is president of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), a nonprofit organization, and heads the UIC SEL Research Group, an interdisciplinary team focused on addressing social and emotional learning research and assessment, practice, and policy development.

Based in the department of psychology, the chair will oversee ongoing research on social and emotional learning, a method of proactively developing children’s ability to identify, manage, and discuss their own emotions and to modify their behavior in pro-social ways. Students trained in these skills are better prepared to succeed in school and in subsequent careers than their untrained peers.

“Social and emotional learning is founded on scholarly research, and its success continues to be validated by a growing body of evidence,” said Weissberg, who is a UIC College of Liberal Arts and Sciences distinguished professor. Weissberg and UIC collaborators secure funding to provide research assistantships for graduate students to help advance the science of social and emotional learning.

Research demonstrates that social and emotional learning programs raise students’ standardized test scores by an average of 11 percentile points, while improving attitudes, behavior, and interpersonal communication, and decreasing problematic conduct, such as drug use, high-risk sexual interaction, and aggression.

The chair has been endowed by a $2 million grant from the NoVo Foundation, led by Jennifer and Peter Buffett. The NoVo foundation’s vision is “to foster a transformation in global society from a culture of domination and exploitation to one of collaboration and partnership”. The endowment represents the latest in a series of strategic advances in social and emotional learning supported by the Buffetts, who were named to Barron’s list of top 25 most effective philanthropists for their thoughtful, targeted, and involved method of advancing their chosen causes.

“NoVo’s endowment of the UIC chair is our signal to a broader academic community and to a growing community of effective practice that social and emotional learning has come of age,” said Jennifer Buffett, president of NoVo. “We now have evidence from over 20 years of first-rate social science that emotional development and cognitive development are inextricably linked. The advantages of integrating this more comprehensive understanding of teaching and learning are pronounced and undeniable.”

The title of the lecture Weissberg will give on Thursday, “Establishing Social and Emotional Learning as an Educational Priority Across Chicago, Illinois, and the United States,” hints at his success bringing social and emotional learning is states and cities around the country. In 2004, he was instrumental in making Illinois the first state to adopt K-12 student learning standards, and CASEL’s Collaborating District Initiative program, also supported by NoVo, is instituting social and emotional learning curricula across all grades in eight geographically diverse U.S. school districts.

Weissberg came to UIC in 1992, prior to which he served as a faculty member at Yale University. In 2008, The George Lucas Educational Foundation named Weissberg one of the “Daring Dozen” who are reshaping the future of education. He has also received the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Contribution Award for Applications of Psychology to Education and Training in 2000, the Society for Community Research and Action Distinguished Contribution to Theory and Research Award in 2004, and the Nan Tobler Award for the Best Review of Prevention Research from the Society for Prevention Research in 2010. He holds a doctorate in psychology from the University of Rochester and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Brandeis University.

The NoVo Foundation, established in 2006, pursues its mission of promoting a more caring, collaborative global culture primarily through efforts focused on ending violence against girls and women, empowering adolescent girls in the developing world, and promoting social and emotional learning in the U.S.

UIC’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences enrolls 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students in more than 20 departments and programs that offering over 40 undergraduate major fields of specialization, 40 minors, nearly 50 graduate degrees at the master’s and doctoral levels. The college features programs in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.

The inaugural lecture and investiture of NoVo Foundation Endowed Chair in Social and Emotional Learning Roger P. Weissberg will take place at 4 p.m. on Thursday, October 20th in the Illinois Room of Student Center East on the campus of University of Illinois at Chicago.

To learn more:

UIC’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences: www.uic.edu/las/index.html/

Roger Weissberg: http://portal.psch.uic.edu/rpw.aspx

NoVo Foundation: www.novofoundation.org

CASEL: www.casel.org

Link to Jennifer’s blog on Huffingtonpost.com

At the NoVo Foundation, we know that prioritizing girls and women is one of the most fundamentally sound methods of changing our world for the better. We’ve learned that helping girls and women help themselves raises living standards for everyone.

Each year a girl stays in school boosts her future income by 10 to 20 percent. And since girls and women are likely to invest 90 percent of their income in their families — as opposed to a man’s 30 to 40 percent — the education and empowerment of girls and women has an impact that ripples across a society.

So what happens to girls early in their life makes a huge difference. On a learning trip to Ethiopia, where 49 percent of girls are married before they are 18, I came face to face with one of the biggest challenges that holds back the world’s female population and keeps countries mired in poverty: child marriage.

Speaking with a group of Ethiopian girls, I got a lifetime’s education in a single afternoon. I sat and listened as girl after girl described to me how they had become the wives of much older men. One woman told me she fled after being told she was going to be married at the age of four! She ran away crying in terror and heartbreak, only to return to her village after realizing she had no options whatsoever.

All of these girls had been forced to leave school in favor of working in their in-laws’ homes and bearing children while still children themselves. And none of these girls had wanted this fate. They all had hoped to go to school and grow up with their friends and families.

Little was being done on an international level to recognize — much less halt — this practice, which violates the human rights of girls in many ways. So when The Elders, a group of eminent global leaders, established a global campaign to end child marriage in a generation, NoVo offered early support for the initiative, along with the Nike Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

The campaign, Girls Not Brides, will recruit non-governmental organizations, as well as governments, the private sector, and individuals around the world to work for a day when no girl is married before the age of 18 and to raise the profile of the issue. We announced the launch of the initiative this week at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York City.

The campaign will be global in scope and assertive in nature to meet this enormous problem head-on. Despite the limited publicity about it, child marriage is not an isolated or uncommon practice. It is in fact so widespread as to be commonplace in many parts of the world. Studies estimate that one-third of underage girls in the developing world are married, 10 million new brides joining their ranks every year. In Niger, the country in which child marriage is most common, fully three-quarters of girls under 18 are wives.

Child marriage amounts to a socially sanctioned method of abduction and rape. Forcing any person — not to mention an underage girl — into marriage violates the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the nearly universally ratified UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Child marriage also violates girls’ basic rights to health, education, and security.

Girls in marriages instead of in school are not able to learn skills that could help them pull their families from poverty or provide them some measure of independence. Their health is put in danger: Girls under 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their twenties, and those 15 to 19 are twice as likely to die. With virtually no power to reject unwanted sex, child brides are more likely to contract HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases than unmarried, sexually active girls the same age. Sexual violence and domestic servitude are part and parcel of life for child brides.

We all are accountable for what is happening to these girls, who are sometimes as young as four years old when they are wed. Unless we take action, we are consciously forfeiting our responsibility for many of the most vulnerable people on Earth.

We must end this practice now. And we can.

We can go about this work by empowering local activists who are already making change, promoting transformation on the community level. There are passionate and dedicated people around the world who have been struggling against this practice for years. Our role will be to support and enable their efforts, and to raise consciousness on what they are doing and why.

Some object to our intentions by saying that child marriage is an issue of tradition, culture, or religion, and therefore must continue as it always has. But none of the world’s major religions support this practice. And while traditions are vital to nations in many ways, they are not set in stone. “People may say it is tradition, it cannot change,” says Mozambican social and political activist Graça Machel of The Elders. “But I know it is not true. Traditions can change because they are made by people.”

Together we can take on the important work of transforming traditions to embrace empowerment, equality, opportunity, and kindness, instead of domination, restriction, and exploitation. We can give these girls — and their societies — a better future. We can end child marriage in a generation. Please join us.

www.GirlsNotBrides.org

NEW YORK: 20 September 2011 – A new global effort to end child marriage was announced today at the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, turning the international spotlight on a harmful traditional practice that affects the lives of 10 million girls in dozens of countries around the world every year.

Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage was announced at CGI by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson of The Elders; Ford Foundation President Luis Ubiñas; and NoVo Foundation President and Co-Chair Jennifer Buffett.

Archbishop Tutu described child marriage as “a practice that robs millions of girls of their childhood, their rights and their dignity. I find it astounding that this issue does not receive far greater attention. Together, we and our partners commit to working together to end it.”

Child marriage affects millions of children, predominantly girls, every year. In the developing world, one in three girls is married before the age of 18, one in seven before she is 15.

“This harmful practice contributes significantly to core development challenges – poverty, education, maternal and child health, HIV and gender equality,” said Mary Robinson. ”Yet, disturbingly, it has remained on the sidelines of mainstream development debate. That can’t be allowed to continue, because, beyond the numbers, this is about the human rights and squandered potential of hundreds of millions of girls and the women they become.”

The Girls Not Brides partnership will bring together a wide range of players, from community organizations on the front lines of the issue to international agencies, governments and all those who have an interest in ending child marriage.

While there are a number of projects addressing child marriage already – many of them by courageous leaders in communitieswhere the practice occurs most frequently – they tend to be small and have lacked the critical mass needed to achieve significant change nationally or globally.  This effort will change that, making it possible to vastly reduce child marriage around the world.

In their announcement today, as CGI members, The Elders, the Ford Foundation, the Nike Foundation and the NoVo Foundation committed to:

• Building Girls Not Brides into a fully-fledged partnership organization, with at least 150 members running programs in at least 20 countries by December 2012.
• Raising US$3 million to ensure the functioning of the partnership, the creation of a secretariat, and to seed activities to end child marriage in priority countries.
• Establishing a network of donors to support programs to end child marriage worldwide.

Several other donors have already joined the effort, including The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.

“Women’s rights start with protecting girls,” Luis Ubiñas said. “It’s a very human issue, one at the center of a wide range of challenges girls and women still face. We don’t think we can work on reproductive health, women’s rights, girls’ education, or women’s economic empowerment without addressing a widespread and fundamental issue like this one.”

Child marriage usually marks the end of a girl’s schooling, limiting her opportunity to develop skills that can help her to earn an income and lift herself and her children out of poverty.

It also puts girls at greater risk of disease, injury and death due to early sexual activity and childbearing. According to UNICEF, a girl under the age of 15 is five times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth than a woman in her 20s. As a consequence of their physical immaturity, an additional 100,000 girls each year live with the disability of fistula resulting from obstructed labor.

Young wives’ low status in their marital households condemns them to long hours of drudgery, social isolation, greater risks of physical or sexual violence, and very little say over anything that affects them. And disadvantages among girls who marry young are frequently transmitted to the next generation – their babies are much more likely to die in their first year than infants born to women over 20.

“Investing in girls is the single most important action we can take to improve their lives and our world,” said Jennifer Buffett, President and Co-Chair of the NoVo Foundation. “When a girl is in school instead of in a marriage, the positive results ripple out not just in her own life, but into her family, community, and nation, and down to future generations. Girls can be central to solving our world’s problems, but for that to happen we must end child marriage.”

While a number of organizations and donors have been investing in programs to address girls’ reproductive health and rights, schooling and life skills, relatively little attention has been paid to child marriage, despite the scale and dramatic impact of this practice. Child marriage lies at the intersection of all of these issues, and requires specific attention and resources to confront this devastating practice.

What’s new is that The Elders, long committed to addressing gender inequality, have decided to put their weight behind efforts to end child marriage. With core funding and technical input from the Ford Foundation, as well as early support from the NoVo Foundation and the Nike Foundation, The Elders are spearheading efforts to address both the lack of international visibility and leadership on the issue of child marriage, and to support greater coordination and collective action, especially among those working at the community and national levels.

“I am confident that change can happen very quickly,” said Desmond Tutu. “No woman who has had the benefit of staying at school and marrying later in life can inflict child marriage on her daughters. We can end child marriage in a generation.”

* * *

Media contacts:

Katy Cronin, Communications Director, The Elders

Katy.Cronin@theElders.org

+44 7788 710 789

Joe Voeller, Senior Communications Officer, Ford Foundation

j.voeller@fordfoundation.org

+1 212 573 4821

Pamela Shifman, Director, Initiatives for Girls and Women, NoVo Foundation

pshifman@novofoundation.org

212-808-5400

The Nike Foundation
503-532-5242
media@girleffect.org

www.GirlsNotBrides.org

About the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI)

Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) convenes global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Since 2005, CGI Annual Meetings have brought together nearly 150 current and former heads of state, 18 Nobel Prize laureates, hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations, major philanthropists, directors of the most effective nongovernmental organizations, and prominent members of the media. These CGI members have made more than 2,000 commitments, which have already improved the lives of 300 million people in more than 180 countries. When fully funded and implemented, these commitments will be valued in excess of $63 billion. The 2011 Annual Meeting will take place Sept. 20-22 in New York City.

This year, CGI also convened CGI America, a meeting focused on developing ideas for driving economic growth in the United States. The CGI community also includes CGI U, which hosts an annual meeting for undergraduate and graduate students, and CGI Lead, which engages a select group of young CGI members for leadership development and collective commitment-making. For more information, visit www.clintonglobalinitiative.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Pamela Shifman, Director
Initiatives for Women and Girls, NoVo Foundation
(212) 808-5400

This week, the NoVo Foundation kicks off its Move to End Violence initiative, a groundbreaking, 10-year, $80 million initiative designed to strengthen the movement to end violence against girls and women in the United States.  The program is designed as a series of five cohorts, each on a two-year cycle. Over the life of the initiative, Move to End Violence will engage over 100 individuals and as many organizations, establishing a powerful infrastructure of sophisticated leaders and organizations to lead the effort to end violence against girls and women in the United States.

“Many have expressed shock at IMF leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest in connection with a sexual assault here in New York,” said Jennifer Buffett, President and Co-Chair of the NoVo Foundation. “But given the epidemic of sexual violence against girls and women, we shouldn’t be surprised. Thanks to the tireless work of countless activists we have made progress, but staggering rates of violence remain worldwide. Powerful, systemic forces persist and perpetuate it. Our goal with Move to End Violence is to prevent violence against women before it starts, and to create a culture where powerful men—and all boys and men— don’t think they have the right to abuse women.”

After consulting over 200 advocates, practitioners and thought leaders, NoVo initiated a new, long-term strategy: rather than funding organizations in isolation, the Foundation created a comprehensive program that aims to build capacity in the field by connecting and cultivating innovative leaders and organizations working for social change. The initiative will provide these leaders the opportunity to step back from the pressing needs of their day-to-day work to envision a world free of violence against girls and women, and strengthen the movement’s capacity to take strategic steps towards that ambitious goal.

Move to End Violence’s pilot cohort includes 16 visionaries from eight states selected from a pool of over 140 applicants. During their 2-year cohort experience, they will engage in movement building work, transformative leadership development, social change skills trainings, and organizational development. Additionally, each of their organizations will receive a significant grant from the NoVo Foundation. The progress and experience of the cohort will be chronicled at On The Move, a blog that will combine the work of Move to End Violence with commentary from leaders and practitioners in the broader movement. In addition, Move to End Violence will be creating online communities through its Facebook page and its Twitter account @MoveEndViolence.

“For too long, this movement has lacked the funding necessary to commit sufficient time and energy to addressing root causes,” said Jackie Payne, a consultant to NoVo and the director of the initiative, “Because of NoVo’s extraordinary commitment, Move to End Violence will fill that void by strategically investing in the movement’s capacity to end violence against girls and women.”

Violence against girls and women is an epidemic in this country. In the United States, 17.7 million girls and women have been victims of rape or attempted rape. An average of three women are killed per day by their partners or ex-partners. Seven million children live in families in which severe partner violence has occurred in the past year. Approximately one in three adolescent girls is a victim of physical, emotional, or verbal abuse from a dating partner.

“Move to End Violence is a hallmark program of the NoVo Foundation,” said Jennifer Buffett. “We believe that lasting and profound social change happens when philanthropy makes space for gradual, yet systemic change.”

Link to article on World Affairs Commentary website

Today through Friday April 15th, the 2011 Global Philanthropy Forum takes place Redwood City CA, for which I interviewed Pamela Shifman, Director of Initiatives for Women and Girls at the NoVo Foundation. Shifman discussed the evolution of the NoVo Foundation, the status and progress of women and girls around the world, risk and philanthropic investment, her advice to President Obama, and much more. This interview is part of a series with participants at the 2011 Global Philanthropy Forum, which can be found here.

Rahim Kanani: What motivated the NoVo Foundation to explicitly focus on the advancement of women and girls around the world?

Pamela Shifman: The NoVo Foundation was founded with the overall mission of creating a more just and balanced world.  Jennifer and Peter Buffett, founders and Co-Chairs of NoVo created the NoVo Foundation with the understanding that our current social environment is out of balance—discrimination, inequity and violence are preventing individuals and society from reaching their full potential.  As they determined where NoVo would focus its resources, Jennifer and Peter felt strongly about entering a field that was both under-resourced and had significant potential for impact. They saw that girls and women in particular are undervalued and mistreated—but hold untapped potential for creating positive, lasting change in the world.

The NoVo Foundation explicitly focuses on the advancement of women and girls around the world, motivated by the belief that investing in girls and women will help achieve the larger goal of transforming a world out of balance—bringing about real and lasting change for women, men, girls and boys.

Within its two initiatives dedicated to empowering girls and women.  NoVo focuses on ending violence against girls and women globally, including in the US and together with the Nike Foundation on empowering adolescent girls living in poverty.  In addition, NoVo Foundation supports efforts to build the field of social and emotional learning, to help all children to grow into caring and compassionate adults who have the skills and abilities to work together in an uncertain world.

All of NoVo Foundation’s work is dedicated to creating fundamental transformation in society, rather than quick fix solutions.

Rahim Kanani: How would you characterize the global trend in awareness, advocacy and action towards the social, political and economic empowerment of women and girls around the world?

Pamela Shifman: It is encouraging to see increasing awareness, advocacy and action dedicated to girls and women’s rights around the world.  Organizations such as the Clinton Global Initiative, the United Nations (through UN Women),  G(irls) 20, the Nike Foundation, and Women Moving Millions have all made the social, political, and economic empowerment of girls and women a priority in their work. For example, the Clinton Global Initiative made empowering women and girls a central track in its 2010 annual meeting and recently announced it will do the same in 2011.   In creating UN Women, (the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women) in July 2010, UN member states took a historic step to meet the UN’s commitments to gender equality and the empowerment of women.

While these developments are significant, the fact remains that the situation for the world’s girls and women remains dire and the commitment to addressing inequality, precarious. While girls and women comprise more than half the world’s population, we are not even close to seeing the levels of commitment and dedication that are required to truly bring about lasting change for the words most marginalized girls and women.

Violence against women is a good example of a problem requiring vastly more attention, resources and dedication. We know that an estimated 1 out of 3 women will be beaten, raped, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. This problem crosses geography, class and community. In no country are girls and women able to live free from violence. And not only does violence have an impact on every girl or woman who survives it, we also know that the mere fear or threat of violence shapes a girl’s or woman’s access to opportunity and self-determination.

Despite increased attention to this problem, the numbers of victims remains staggering. Moreover, the official government response remains insufficient at best and harmful at worst. For example In 102 countries there are no specific legal provisions against domestic violence, and marital rape is not a prosecutable offence in at least 53 nations.

While increased attention is an excellent step in the right direction, we need to be vigilant in asking the tough questions: how much have budgets been transformed so that girls and women are at the center of investments?  Are the most marginalized girls and women being reached or simply ignored? Are governments meeting their international obligations to gender equality?  Are funding institutions prioritizing adolescent girls?  And in particular, we need to ask ourselves if we are supporting efforts that position girls and women as change agents who will lead the movement to empower themselves and their communities.

In summary, the global trend of increased awareness, advocacy, and action to empower women and girls signifies great progress.  However, it is only the beginning of fundamentally changing how societies and institutions value girls and women. As the great Bella Abzug, former US Member of Congress and leading activist for women’s rights once said, “We have the words, now we need the music- and the music is action.”

Rahim Kanani: In terms of organizational distinctiveness, what role does the NoVo Foundation play within this movement that pays special attention to women and girls?

Pamela Shifman: As one of the largest private foundations whose explicit mission is to empower girls and women worldwide, NoVo sees its role as one of a catalyst and risk taker.  NoVo is willing to invest in yet-unproven, but promising initiatives at the grassroots level.  Equally important we do not expect progress to happen overnight.  The efforts of much of the work we support may only show results over the long term, but each of our grantee partners is working towards achieving lasting and true transformation in society.  We support our partners in being innovative and forward thinking as they seek to change political and social structures that prevent girls and women from reaching their full potential.

We are also very dedicated to building partnerships with funder colleagues and leveraging our respective resources and expertise in order to achieve advances for girls and women.  For example, the NoVo Foundation has invested more than $100 million in a long-term collaboration with the Nike Foundation to support the “Girl Effect”.  It is highly unusual for a private foundation to invest in a corporate foundation.  However, the NoVo Foundation entered the partnership confident that our impact on the lives of women and girls would be greater if we consolidated our resources and developed a shared strategic vision for the world’s girls.

Together with the Nike Foundation, we work with partners to build the case for why multi-lateral organizations, private donors, and government agencies should prioritize girls.  This partnership draws on our shared passion for the girl effect; it leverages the strengths of our individual organizations; and consolidates complementary efforts so that we can focus even more resources where they are most needed.

Finally, NoVo has made the choice to invest both locally and globally because we know that  gender inequality and violence against girls and women are problems that plague countries and communities in the global north as well as in the global south.  We know that the world is interconnected and that the marginalization of girls is intolerable wherever it occurs.  At NoVo, we believe in thinking globally and locally; and acting globally and locally.

Rahim Kanani: As an important global voice on philanthropy and development, are we moving in the right direction, or is the sector by and large too risk-averse to experiment with new, innovative, and perhaps more effective development models?

Pamela Shifman: NoVo’s approach to philanthropy is greatly influenced by Peter’s father, investor Warren Buffett.  His advice to Jennifer and Peter was to invest for the long term in logical and practical ways, but not to be overly focused on the most popular strategies.  He advised Jennifer and Peter to look for “undervalued assets” as solutions – places where tremendous value is held, but not necessarily recognized.

With this advice, Peter and Jennifer decided to invest in the “undervalued assets” of women and girls.   They see their focus on women and girls as an overlooked area in philanthropy, but ripe with opportunity to achieve deep, systematic change.  Even the name of the foundation – NoVo – suggests a different philosophy. NoVo is Latin meaning to change, alter or invent, and the idea behind it guides the foundation’s work to create transformational change in the world.  We support grantee partners with ideas that show unusual promise for positively impacting the lives of girls and women.  We also seek out change agents who constantly challenge themselves and others to envision a better world for girls, women and their communities.

More than anything else, however, NoVo is committed to thinking differently about measuring impact and achieving lasting social change. NoVo Foundation’s ultimate goal is to support a transformation in society from a culture of domination and exploitation to one of equality and partnership.  Given this aim, NoVo Foundation thinks about its work in the long-term, rather than over short grant terms.   We recognize that one cannot instantly measure social change progress, or attach numbers to work that seeks to create deep changes in the fabric of our society.  Our approach to philanthropy and our investments in  individuals and communities (who are the ones who make the changes and know their needs and solutions best), allows for gradual, yet systematic change, and understands that achieving true transformation is not necessarily a linear process and that long term support is needed.

Rahim Kanani: What are some of the ways in which we can, and should, include men and boys in this conversation about women and girls?

Pamela Shifman: It is crucial that boys and men are engaged as full partners in the conversation about empowering girls and women, and in particular, ending violence against girls and women.  Men and boys have a critical role to play in this area.  In fact, until boys and men take responsibility to end violence against girls and women and to create a world based on equality, we will not be successful in our work.

The important role of men and boys in advancing gender equality is becoming increasingly clear to activists and donors alike.   Many donors have made “male involvement” programs a centerpiece of their efforts to end violence against women internationally.   While this focus is critically important, it is vital that efforts be done in a manner, which truly promotes gender equality and does not reinforce existing gender hierarchies. It has been disturbing to see programs around the world spring up which have supported men to organize with virtually no consultation by women in the process, in a manner which has contributed to the ongoing disempowerment of girls and women.

While there are some problematic initiatives, there are also some excellent initiatives and organizations that are focused on involving boys and men in ending violence against women, that are girl and women-centered and focus on accountability, equality and inclusion.  A Call to Men, International Rescue Committee and Family Violence Prevention Fund for example, have developed innovative programs designed to fundamentally address inequality of women and girls through engaging boys and men as part of the solution.  I recently visited IRC’s program in West Africa, Women and Girls’ Rebuilding Nations, where I saw firsthand the impact of creative, thoughtful rights based programming that engages boys and men as partners in the struggle to end violence against girls and women. The IRC programmatic work with men is not done on behalf of women, but in partnership with women.  This has made all the difference.

As men and boys take a more active role in creating change, girls and women must remain at the center.

Rahim Kanani: If President Obama granted you an audience for ten minutes and was seeking counsel on the most effective model to empower women and girls as primary agents of change around the world, what would be your advice?

Pamela Shifman: My advice to President Obama would be to look to the “Girl Effect” as a powerful approach to empower girls and women as primary agents of change around the world.

I would tell President Obama that putting adolescent girls at the center of development policies would change the fate not only of girls themselves, but their communities, countries, and the world. The Girl Effect focuses on adolescent girls, believing they are the most powerful force for transformative change.

The girl effect is the unique potential of adolescent girls to break the cycle of poverty and create a more just and balanced world. In impoverished communities, lack of resources drives girls out of school and into early marriage, childbirth, and HIV infection at rates dramatically higher than boys. The results are irreversible for girls, and devastating to communities caught in intergenerational cycles of poverty. Yet when girls gain a different path—supported, educated, and empowered—everyone benefits. Improve a girls’ life and many more lives benefit: her brothers, sisters, future children and grandchildren. As an educated mother, an active, productive citizen and a prepared employee, she can break the cycle of poverty for families and nations.

I would call President Obama’s attention to the fact that despite their potential, girls today face overwhelming invisibility, ignorance and inaction. In fact, less than two cents of every international development dollar is directed to her; 98 percent of funding goes elsewhere. The girl effect supports innovative programs that demonstrate the positive impact on communities and countries when resources are driven towards girls. By supporting girls in areas such as health education, rights-based participation, and as economic agents, the girl effect is proving the belief that if we “invest in a girl, she’ll do the rest.”

President Obama may already be familiar with the Girl Effect from Malia and Sasha but I would definitely advise the whole first family to check out: www.girleffect.org for more information.

Rahim Kanani: As you look ahead into the next decade, what challenges and opportunities are on the horizon with regard to not only empowering women and girls around the world, but also the field of international development more broadly?

Pamela Shifman: As Secretary of State Hilary Clinton recently said, “I believe that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century.”

I agree with Secretary State of Clinton.  We have a unique opportunity before us.  The dialogue has shifted so that the importance of empowering women and girls has a much more prominent place in the field of international development.  Now we must ensure that empowering women and girls does not become a “trendy project of the moment,” but rather an ongoing effort that places girls and women at the center of global development.

Putting girls and women at the center of development requires us to question our assumptions about how we do development. Putting girls at the center requires us to look deeply at our systems and how me make them work for the most disadvantaged.  Putting girls and women at the center presents an opportunity to bring in new partners, create new modes of collaboration and invest in sustained efforts to create the kind of world in which every girl, boy, man and woman can thrive.  The opportunities are endless, but we need the political will, energy and determination to shift the paradigm from domination and exploitation to partnership and collaboration giving credence to half the world’s population- women and girls.

If the International Development community truly listens and supports girls and women’s voices, knowledge, involvement, safety and self-determination to lead the world in new directions we will see and realize enormous gains and sustainable progress. We’re betting everything on it.

Cross-posted with the Huffington Post

Media Contact: Nicole Brown
Communications Manager, LCIF

Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF) has been awarded a US$100,000 grant from the NoVo Foundation to support LCIF’s Commitment to Action through the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). LCIF has committed to expand Lions Quest across one entire United States school district by 2013. Expansion of Lions Quest, the kindergarten through 12th grade life skills and youth development program, will ensure even more students benefit from the values of social and emotional learning.

The US$100,000 in funding will support LCIF’s U.S. efforts during the next three years to implement Lions Quest district-wide as a social and emotional learning program. These LCIF efforts match the efforts being led across the U.S. to build support and evidence for the positive impact on youth.

“Lions are encouraged to know that there other leading Foundations in addition to LCIF that support our youth and see Lions Quest as a leading program to empower and support adults and educators throughout the United States and world to nurture caring and responsible young people. By joining with Novo Foundation to support the Clinton Global Initiative, we are helping even more youth to lead positive and healthy lives,” said Eberhard J. Wirfs, LCIF Chairperson.

NoVo Foundation supports initiatives that focus on ending violence against girls and women and promoting gender equity worldwide, empowering adolescent girls in the developing world, and advancing social and emotional learning in the U.S. Established in 2006, NoVo Foundation is led by Jennifer and Peter Buffett.

“We are excited to join LCIF in its important commitment to bringing social and emotional learning to an entire school district” said Jennifer Buffett, President of NoVo Foundation. “Over time, with the proper exposure, we expect that more districts will harness the power of evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) to improve academic and personal development outcomes for children and schools. There is overwhelming evidence that SEL yields multiple, important benefits, fully compatible with the core objectives of education. NoVo Foundation and LCIF are well aligned, and we are pleased to be able to contribute US$100,000 help meet the CGI commitment.”

SEL and the Lions Quest program encourages youth of all ages to be self-aware, to regulate their emotions, to be socially aware by recognizing and appreciating individual and group similarities and differences, to seek out and appropriately use family, school, and community resources, to have good relationship skills and to demonstrate responsible decision-making at school, but also at home and in the community.

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About Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF)
LCIF supports the large-scale humanitarian initiatives of members of Lions Clubs International, the world’s largest service club organization with 1.35 million members in 206 countries and regions. LCIF has been named the #1 NGO with which to partner, according to a Financial Times survey. Serving youth has been a longstanding mission of LCIF. LCIF has awarded more than 200 grants for a cumulative total of more than US$13 million to expand or establish Lions Quest programs across 64 countries around the world, impacting more than 12 million youths. To learn more visit www.lcif.org or www.lions-quest.org.

Link to article on Huffington Post Website

The movie, Waiting for “Superman”, laid blame for our broken K-12 public school system with teacher unions. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan suggested teachers should come from the top third of their graduating classes. President Obama in a recent speech at TechBoston called for more reform and more money. Theories abound for fixing our schools, but the debate ignores an underlying current. The root of our failing education system from K-12 all the way through college is a lack of one basic skill: the ability to manage our emotions.

According to Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence, emotional management, the ability to identify, appropriately express and manage our emotions, forms the foundation for learning and making decisions. It is the platform on which other essential skills, like reading, writing, math, even social skills are built. As it is a skill, it has to be taught and continually practiced.

Dr. Goleman’s research has found that academic achievement scores in students who learn key emotional skills improve by an average of 12 percent to 15 percent. These results underscore what literally happens in a brain distracted by emotions — it has precious little cognitive ability available to take in new information or critically think.

So why doesn’t every school teach emotional management and why is it not taught every year of school and even through adulthood? The answer lies in our culture’s general discomfort with feelings.

According to Carole Robin, a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in organizational behavior, our ability to be in touch with and express our feelings is slowly socialized out of us. She gives the example of a toddler who bumps his head: the mother rushes to him and says “You’re okay. You’re okay.” We’re told to be okay even if we’re not.

Then we enter school and we’re told to be rational and not emotional. Later in the workplace, we’re trained to put on armor. So over time, our ability to even access emotion gets thwarted; in her words, “our emotional muscles atrophy.”

Though we’re trained to tamp down our emotions, it’s an illusion, because emotions don’t go away unless addressed. “Human beings are leaky,” Dr. Robin adds. Meaning, if you’re not aware of your emotions you can’t manage them and when you don’t manage your emotions you encounter all manner of unintended results.

Some of which we can already see not only in poor student test scores and the escalating number of high school drop outs, but also in adults with enormous school debt and no jobs.

The reality is the circumstances of the lives of students and their teachers, for that matter, contain difficulties. But instead of facing them with key emotional skills, these difficulties become distractions that are felt in classrooms across the nation. Students and adults, alike, will only be able to learn more or be effective, if all of their faculties are focused on the task at hand, which is only possible if their emotional concerns are addressed and managed.

Dr. Robin’s very popular class in inter-personal dynamics at Stanford, ironically dubbed “Touchy Feely” by students, offers a starting point. The class teaches future business leaders how emotions underlie communication and behavior. Armed with the vocabulary of feelings, students practice identifying and appropriately expressing their emotions. Lack of this simple skill can impede a leader’s success in her environment — the workplace, much like it affects the workplace of students and teachers — the classroom.

While there are organizations like the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) working to integrate self-awareness training into the curriculum of schools, there don’t seem to be any organizations focused on educating the public. Frankly, CASEL and other organizations with similar goals won’t be successful at a scale to make a true difference unless our culture addresses the stigma attached to emotions.

We begin by understanding and addressing how emotions underlie everything we do. We may just find we’re the superheroes.

A $2 million donation to the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from the NoVo Foundation will support ongoing research in social and emotional learning.

The gift from the foundation, led by Jennifer and Peter Buffett, will establish the NoVo Foundation Endowed Chair in Social and Emotional Learning at UIC. Based in the department of psychology, the chair will oversee continuing research on social and emotional learning programs that promote children’s positive behavior and school performance.

Pending approval of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, Roger Weissberg, professor of psychology and education, will be appointed to the chair. Weissberg is president of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, also known as CASEL.

“We hope that people will recognize NoVo’s endowment of the UIC chair as acknowledgment of the importance of the university’s work and contribution to the field of social and emotional learning,” said Jennifer Buffett, president of NoVo.

“UIC can continue to have a strong hand in bringing these crucial, reliable social and emotional learning programs and methods to schools and districts across the U.S., enriching the educational experiences of children at a time when so many American schools are failing kids. We firmly believe that SEL’s benefits lead to much stronger educational achievement, sustained personal development, and healthier school communities.”

Recent research indicates social and emotional learning programs can raise students’ standardized test scores, build attachment to school, improve interpersonal attitudes, and decrease problem behaviors, such as drug use, high-risk sexual behavior and aggression.

“The NoVo Foundation’s contribution will allow the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to continue as a leader in the field of social and emotional learning and to further our mission of making an impact beyond the classroom,” said Astrida Orle Tantillo, interim dean of the UIC College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “We are grateful for their generous support of this important research.”

The college’s department of psychology is already home to the UIC SEL Research Group, which is headed by Weissberg. With scholars in psychology, education, sociology, and public health, the group’s projects address social and emotional learning research and assessment, practice, educator preparation and policy development.

“Social and emotional learning is founded on scholarly research, and its success continues to be validated by a growing body of evidence,” said Weissberg, who is a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences distinguished professor.

“As the NoVo chair, I anticipate further advancement of the work in this field, establishing more school-family-community partnerships, and continuing to help bring these healthy child development practices to more schools across the country.”

Through three decades, Weissberg has become a leader in the campaign to establish social and emotional learning as an essential part of education from preschool through high school. He has trained scholars and practitioners in innovative family, school and community interventions. His work includes more than 200 publications focusing on preventive interventions with children and adolescents.

Under Weissberg’s direction, CASEL has been a leader in efforts to ensure that the social and emotional needs of children are recognized and addressed in schools worldwide. In 2004, Illinois became the first state to adopt K to 12 student learning standards in social and emotional learning.

Weissberg was chosen in 2008 by The George Lucas Educational Foundation for its “Daring Dozen,” which honors those who are reshaping the future of education. He received the American Psychological Association’s 2000 Distinguished Contribution Award for Applications of Psychology to Education and Training, the 2004 Society for Community Research and Action Distinguished Contribution to Theory and Research Award, and the 2010 Nan Tobler Award for the Best Review of Prevention Research from the Society for Prevention Research.

Prior to joining UIC in 1992, Weissberg was a faculty member at Yale University. He earned his doctorate in psychology from the University of Rochester and his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Brandeis University.

Established in 2008, the NoVo Foundation supports initiatives that focus on ending violence against girls and women and promoting gender equity worldwide, empowering adolescent girls in the developing world, and advancing social and emotional learning in the U.S.

With more than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is UIC’s largest college. It comprises more than 20 departments and programs offering over 40 undergraduate major fields of specialization, 40 minors, nearly 50 graduate degrees at the master’s and doctoral levels, and almost 1,000 courses. The college features programs in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.

For more information about UIC, please visit www.uic.edu.

Copyright ©2009, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.