Remarks by Adrienne Germain, President, IWHC
Meeting Global Challenges: Healthy Women, Healthy World
IWHC's Fifth Annual Gala, January 19, 2006

Thank you to everyone of you here tonight. I would like especially to acknowledge two of our closest friends and staunch allies over the years. First is Ellen Chesler, our immediate past Board Chair. And second is Jacqueline de Chollet, who for years was on our board and started us down the path to this gala with the beginning of our President's Council, I think about eight years ago. In the tradition of our fearless first President, Joan Dunlop, IWHC is taking on three major challenges this year, sustained by your investment in us. 

First, as Kati, our most ardent champion, indicated earlier, we are determined to persuade world governments to strengthen their policies and invest their money to protect girls and women from HIV/AIDS. To succeed we are collaborating with U.N. agencies, especially UNFPA and UNAIDS. We are conspiring with the heads of the National AIDS Control programs in Brazil, India, and Nigeria, and we are convening women and young people worldwide to convince their governments to invest in girls and women. This is how we helped change population policy in 1994 and I know we can do the same with HIV/AIDS policy in 2006.  

Our second challenge is to intensify our work to protect sexual rights, without which no woman can be healthy, or safe. For example we fund an organization in India that trains both government and civil society leaders to protect women and girls from domestic violence, sexual coercion, and child marriage. Halfway around the world in the Peruvian Amazon we are the only supporter of work with women in the largest indigenous population, the Asháninka. The women in this community have identified their primary concerns as child marriage, sexual violence, and lack of appropriate health services.

Finally, this year we expect to make major progress in our work with adolescents. We agree with our incomparable ally, Jim Wolfensohn, that the education, health, and empowerment of young people will determine all of our futures. IWHC is, for instance, helping to fill a major gap created by U.S. government imposition of abstinence-only sex education. We create comprehensive materials such as this one, Positively Informed, primarily for educators and young people in developing countries. But request for Positively Informed have also poured in from parents and educators in this country. Washington Heights, Kansas, California—parents who want their children to be in the know so that they can stay safe. 

Across Asia, Africa, and Latin America IWHC also funds programs for adolescents that emphasize equality and human rights for girls, not just information on sex and biology. The Girls' Power Initiative, GPI, in Nigeria is one outstanding example. GPI inspires young girls to get an education instead of getting married at an early age. GPI helps them to develop the skills and the power to say no to genital mutilation and to sexual harassment.

In August 2004 I attended the GPI graduation ceremony in Calabar. My most powerful memory of that day is the speech by Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi. The standing room only auditorium fell silent. The audience was mesmerized by Bisi's vision for the girls and women of Africa. When she finished speaking, appreciative pandemonium broke loose. It is my great honor to introduce you tonight to Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, co-founder and Executive Director of the African Women's Development Fund. She is a powerful Nigerian woman and a new member of the Board of the International Women's Health Coalition. Bisi... 

Read Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi's remarks>>