2. Make it hands-on. We host a lot of [informational] tables about Oxfam at farmers’ markets and music festivals. At one festival, we wanted to offer people something more than a petition to sign. So we invited them to use food items, like seeds or beans, to decorate postcards with what they thought a world without hunger would look like, or to write or draw a message to share with their legislators. We ended up with about 60 hand-decorated cards. When we brought the cards to our next meeting with representatives, they paid attention. Signatures are great, but a handwritten note or picture feels more personal.

3. Connect your community to the world. In Des Moines, the Oxfam Action Corps combines legislative efforts with hands-on projects that make a difference in our city. Once a month, we volunteer at community gardens or help out at a local food pantry. Talking to [our fellow volunteers] helps make people  aware of Oxfam and the international angle to the issues. It’s also a great way to bring in new volunteers who are looking for ways to give back.

4. Reach out over a meal. Food brings people together in ways that you wouldn’t expect. It was an Oxfam America Hunger Banquet that first inspired me to work with Oxfam; I’ve been part of five Hunger Banquets, and each one is different. We co-organize these events with other groups, like the ONE Campaign or students at a local university, who can bring in additional people and ideas. We also co-hosted a potluck dinner with Oxfam’s Sisters on the Planet ambassadors in Iowa, and we’re planning another potluck in the spring. There are always good discussions during the meal, and afterward a lot of people come up to us wanting to get involved in our efforts.

If you want to get involved, apply here to join the Oxfam Action Corps in Des Moines and 14 other US cities.

Majora Carter, far right, fires up the crowd at a New York City Oxfam America Hunger Banquet earlier this week. Photo: Sarah Peck / Oxfam America

“You’re not going to like what I have to say,” warned the woman next to me. An instructor at a local college, she was among the 80 or so people who’d attended a Boston panel discussion last week in honor of the centennial of International Women’s Day. The panel was one of over 175 events nationwide organized by Oxfam America and our supporters this spring, all based around the theme of women and food.

It wasn’t the response I expected when I asked my neighbor what she thought of the panel. But I assured her I’d listen with an open mind.

She said that it was good to hear women’s stories from other parts of the world—referring to panelist Yvette Cissé, an Oxfam America partner and leader of an organic farmers’ cooperative in Mali. Cissé spoke via translator about the benefits she’s seen from growing organic cotton, such as more fertile soil and higher earnings that help women feed their families. “You can be an expert farmer, but if there’s not enough water, it’s a big problem,” said Cissé of the challenges caused by increasingly erratic rainfall. “Women are pulling water by hand from a 20- to 30-foot-deep well, or walking up to a mile to get water for their gardens.”

Still, the woman next to me explained, she sometimes worried that stories like this might divert our attention from ending hunger and poverty here in the US. Those problems may not be as intense, she said, but they’re real too, and they’re right on our doorstep.

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March 8th marks 100 years of celebrating International Women’s Day. And to honor the occasion, people like you are teaming up with Oxfam America throughout the month to show their support for women worldwide. Though hunger and poverty affect everyone, women and girls in poor communities face particular challenges. But they can also be leaders in coming up with solutions.

Our centennial celebration includes over 130 grassroots events in 39 states, from Oxfam America Hunger Banquets to panels and film screenings, house parties to open-mike nights , concerts to meetings with members of Congress. There’s an impressive list of speakers, too: former governors; state and national policymakers; farmers from Mali, Cambodia, Haiti, and the US; Sisters on the Planet Ambassadors; business leaders; agricultural innovators; foodies; and more.

We’ve also put together an interactive photobook featuring images from around the world, along with videos, notes, and tweets (see some highlights from the photobook in the slideshow above). And we invite you to join this grassroots show of solidarity by adding your own. The message? Ending hunger starts with women, but it doesn’t stop there. No matter who we are or where we live, all of us can add our voices to the effort.

Terefua Bagajo, in pink shawl, takes part in a community ceremony in Gutu Dobi, Ethiopia. Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson / Oxfam America

This week in Washington, DC, our Senators are still going back and forth about US climate legislation. There’s some debate about whether or not they should prioritize working on a climate and energy bill, or whether other issues should take precedence.

Meanwhile, in many parts of Ethiopia, dealing with climate change is now no longer a question of priorities. It’s a necessity. “In addition to the usual struggles, Ethiopians living in poverty are suffering the effects of climate change—both more variable climate and more extreme weather events,” reads an Oxfam report released just last week.

I thought of this contrast today as I read over an interview that I helped conduct last summer with Terefua Bagajo, one of the data collectors for Oxfam’s drought early warning system in southern Ethiopia. The system collects data from rural women in herding communities, charting their intimate knowledge of their villages in order to identify oncoming droughts and come up with local solutions.

Here’s what Bagajo said about the urgency of climate change, and why women in her community are the ones who are fighting back: 

“The reason why all our informants are women is because in our community they are the first to feel the effect of drought, more than anybody else in the house. Women are the ones who are responsible for what most activities in the house. They know better about problems in the house, children, and cattle. … They know what it means to have something and then lose it. That is why we collect data from them.  …

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Right now, the US Senate is drafting language for a new climate bill—and if we don’t take action, the world’s poorest communities may not get the resources they need to fight climate change. Find out how you can help.

Guest blogger Thao Nguyen (of Thao with the Get Down Stay Down), is a San Francisco-based singer-songwriter. Her latest album “Know Better, Learn Faster” was released in 2009.

Thao Nguyen, left, interviews climate witness Constance Okollet. Photo: Chelsea Brass / Oxfam America

I have no stripes to be a climate leader, but I do have the privilege of serving as an Oxfam America Sisters on the Planet ambassador. I share the honor with hundreds of wildly impressive and inspiring women from all over the US—former senators, interfaith workers, journalists, the Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin, etc.—all social and environmental justice advocates of admirable proportions.

Last month, we gathered for a summit in Washington, DC, to talk and learn and vent and stir frustration and advocacy on behalf of women who are very busy with other things related to climate change. Examples of these other things: extreme drought, severe flooding, erratic rainfall, land erosion, hunger, disease, thirst, living. 

The goal of Sisters on the Planet is to direct attention, funding, and political empowerment to those who are closest and most vulnerable to the effects of climate change: poor women. They are the primary food growers, providers and heads and spines of households everywhere.

You can relate to this very intimately because your mom has done and still does a lot of things for you. If you are like me, a child of suburbs which have not and probably never will be notably affected by climate change because strip malls make good shields, it is difficult to grasp how catastrophic these events are for vulnerable communities, and women in particular. Imagine how hard it is already to keep a family healthy and fed and then imagine the earth convulsing, scorching and spitting at you while you are trying to survive in ways that have always worked before.

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Marisa Marcavillaca speaks at Oxfam's Sisters on the Planet Climate Leaders Summit. Photo: Ilene Perlman / Oxfam America

 Right now, the US Senate is drafting language for a new climate bill—and if we don’t take action, the world’s poorest communities may not get the resources they need to fight climate change. Find out how you can help.

When Marisa Marcavillaca—a farmer and indigenous women’s organizer from Peru—spoke at Oxfam’s Sisters on the Planet Climate Leaders Summit last month, her words were quoted by everyone from Al Gore to a climate skeptic blog called Al Gore Lied. 

“We are very concerned, in my community, in my country, about global climate change,” Marcavillaca said through a translator. “We are seeing the impacts on a daily basis. We are losing our lands; our waters are disappearing. … It rains when it shouldn’t rain. There are freezing temperatures when there shouldn’t be freezing temperatures.”

At first, the idea of global warming actually bringing cooler temperatures might indeed seem counter-intuitive. But that’s the reality that many indigenous people are facing in the high altitudes of Peru, where marginalized communities have taken root on the very limits of habitable terrain. I visited some of these communities a few years back, and I still remember the compact stone houses, perched on the edge of impossibly steep mountain slopes. I remember the farmers’ stepped fields—some pitched at almost a ninety-degree angle—and the fragile, unlikely green shoots emerging from the soil.

When life is so precarious, any shift in weather—not just colder temperatures, but changes in rainfall, even floods—can have lasting consequences.

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Constance Okollet, from Uganda, and Sharon Hanshaw, from the US, bonded this week at the climate talks in Copenhagen. Photo by Emily Gertz.

Emily Gertz is a freelance journalist, editor, and blogger covering the environment, technology, science, and sustainability. She reported on the Copenhagen climate talks on behalf of Oxfam America.

When Sharon Hanshaw walks into the lobby of the Hotel Copenhagen, Constance Okollet’s face breaks into an enormous smile. In a minute she is standing up from the sofa to fold Hanshaw into an enormous hug.

Soon they are sitting on the couch with their heads together, Okollet’s wiry black hair touching Hanshaw’s bright blond bangs. They trade news of their families and homes, and then move on to strategizing about how Okollet might do fundraising for the community organizing group she founded, the Osukura United Women Network.

Okollet is a farmer from the rural Tororo district in eastern Uganda. Hanshaw is a cosmetologist from East Biloxi, Mississippi. The two women have become close friends while traveling long distances to bear witness to the devastating impacts of climate change on their communities.

While talking on the couch, Okollet gets a call on her mobile from her husband, back home in Uganda. She passes the phone to Hanshaw, who jokes with him like she’s known the couple forever. In her Mississippi drawl, she offers to send him a package of her signature confection, homemade pralines.

Watching them laugh and joke together with so much fun and affection, it’s surprising to learn that the two women met only a few months ago, in New York City. They came in September 2009 for the United Nations Climate Summit, to make the case for funding to help poor nations adapt to climate change. Hanshaw is the first “climate witness” in this program who is from a rich, industrialized nation.

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Oxfam America supporter Thao Nguyen (of Thao with the Get Down Stay Down) is a San Francisco-based singer-songwriter, whose new album “Know Better, Learn Faster” has just been released.

Hello out there. I am very pleased to be writing you on Blog Action Day, as it is my favorite day of the year. Last year on this day I dressed up as a blog, but because I’m more of an idea person, execution was poor and no one could really tell. This year will be clearer and different.

Thao with the Get Down Stay Down. Photo: Tarina Westlund

I am a songwriter and musician by trade, and although that is incredibly fortunate in and of itself, I feel especially lucky for such job placement because it has afforded me the unique opportunity to closely work with and support Oxfam America.

I have always loved Oxfam’s focus and application of energies and issues to real live people, and how the scope and arch of causes great and small always return to how real places with real people are being affected, and what can be done to help improve their quality of life. Climate change is a real bastard, as we all have heard. And it’s happening, let’s not deny it. If you keep turning a blind eye to climate change it will probably be injured in a surprise gale force wind. Or not. The issue of climate change has painted the town so many times with so many brushes, it is understandable that those of us with the ability and privilege to forget, would.

Enter Oxfam and others of its ilk to keep us aware and connected: The people the world over who have done the least to upset nature are always the ones who bear the brunt of its imbalance and fury.

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Actress Joy Bryant is an Oxfam America Sisters on the Planet Ambassador. She recently spoke about the disproportionate impacts climate change has on poor people at an Earth Day event on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

Joy Bryant speaks about climate change and poor people on the National Mall in Washington, DC last Sunday. Photo: Laura Rusu / Oxfam America

We often think about the impacts of global warming as something happening in the distant future. But the reality is that communities around the world are dealing with it right now. From Ethiopia to Bangladesh, South Africa to our own Gulf Coast, we have witnessed the shocking damage from droughts, floods, and extreme weather associated with climate change. And as Hurricane Katrina’s devastation showed, it’s the poorest and most vulnerable who are hit first and worst.

Women in poor communities are particularly vulnerable. Because of their roles in communities and families, they often have access to less education and fewer resources, all of which makes it more difficult for them to cope.

This is why I began to work with Oxfam America and became a Sisters on the Planet Ambassador. As a Sister, I have committed to raising awareness about the impact that climate change is having on people — and what we can do to help.

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