Preventing Child Marriage act killed in the House

by Shine Global | Dec 20, 2010 | News, Shine a Light On

Non-governmental organizations, women’s rights advocates, and lawmakers from both parties spent years developing and lobbying for the “International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act of 2010,” which the House failed to pass in a vote Thursday. The bill failed even though 241 Congressmen voted for it and only 166 voted against, because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) brought it up under “suspension of the rules.” This procedure has the advantage of not allowing any amendments or changes to the bill, but carries the disadvantage of requiring two-thirds of the votes for passage.

Even still, supporters in both parties fully expected the bill to garner the 290 votes needed — right up until the bill failed. After all, it passed the Senate unanimously Dec. 1 with the co-sponsorship of several Republicans, including Appropriations Committee ranking Republican Thad Cochran (R-MS), Foreign Relations Committee member Roger Wicker (R-MS), and human rights advocate Sam Brownback (R-KS).

If passed, the bill would have authorized the president to provide assistance “to prevent the incidence of child marriage in developing countries through the promotion of educational, health, economic, social, and legal empowerment of girls and women.” It would have also mandated that the administration develop a multi-year strategy on the issue and that the State Department include the incidence of forced child marriage during its annual evaluation of countries’ human rights practices.

Incoming House Foreign Affairs chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) first argued that the bill was simply unaffordable. She objected to the cost of the bill, which would be $108 million over five years, and criticized it for not providing an accounting of how much the U.S. was already spending on this effort. The actual CBO estimate said the bill would authorize $108 million, but would only require $67 million in outlays from fiscal years 2011 to 2015.

Regardless, the supporters still thought the bill would pass because House Republican leadership had not come out against it. But about one hour before the vote, every Republican House office received a message on the bill from GOP leadership, saying that leadership would vote “no” on the bill and encouraging all Republicans do the same. The last line on the alert particularly shocked the bill’s supporters: “There are also concerns that funding will be directed to NGOs that promote and perform abortion and efforts to combat child marriage could be usurped as a way to overturn pro-life laws,” the alert read. The bill doesn’t contain any funding for abortion activities and federal funding for abortion activities is already prohibited by what’s known as the “Helms Amendment,” which has been boiler plate language in appropriations bills since 1973.

The main author of the bill was Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), who was incensed when the bill failed in the House. “The action on the House floor stopping the Child Marriage bill tonight will endanger the lives of millions of women and girls around the world,” Durbin said in a Thursday statement. “These young girls, enslaved in marriage, will be brutalized and many will die when their young bodies are torn apart while giving birth. Those who voted to continue this barbaric practice brought shame to Capitol Hill.”

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that 60 million girls in developing countries now between the ages of 20 and 24 were married before they reached 18. The Population Council, a group focused on reproductive and child health, estimates that the number will increase by 100 million over the next decade if current trends continue.

To read more: http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/17/how_ileana_ros_lehtinen_killed_the_bill_to_prevent_forced_child_marriages

Molina Foundation: Health and Literacy for Those in Need

by Shine Global | Dec 2, 2010 | News, Shine a Light On

The Molina Foundation is a 501(c)(3) foundation with the mission to reduce disparities in access to education and healthcare by underserved populations. They seek to enhance learning and educational performance through the promotion of family literacy, math competency, and teacher effectiveness by providing replicable and sustainable models that enhance access to education and reinforcement of activities shown to improve student achievement is one of the overarching goals of The Molina Foundation.

Dr. Martha Bernadett, the founder of the Molina Foundation, is the eldest daughter of the late Dr. C. David Molina, the founder of Molina Healthcare, Inc. Both Dr. David Molina and his wife Mary were elementary school teachers prior to Dr. David Molina’s return to medical school. Thus, Dr. Bernadett, or “Dr. Martha” as she is known, and her siblings were raised with a deep value for education.

As a Family Physician, Dr. Martha understood the importance of literacy and education in overcoming health disparities. In addition, as the Principal Investigator of a demonstration project funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Hablamos Juntos (We Speak Together) Program, she understood the barriers to health access faced by those with limited English proficiency.

In 2003, Dr. Martha started a program to provide books to children without access to books in an effort to improve literacy of children to help them overcome barriers to healthcare access and impact their long-term overall health status. This program was called Book Buddies. Through support and partnership of similar 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations, Book Buddies grew and grew, establishing itself as a cornerstone of literacy efforts throughout California.

To address these important issues in an ongoing and sustainable manner, Dr. Martha Bernadett formed The Molina Foundation in August, 2004.

The Molina Foundation’s 4 programs are:

I. Book Buddies

Book Buddies™ Literacy Program: This program has distributed about 1,000,000 new or gently used books since 2003 and was the one of the reasons driving the formation of The Molina Foundation. Through this program, they have identified and distributed hundreds of thousands of books through schools, libraries, community based organizations, hospitals and health care facilities. These books are distributed where cohorts of children and adults have been identified at high risk for low literacy, primarily due to poverty or prevalence of English as a second language.

II. Step Up to Math

The Step-Up-to-Math program targets 6th graders who are at the Basic level on the California Standards Tests (CST) in math and may include English Language Learners. The program has three objectives:

1. To motivate and encourage students to increase math skills
2. To attain proficiency in math for the rigors of 6th grade pre-algebra
3. To encourage parents to give positive messages while tracking their student’s school work.

Step-Up-to-Math is a model that can be applied wherever qualified and interested high school students and middle school students are already gathered in a supervised setting.

II. Experience Counts

Experience Counts is part of the Molina Foundation. The goal of Experience Counts is to support current school educators and administrators by sharing the expertise of experienced retired administrators and educators.

Experience Counts helps through:

* Support advice online.
* Support by phone.
* In person mentoring.
* Free seminars.

IV. Everybody Writes

Everybody Writes a program of The Molina Foundation that produces writing conferences to encourage children to write.

Everybody Writes is a program designed to inspire children to write outside the classroom by offering exciting and engaging activities through which the children do not realize they are learning while writing.

The conferences and program is conducted by authors, literacy specialists and engaging teachers.

To find out more about the Molina Foundation Please visit their website: www.molinafoundation.org