The Everyday Relay of Being a WRA Advocate
By Stephanie Bowen, Director of Strategic Communication, White Ribbon Alliance
I’ve worked with White Ribbon Alliance for about two and a half years and it’s unlike any other organization I’ve worked with. I knew from the outset that it was special, but it wasn’t until I ran in a Ragnar Relay to raise money for WRA that I truly understood why. The relay is the perfect metaphor for what we do. It’s also illustrative of how we’ve grown from a loose network to a global movement with concrete results that advance women’s and girls’ reproductive and maternal health and rights around the world.
It starts with one, motivated person.
With WRA, it was our founder, Theresa Shaver who was a young midwife working in Vietnam, Ethiopia and Cambodia where she saw women dying from preventable complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Little was changing. She knew she had to help make it everybody’s business to ensure that women had safe pregnancies and childbirths. It sparked an idea that later became White Ribbon Alliance.
With the Ragnar Relay, it was WRA board member Lynn Altman, who had already run a few marathons and adventure races as fundraisers for WRA. She wanted to have a bigger impact and recruited a team of eight to do a Ragnar Relay.
It grows as people come together.
With WRA, as people came together goals became clear and they got to work putting maternal health on the global agenda and putting real faces, names and voices to the women who were dying from preventable deaths.
With the Ragnar Relay, one person became two, then three, then before you knew Lynn had a team of eight people who were committed to training and finishing the race.
Everyone has a part to play and contributes to the win.
WRA has amazing public-facing advocates who won’t back down in pushing for change in their communities and countries. It also has people behind the scenes who draft remarks, design campaign banners, balance budgets, build out advocacy programs and more. Everyone plays his or her part and everyone contributes to the result.
With the Ragnar Relay, we had the captain who brought us all together, the co-captain who organized us and made sure we knew where to go. And of course, all the team members who shared training tips, lent each other gear and cheered each other on along the way.
Momentum shifts and that’s okay.
Advocacy is tough with what can seem like many steps backward before big leaps are taken forward, but we keep each other going through it all. When one person is busy or sick, another picks up the slack. When someone faces an obstacle, another helps them overcome it. We try new things with grit, patience and humor. It’s team work and it’s messy sometimes, but it’s beautiful because it works.
Running a relay through rugged terrain for 48 straight hours is hard. None of us had ever done it before. I was afraid of running in the dark and over tree roots. Another teammate twisted her ankle. The coffee pot broke on the campfire. But we helped each other out, cheered each other on and made it to the finish line (and the coffee line).
There’s personal growth and collective gains.
While always humble, our founder Theresa has had an incredible career filled with personal and professional milestones. And as an organization that isn’t afraid to try new things, I’d bet everyone who has ever worked with WRA as staff, volunteer or partner, has many personal achievements to be proud of. Those individual rewards translate to collective gains for the whole, making them that much sweeter.
Running that relay was a tremendous personal achievement. I had just turned 50 and to be able to run 16 miles through the woods was life-affirming. With my husband on the team, the training and relay itself brought us closer together. We met incredible people and had a great time getting to know each other. And at the end, we were able to say we did it, together. I might’ve run 16 miles, but the team ran 128 miles, for nearly two days straight! And after crossing the finish line we got individual medals that when put together, spelled out a special message.
It’s all about the power of a collective coming together for individuals.
Everything we do comes back to individual people. We amplify citizen voices and work with them to hold those in power to account for promises they’ve made. We believe that every woman and every girl should realize her right to quality care. Her voice matters, and it carries us through every challenge and is there for every victory.
I thought of many of the people I have met during my time at White Ribbon Alliance throughout the relay, but the one person who kept coming back to me was my friend and colleague Faridah. When her sister died in childbirth, Faridah decided to change things so that other women would survive. She has been a fierce advocate ever since, helping to make concrete advances for women in Uganda. When I was tired and thought I wasn’t going to make it up a hill, Faridah’s spirit got me to the top. When I was running through the forest in the darkness of night and afraid of just about everything around me that I couldn’t see, Faridah’s strength carried me through. Because like Faridah, I am invested in making sure that her daughter grows up in a world where she understands and is confident to demand her rights to quality healthcare; a world where her voice matters and is heard; a world where she can enjoy the beauty of pregnancy and childbirth, the beauty of being a mother.
It takes everyone, and we are in this together.
We achieve so much more together than we do as individuals. That is why WRA is purposefully made up of individuals, organizations, men, women, healthworkers, ministers of health, academics, private corporations, family foundations and more. With that kind of power behind our movement we have achieved amazing results at the global, national and community level.
Last year there were eight. This year 12. Last year, with only a few active fundraisers on the team, we raised nearly $10,000 for WRA. This year we set a goal of $25,000. It’s not always easy to ask people for money, but I know we will meet our goal. Will you help us?
Join our movement. You don’t have to be a runner. You just have to be willing to share your unique gifts and believe in our vision that all women and girls realize their right to quality reproductive and maternal health and rights.
Donate to White Ribbon Alliance and help protect and promote women’s health around the world. White Ribbon Alliance unites citizens to demand the right to a safe birth for every woman, everywhere. We harness the power of local women and men to achieve lasting change. Our approach is working. Subscribe to WRA Voices and follow WRA on Facebook and Twitter to learn more about the work White Ribbon Alliance does around the world.
