When You Inform Women, You Transform Lives | Paige Alexander | TED

So this is Anna.

Four years ago in Guatemala City,

she was literally at death's door.

Her husband had died,

she had fallen into a deep depression, she had stopped eating.

She didn't have the stamina to walk door to door to sell the eggs,

which is what was supporting her family.

Her daughters watched helplessly

as she gave every last penny she had to them.

Until a neighbor said,

“Right down the street, there’s a city-run, free women’s clinic

where you can get help."

And that conversation changed her life.

She went to the center.

They treated her for malnutrition.

They gave her the mental health care she needed and other health support.

And now Anna and her two daughters make tortillas in a small,

women-owned business,

and that's enough to support her family.

Anna was saved by information.

So you hear that story and you probably think,

"Ah, another nice NGO doing some good work around the world."

But when I hear that story,

I think how the right information at the right time

actually saved a woman's life.

That information saved Anna's life.

At the Carter Center,

we work in global health and peace around the world,

and I've been in the business long enough to know that there is no silver bullet

to solving our world's problems,

but the closest thing we have is access to information.

And I consider that a master key, because it unlocks human rights

for everyone around the world.

And it's because of that that Anna's life and many other women's lives were saved.

So when you work for President Carter,

you spend a lot of time thinking about human rights.

And when your other boss is Rosalynn Carter,

you spend a lot of time thinking about women's rights.

My favorite thing on Mrs. Carter's desk is a picture that she keeps

of a group of women in front of the White House in 1977,

protesting against the Equal Rights Amendment.

And when I asked her, "Why do you keep that on your desk?"

She said, because she wanted to be reminded

of the work that she had left to do.

Now, you don't have to be a former president of the United States,

or a former first lady,

to understand the power of sharing information.

Honestly, obviously the platform does not hurt.

But what we do now is we look at how we match information needs

with information wants that exist.

So when we talk to President Carter

about the fact that there's a gap

between how men and women receive information,

we ask very specifically, we want to run a program on this.

But he is a very disciplined engineer,

and he said, "It's an interesting thesis, but can you prove it

and can you come up with a program

that's actually going to make a difference?"

So not working on anecdotal information,

we decided to survey about 2,000 women --

people in Guatemala, Liberia, Bangladesh --

and we wanted to ask government offices: “Are women seeking information?”

And so when you go into a government office,

you'll find women who might be sitting there,

if they brave the odds,

but they're being ignored, they're being questioned,

or they're actually being derided.

And so we thought, what are the barriers to finding this information for women?

Well we all know,

data illiteracy is greater among women.

They have less chance of education,

transportation can be very difficult.

You look at gender norms and cultural norms,

often women are responsible for not only full-time childcare

but also raising the family and working.

And it also can be very dangerous if they take transportation on their own.

And so one government office building,

we noticed that there were no women's bathrooms.

So if anyone had gone in to try to seek the information,

they were there all day without a restroom.

So we thought, what can we do to change the situation?

So we decided that all politics is local and all development is local.

And so we hired local information liaisons

to help connect the dots for women to get the information they needed.

For example, in Dhaka in Bangladesh,

there was a woman who wanted to get a streetlight in her slum,

but her father had said, "Don't ask for the information.

This is not your position.

You won't get it."

So when the street lamp showed up, he was incredibly proud of her.

And in Liberia,

a group of women came together and they sought information

on county development funds.

And with that money,

they were able to open a soap business.

And that created an entire community of women entrepreneurs.

So it's great to do this one information liaison at a time.

But the reality is we wanted to scale up.

So in 2021, in the middle of the pandemic,

we decided to start a campaign called Inform Women, Transform Lives.

And it was to connect women with information

that was out there that they did not have.

So we're now on five continents, across 35 different cities,

from Atlanta to Chicago,

from Dublin to Rotterdam,

from Sao Paulo to Kathmandu.

And it hits 215 million people,

215 million citizens who can be affected by information

through the city's programs.

So this is how it works.

We start with the city,

we find a city service that women have access to

but they don't know about it

because they haven't been told.

And then we run radio jingles,

we do murals, we do transit ads,

we use social media,

and we get them the information.

We meet women where they are.

So it seems quite simple.

and the results were real.

In Sao Paulo there was 86 percent uptick in the information

that was received for gender-based violence and domestic violence.

In Nairobi, we were able to put the sign up

that actually was a hotline for women who wanted help on domestic violence.

Before this billboard went up,

there were 10 calls to that hotline.

After this billboard went up, there were 500 calls.

That's 490 women who needed the assistance the month before

but didn't even know it existed.

(Applause)

In Cape Town, we brought women together from a township,

we brought them to the public library.

We had the city talk about how to access information services,

and there was an uptick in everything

from requests for street cleaning to COVID vaccinations.

And in Kampala,

women were able to get increased loans

so women entrepreneurs could start.

In Chicago,

the benefit of having a city keycard

was something that many women didn't know about

until we started the campaign.

It serves as a government ID,

a health prescription card, a transit card,

a public library card,

and there was a 225 percent uptick

in requests for the city of Chicago.

And then here in Atlanta,

we have a program that we call “safe spots.”

It’s a program that the city started to create, in fire stations,

a safe spot for women and children

who are going through domestic abuse to enter.

The fire station shuts down,

the immediate assistance is given to the person who needs it,

and it's very difficult to walk into a police station

if you're in a domestic abuse situation.

But fire stations we've all been to,

we've all sat there, we've rang the bell,

people feel more comfortable.

And we always have to check our assumptions

because the reality is we thought

this was going to be something that was used

in the lower-income parts of town,

but in fact, the data shows that in the more affluent areas,

people are walking into those fire stations as safe spots.

So we all do our work for very different reasons.

I will tell you that I am the daughter

of an incredibly amazing woman

who taught me I could be anything that my three older brothers could be.

I am now a mother of two amazing daughters, who are incredibly independent,

and a very well-trained and sensitized teenage son.

(Laughter)

We need more of those.

(Applause)

And often it’s my vision of Mrs. Carter’s picture

that is sitting on her desk

reminding me that for 40 years she looked at that picture,

and she knew that that was work that still needed to be done.

Or, of course, it could be the fact that President Carter,

who is 99 and still cares deeply about this issue,

when he was 89, at the spry age of 89,

he wrote a book on women's issues and human rights,

and he gave a talk at TEDWomen.

(Applause)

He has always taught me

that wherever we go in the world, people are intelligent,

they care about their families, they're hardworking,

but they often just don't have the information

that they need to be successful.

And so it's my job,

it's all of our jobs,

to help women get that information,

because it's really quite simple.

When you inform women, you transform lives.

Thank you.

(Applause)