World
Ruth Messinger
Photo cour tesy of Mla Farrow
"We must help and in the right ways."
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Ruth Messinger, the president of the American Jewish World Service, shown
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on a visit to Chad.
Editor's note: Shortly after a failed mayoral bid in New York City ended her politi-
cal career in 1997, Ruth Messinger became president of the American Jewish World
Service, an international human rights organization that works to alleviate poverty,
hunger and disease in the developing world. Since then, the organization has seen its
annual budget jump from $2 million to $29 million. It distributes about $13 million
in grants each year to more than 400 grassroots projects around the world and has
sent 3,000 Jewish volunteers overseas.
Messinger, who was recently appointed to the White House Task Force on Global
Poverty, talked with JTA about the challenges of globalization, the reasons why
young people are inspired to take part in her organization's trips and why she thinks
Jews should be involved in fixing the world — not just their own communities.
The following is an edited and condensed transcript of the interview.
Amy Klein
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
New York
• Some have criticized Western coun-
tries for dumping money on places like
Africa and creating a culture of depen-
dence there. How does AJWS work to
avoid that?
Messinger: There are 1 billion people
in the world who have nothing and
make less than a dollar a day. If someone
doesn't help them, they'll remain dirt
poor and ravaged by disease. So it's our
imperative to help them.
The worst thing in the world is to just
give food or used clothing — that could
not be more culturally inappropriate.
The instinct all too often is for people
to clean their closets, without under-
standing needs.
A month after the tsunami, the high-
est point in Sri Lanka was a mountain of
American blankets!
We're offering funds for a specific
purpose where we've been asked by the
community.
This way, they can, for example, prac-
tice drip irrigation — which, by the way,
most people in the world learn from
Israel — so they can take other steps [to
gain nutritional independence], which
is encouraging to both the people on the
ground and to us.
We work with our community of
activists — 70,000 advocates — to urge
better U.S. policy. The U.S. government
funds American farmers to grow surplus
food and dump the surplus in the devel-
oping countries — that's undercutting
local farmers, that's encouraging depen-
dence, not independence.
That's bad American policy.
Ruth Messinger on page 20
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