History
The nonprofit Vital Voices Global Partnership grew out of the U.S. government's Vital Voices Democracy Initiative. The Vital Voices Democracy Initiative was established in 1997 by First Lady of the United States Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, following the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing to promote the advancement of women as a U.S. foreign policy goal. The first Vital Voices Democracy Initiative conference was held in 1997 in Vienna, and hosted by U.S. Ambassador to Austria Swanee Hunt.
The Vital Voices Democracy Initiative led to the creation of Vital Voices Global Partnership as a nonprofit non-governmental organization (NGO) in March 1999.
Former Hillary Clinton aide and chief of staff Melanne Verveer is co-founder of the global partnership and its board chair emeritus. Other co-founders were Alyse Nelson (current President of Vital Voices Global Partnership), Donna McLarty, Mary Yerrick, and Theresa Loar. Loar was the founding President of the Vital Voices Global Partnership and also served as Director of the Vital Voices Democracy Initiative at the U.S. Department of State, the Senior Coordinator for International Women's' Issues at the U.S. Department of State and Director of the President's Interagency Council on Women.
Besides Clinton, honorary chairs include current and former U.S. Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and Nancy Kassebaum Baker.
Funding has come from a variety of sources, including individual donations; corporate sponsors such as ExxonMobil, Standard Chartered Bank, and Bank of America; foundations such as the Avon Foundation for Women and Humanity United; and the efforts of the Clinton Global Initiative.
In 2002 Vital Voices was asked by First Lady Laura Bush to drive the effort to supply school uniforms to the many girls returning to school for the first time following the U.S. led overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Read more about this topic: Vital Voices
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility—I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)