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:
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“The true theater of history is therefore the temperate zone.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)