The Words of the Smith Family

What We Are Doing and Its Social Impact ?

Karen Judd Smith
January, 1999

Women’s Federation is leaving a trail of footprints in American society that we hope will pave the way for others. We intend to tread where no man or "woman" has gone before. Yet, we continue to tend to tasks coming from a natural desire in our hearts to reach out a helping hand to those in need. Nice, but what does all this mean?

We are a women’s organization that has grown out of philosophical underpinnings that see the solution to the world’s problems as being in essence, the solution to individual’s and family’s problems. We recognize these solutions as dealing with the whole person—body, mind and soul.

WFWP also looks at the global and historic perspectives that clearly reflect gender discrimination and the serious consequences these enculturated problems create—for everyone—man, woman and child alike. Therefore we work to raise the status of women worldwide by working to create a focus on the need for true partnerships between men and women in all areas of life—in the family, in our communities, in the work place, in public service, government and beyond.

From the global perspective, women’s greatest enemy is poverty—poverty of body, poverty of mind and poverty of spirit. The face of poverty worldwide is feminine. Money alone is not the solution. Information alone is neither, nor is church, synagogue or mosque. Poverty is a complex problem requiring changes in both individuals and their social environments. Women’s Federation for World Peace USA sees its mission as:

Empowering women with the knowledge, tools and support needed to create peace at home, in our community, nation and world. We address problems primarily through the empowerment of women rather than through the traditional feminist approach of insisting others change the way they treat women. We see the locus of power to change as being primarily within. We believe in the power of the human spirit, the same power that those who wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized, that has challenged society, creating social change through many historic persons—men and women.

So what are we doing about all this philosophy? Women are inherently practical beings, naturally desiring and able to turn the movements of the heart into caring and life-changing acts. We continued to build the Bridge of Peace beyond the international monetary resources that initiated the program and have created the Interracial Sisterhood Project. ISP is now an annual institution in the City of Carson in California, has been recognized as one of America’s Promising Practices, and is listed on the President’s Initiative on Race’s website.

WFWP is developing mentoring programs to attend to America’s poverty. Mrs. Spurgin is traveling and giving seminars on Creating Lasting Marriage—the response to which shows the simple yet basic need marriages have for support and nurture. WFWP continues to introduce to America, the situation of women worldwide and to encourage American women to extend our blessings and advantages to others through our Partnerships for Peace program. This program sets up international partnerships between American women and/or WFWP chapters here and communities in other countries that are dealing with particular issues such as poverty, female genital mutilation, women as social outcasts, racism etc. As part of this effort, we set up public talks under the banner "Women Around the World." We hold these talks in local libraries, at the United Nations, in our homes, to educate ourselves about different situations worldwide and to help us address the fundamental issues underlying these global problems that we all need to deal with, in our own homes, marriages, work places and in our society.

Through our local chapters that are emerging throughout America, we are able to get together with other women who have similar concerns, who have different life experiences and perspectives, and work together, learn from one another and make changes in our communities.

This is what we are doing. We are making our philosophy work for the betterment of our own lives, the betterment of our communities, our nation, and through our network of 143 countries and 80,000 members worldwide. We are agents of change in our changing world.

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