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Malini Alles connects local activism with global women through her young organization

By May Chow | AsianWeek Staff Writer

From remote tribes, tiny villages, urban centers — the women all come for help with the same fatigued look in their eyes. Scared, embarrassed, ashamed, often too poor to afford sufficient health care, often too abused to look for help earlier. Put them all in one room, and no one would understand anyone else. They live thousands of miles away from one another and are in different continents and time zones. The common denominator among these women? Need.

Former president Bill Clinton and Malini Alles (left) and Rita Ghatak (right).

Alles, 33, decided to borrow the Sanskrit word, stree, which means women, dignity, empowerment and strength, to name her organization. The main goals of Stree: Global Investments in Women are to promote women’s health, advocate prevention, connect grassroots movements with public policy and help at-risk women and girls.

“I feel a woman deserves the same rights as a man, and the opportunities need to be available to her,” says Alles. “I really wanted to start an organization where I could work with policy makers and be involved in the decision-making or go out and do it on our own, you know, real grassroots.”

“We’re About Global Change”

To be able to help women this way has always been a dream of Alles. Growing up in Malaysia and Australia, Alles says no matter how educated the women around her were, they always took the passive role. Somehow, the Indian culture she was familiar with afforded an environment in which women were made second-class citizens.

“They never spoke and I believe the culture made it so that the women were submissive,” says Alles, who was born in Kuala Lumpur and now makes her home in Palo Alto, Calif. “It made me angry to see how Indian women were placed in that position. But things change, with younger generations come new ideas about women’s role in society.”

Take one look at Alles and her beauty captivates you. Sit down and have a conversation with her and her strength moves you.

Her savvy investments during Silicon Valley’s hi-tech and stock market boom provided her with enough of a nest egg to start Stree in May 2001. She used her background in nursing and her doctorate in psychology to help construct the nonprofit. She was adamant about not having a program where money was siphoned off without any real change to the situations that caused the need for aid in the first place.

“What I didn’t want to do was to reinvent the wheel,” she says. “We’re not about programs because we already have enough of them out there. We’re about global change, challenging policy makers to make sure the status of women everywhere is improved.”

Although Alles was determined to create an organization that would help developing countries, she was aware that the nation she was living in — the United States — did not have an ideal healthcare model.

“There’s a lot to be said about healthcare in the states and the saddest thing is that so many women out there are not receiving adequate care and follow-up services here in America,” Alles says. “Here, without insurance, you’re either told to go to a random clinic with an exhausted staff, or you go without medical attention.”

But Alles stresses that not all communities share the same health problems and needs, and thus understands that every country needs different emphases on health. For example, in India, immunizations, gastric health and polluted waters are enervating those that can’t afford or have access to proper healthcare. In the United States, where there isn’t a strong sense of community medicine, the insurance programs only benefit a handful and patients get inadequate health screenings and don’t receive continuous care from one physician.

“You can be in another country, lose your job, and still somehow receive healthcare, but here in the states, once you lose your job and COBRA in six months, you worry,” Alles says.

Although critics may question Alles on why she doesn’t hone in on the local problems here in the United States if she’s aware of them, Alles believes her global initiatives benefit all countries, since they can learn from one another.

“I think this aspect enhances Stree. We can take these communities and see what has been successful and what hasn’t and see if we can slowly introduce and adapt them into other ones,” says Alles. “Of course, throughout this whole process, you have to remain culturally sensitive and be aware that people and customs are different. We’d be ignorant if we were to say that the people in Asia don’t know proper healthcare because they have no money, which isn’t true.”

Global Partners

One illness that has traveled the world and decimated women, children and families is domestic abuse. Alles is passionate about this issue and is fighting hard to help women, raise awareness and begin the process of ending it.

As violent as it is, domestic abuse is a silent killer — muting a woman’s voice, suffocating her freedom and sometimes or ending her life. It is also silent because many people, especially in communities overseas, don’t address the matter as a problem; rather, it is a part of a husband’s dutiful role of disciplining a wife. Whether it’s done in the name of being a good family or as a physical and violent reminder to the woman of who has the upper hand, domestic abuse reaches far into communities of all kinds worldwide.

Part of Stree’s success is the partnerships and networks it forms with other healthcare organizations, hospitals and non-government organizations (NGOs). Here in the United States, Stree is partners with Count Me In, a New York-based micro-lending organization providing preventive health care education for women in poverty. Stree is also working with local healthcare centers in San Francisco to develop a comprehensive model for health access and preventive health services for low-income, women and young and old.

Rita Ghatak, the chief operating officer of Stree, said the emergency care and medicine program is one of Stree’s most innovative and exciting projects. Working with Stanford University Medical Center, Stree sponsors emergency care physicians from developing countries to train at Stanford’s emergency department for 10 weeks under the tutelage of staff physicians.

Murat Ibragimov traveled from Tashkent, Uzbekistan to become Stree’s first visiting physician.

“The physicians who come to us must be from developing countries and be involved in the emergency care of women and children,” says Ghatak, a psychologist who specializes in gerontology. “We want them to take back what they learned from us and educate women and young girls in their home country about preventive health concerns and matters.”

Stree has formed alliances with a diverse group of international organizations. Stree is working with Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA), a volunteer-based development organization in Bombay, India to build a preventive health education center in Bombay. The center will provide free access to clinical health services and information.

Hoping to reach the young girls in Togo, West Africa, Stree has teamed up with CARE International United Kingdom, to work on the Program for the Promotion of Educational and Employment Opportunities. This program promotes and provides literacy, life skills, a support system and health and human rights education.

Stree has partnered with Netaid’s Campaign for Female Education in Ghana and Somalia which provide the necessary materials for girls to receive a proper education.

Stree has just finished up a preventive healthcare project for women in rural Australia. Researchers focused on creating preventive strategies for cervical cancer, breast cancer, mental illness, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Starting With One Village

Rajeswari Rao Pingali met Ghatak last June while she was at Stanford University finishing up a program sponsored by the Reuters Foundation. She had designed a mobile information and communication model to establish a network of links for agriculture and health support with outlying villages.

“One of my friends pointed me to Stree’s work,” says Pingali, who was born in Guntur, a place known for its chili and tobacco production, and now lives in Hyderabad, the capital city of Andhra Pradesh in India. “Since I too was working with women in a certain way and belong to the same country, I met Rita.”

Alles and Ghatak both see meeting Pingali as a windfall. Since she was already working on a similar preventive health project in the state of Andhra Pradesh, both women decided to make Pingali the first fellow in Stree’s Village by Village program.

“We are trying to take clean water processes and education on reproductive health to the villages,” Pingali says. “We are starting with one village, Upparapalle. In this village, people have to go very far to fetch water, sometimes up to 2 kilometers.”

Stationed at a small village with a population of 2,145, the idea is to create a simple and effective water purification method and teach the women how to operate the equipment, so they can earn a living and save money for the villages since less money will go toward medicine to treat water-borne diseases and illnesses.

“I have met people in the village who are trying to implement a water source and cleaning mechanism in their community,” Pingali says. “But the lack of unity in the village makes this a difficult effort.”

As a woman, it’s hard for Pingali to deal with the condition of women in this particular village and the others she has visited. Because Pingali had the opportunity to go to school, she stands out somewhat among these women albeit sharing the same language, facial features and culture. One commonality she sees and feels is their strength.

“What moves me is the integrity they have,” says Pingali. She recalls a woman who makes a living breaking stones.

“When I explained to her my work and asked what expectation she had, she said that they don’t want any charity and they have their shoulders to work, what they need is support to find a direction,” she says. “[These women] have several problems, the biggest being lack of opportunities. The opportunity deprivation is because of caste, power, politics and illiteracy.”

Girl Power

Born to Sri Lankan parents, Alles said she was lucky to have had a strong and supportive mother.

“What we don’t want to be is a militant feminist group,” says Alles. “We are not going in that direction. What we’re doing is forming an organization that lets young girls know that they need an education to know how to read and write and fill out forms.”

Ghatak says her 15-year-old daughter admires Alles.

“My daughter tells me that Malini is one of my ‘cool’ friends,” says Ghatak laughing. “Malini has what my daughter calls ‘girl power.’ ”

And her girl power has garnered the attention of former President Clinton and Queen Noor of Jordan. Both attended a Stree fundraising event last year and praised Alles for her groundbreaking work and determination.

Now Alles is working on another major project.

“I’m getting married in June, in my backyard!” beams Alles. “I have a traditional gown being made in India, but it’s going to be a combination, global wedding, Indian and American.”

For more information about Stree, go to www.streegiw.com.

Reach May Chow at mchow@asianweek.com.