Peter Bell was been President of CARE USA from 1995 to early 2006. As the leader of one of the largest, most effective non-governmental organizations in the world, Mr. Bell has certainly made an impact on poverty through his work with CARE. Under his guidance, CARE USA has transformed from an organization that simply supplied emergency services into one that works to empower the communities it serves and build long-term stability. The transcript for our team's interview with Mr. Bell is below. To jump to different questions, use the links in the sidebar on the left.

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Boy! I’ve been engaged in issues of social justice, peace making, poverty reduction, from really quite an early age. Read More... When I was a high school student, I went on an AFS program to Japan and lived with a Japanese family. And this was not so many years after the Second World War. I learned on the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, this family, whose home in which I was living, had lost some of its relatives in the bombing. And they had welcomed me into their home as a way of reconciling with America. And that made a tremendous impression on me and it helped feed a fire in me to spread peace.

Then later on, a couple of years later, when I was in college I went off to the Ivory Coast, with Operation Project South Africa and helped to build the cinder blocks elementary school in an African community there. And I saw how important education was for the development of the people in that community and how much they treasured it. Again, that made a tremendous impression on me and I became deeply involved in Africa and in development and the importance of education within development. So it really goes way back to that early formative period in my life. Collapse...

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Our single greatest strength is our ability to work sensitively in tens of thousands of the world’s poorest communities. Read More... We respect local cultural and values, but are also able to advance changes that open new opportunities for people in those communities. Collapse...

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First and foremost it is [for teenagers] to educate themselves, both about the toll that poverty takes in people in this country and around the world. Read More... By and large, people in the U.S. live with such prosperity, at least relevant to a very large portion in the rest of the world, that it is difficult for us to imagine not having access to safe water to drink or to have access to a school and a health clinic. So it is important to become informed, and then it is also would be important to focus on not just the challenges, but the opportunities.

I mean how can development systems, how can good public policies make a difference in the lives of the poorest people in the world. And how can teenagers contribute now and how can they be able to contribute increasingly in the future. By contributing now, they may be able to become active with for example, the CARE Action Network. Or they may be able to participate in CARE Corps, our volunteer program in Peru and Guatemala, that would give them a first hand opportunity to visit with communities with which CARE works, and to hear from CARE workers about what we do.

Or they may be able to participate in the One Campaign, an effort in which CARE and other non-governmental organizations are participating with Brad Pitt and Bono and other [celebrities] to help elevate the importance of ending global poverty on the U.S. political agenda. We’ve had a number of teens as well, as they have become engaged with these issues, who have been able to organize fundraising efforts to help our cause. Collapse...

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The U.S. government is in a [very] important position to be of help, because we do have the largest economy in the world. Read More... We are a great democracy, and we are, after all, the world’s only superpower. We can help by providing developmental systems that will reduce extreme poverty.

We can also help by engaging in debt relief for the poorest countries, particularly when those countries will use the funds that they saved to serve the advancement of their own people. We can help by investing more in research agenda, [such as in] health and medical research, that will respond to the threat of infectious diseases that [devastate] the developing part of the world; right now [that] gets very scant attention from continental resources in this country.

Yet another way we can help is through reducing trade barriers, particularly to agricultural products and commodities from the poorest part of the world. Collapse...

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You know, I’m not sure I can point to any single element. The causes of poverty are interconnected. Read More... Some are more immediate, some are more intermediate, and some are more underlying causes. Some of the immediate causes, for example, are malnutrition and disease, but if one goes a little deeper, there are underlying causes such as discrimination and exclusion, though discrimination is probably more [directed] against women and girls. And I think that equal opportunities for women and girls ought not only to be a human right, but that increasing the opportunity for women and girls is probably the best single investment that we make in development of poor communities. And education is especially powerful in the development of girls. Each year of education will improve their own health and the health of their children, and return to family and income.

Violent conflict is also a powerful cause of poverty in counties like Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and finding just and lasting resolutions to conflict are an important way in contributing to the ending of poverty. One other underlying cause, I would mention, is abusive power, for government. And once again, a government that advises by the rule of law, treats its citizens with respect, and provides services to the poor is likely to foster development. Of course, an important part of that is to create an environment where human rights are observed and in which there is opportunity for opportunity.

Just returning, one moment to the importance of education, another very critical need for development in the community level is access to safe and clean water. Education and water are two immediate vital needs for the well being of people and the development of communities.

Another cause of poverty of the world is the apathy of many governments and organizations of people, who could help to reduce poverty, but are so absorbed in their own lives, that they fail to do so. Collapse...

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Right, well you know, it used to be that poverty was regarded primarily in economic terms. Read More... It was seen as having low income, and in fact even today, we often talk about the one point two billion people of the world who live somehow on a dollar or less a day, and talk about their being in extreme poverty.

But within CARE, and I think among many of our sister organizations, we have come increasingly to think of poverty in terms of disempowerment, or in terms of deprivation of basic human rights. And by contrast, development of poverty reduction is related to empowerment, to men, women, and children; to gaining greater effective control over important decisions in their own lives. So yes, economics is an important component of empowerment and income generation is critical, but not by any means sufficient. It is also important [to have] education, the exercise of effective citizenship [to] be able to help hold [the] government and other authorities accountable, and a series of other dimensions that round out a person having a sense of full citizenship and some measure of control over their own lives. Collapse...

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Bell, Peter. Telephone Interview. 19 December 2005.

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Copyright © 2006 ThinkQuest Team 00282