Kathleen McHugh is a senior management support specialist at the non-governmental organization 'Save the Children.' She oversees several overseas 'Save the Childen' programs and field offices. The transcript for our team's interview with Ms. McHugh is below. To jump to different questions, use the links in the sidebar on the left.

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Well, I would say it would probably be on a couple different levels. Read More... [I]t's our responsibility... to improve the lives of others. Just basic humanitarian stuff there. So I would say one would be to help with programs, to really help make a difference in the lives of other people would be one aspect of the government's role.

I think another one would be to help on the advocacy side, help raise awareness of problems that are out there, to work with other governments to really highlight some of the problems in their own country that they maybe don't acknowledge, and then not only to highlight them but to assist them with planning and to work with [writing] legislation [to address those problems]. ...[S]o doing a lot of raising awareness, and encouraging countries to acknowledge that, and giving an example of how it can be addressed.

And then to help to get countries the financial resources to address some of their problems, but also the intellectual [capital] as well, maybe in encouraging sharing of information, encouraging people to study, or sending experts to go there to transfer skill - not necessarily kind of a parental role that the US would play in saying what you're doing wrong, here's what is right - but helping to develop skills in countries so they can address their own problems. Collapse...

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The first thing that we do when we go into a country with [a] the national government, is to make sure that we are seen as their partner, so we go in at all levels and make sure that at a national level, we are invited into that country. Read More... And then when we decide where to work we go to the local government to ask for permission to work there, and we'll work with village governments or village structures - maybe it's a group of elders - to involve them to make sure that we are wanted and invited in that community.

So first we want to make sure that we are welcome and then the next, to make sure that our work is going to be sustainable. And our goal is really to 'work ourselves out of a job,' to set up our programs, to get them going, to involve the community in participation, and eventually managing. And for the end goal, trying to develop local non-governmental organizations that could take on the roles themselves. Sometimes in more developed countries, like say in Vietnam, where they have a stronger system and a higher-level education, that could happen in ten years, but maybe in Sub-Saharan Africa that process of getting that community to take on that role could take longer.

But certainly you want to be seen as a partnership with those governments. Also, we really want to get away from that attitude of dependency - we want them [the government] know that we are giving them a hand up versus a handout. One interesting thing we're seeing with the government is that we are doing a lot of stuff to help Ministries for Education or Ministries of Social Service to develop curriculums for their schools - a lot of times they don’t have a national curriculum, or it could be sub-par. We'll work with them to improve that, or we'll do a lot of direct programs like running a school. Sometimes we do a lot of teacher training to improve just the quality of the classroom teaching techniques that we see, and so that's going to have a long term effect as well. Collapse...

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I think that in the case of gender equality is going to be through education. Read More... ...I think the goal is to encourage more girls to go to school. A lot of times girls are discouraged from going to school, so working with families to encourage the parents to [recognize] that daughters have worth, and that you should educate the daughters [is important]. When mothers are bringing their kids to a clinic we'll give a lot of 'education explaining,' that if you send your girl to school, when they become mothers, their daughters are going to take better care of their children, probably have fewer children, and they will live longer.

So I think it would probably be like a four or five prong approach targeting schools, targeting kids to encourage them to go to school, targeting the parents, and then targeting the civil society leaders and local governments to encourage participation. That's we're going to run into a lot of barriers. It's pretty remarkable: I just heard from Pakistan, from where we have our program for the earthquake, and it's a less than 10% literacy rate for men and a less than 1% literacy rate for females, which is absolutely astounding. [T]hat’s probably one of the lowest I've ever seen. And it's just such a remote place that the camps that we're setting up now where these people are living for the winter, about 80% of the kid that we've established have never been to school before. ...That's going to be a tremendous opportunity for us, to really make a long-term difference in these children's lives, even if we just have this passive audience for a year, those kids will have been to school and will hopefully be able to, when they return to their homes, to establish schools in their local villages. And that can really impact a whole generation.

So its going to be advocating on a couple different levels, and then when we do have opportunities, to really set up those schools and have inclusive environments - it might be having separate schools for girls and boys if that’s what is dictated by the culture - but just getting kids in school is going to have that long term positive effect. Collapse...

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I think [lack of] education is probably the greatest just because lack of education is going to limit your choices or your ability to improve your life. Read More... So I think once you can educate a child then you are going to be able to educate a woman who will be able to educate a family, because she is going to push for her children to always be educated. And then they are going to make better choices about the food that they eat or the water that they drink whether they live or how to mitigate their risks, so I would say that focusing on education is going to have ripple effects, it will probably mitigate cases of HIV/AIDS or tuberculosis, or hepatitis, or causes of wars. For health. It is going to open up a lot of economic opportunities as well. So I think that definitely education is key area to focus on, and education will grow. Collapse...

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I would say that poverty should be defined by an individual's inability to affect change in their lives, maybe resulting from a lack of key resources. Read More... [T]hose key resources would be basic health, education, potable water and adequate food. And then I would say that certainly someone could descend into poverty form an external shock, maybe a tsunami, or an earthquake which could wipe out your assets. Others, of course, are born into poverty. And we see much [of this] in the [places like the] Horn of Africa. Definitely [an] inability to exert change in your life. Collapse...

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McHugh, Kathleen. Telephone Interview. 5 January 2006.

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