The 2018 RESULTS International Conference: Opening day highlights

The air buzzed with excitement as hundreds of RESULTS advocates, supporters, and partners – from all over the country and the world — took their seats. The 2018 RESULTS International Conference was about to begin.

Huge screens flashed with the names of every state and country represented by attendees: Kenya! Australia! The Philippines! Florida! Michigan! Texas!  (And many, many more). The audience stood up and cheered as each one was called out.  As Executive Director Dr. Joanne Carter remarked: “It’s not about who’s at the podium, it’s about who’s in the room.”

Who were some of the people in the room today?

• RESULTS volunteer and group leader Valentina Garcia, who talked about how nervous she was the first time she met with her members of Congress on Capitol Hill. “But as soon as I got in the rhythm of talking about everything this conference had prepared me for, I felt powerful. It’s not just you in those meetings with Congress, it’s you and all of us together.”
• Clara Moore, a RESULTS advocate and Expert on Poverty, helping to introduce RESULTS’ anti-oppression platform. “At RESULTS, we pledge to create space for all voices, including those of us who are currently experiencing poverty…Our strength is rooted in our diversity of experiences, not in our assumptions.”
• H.E. Joyce Banda, former president of Malawi, who spoke on eradicating poverty, ending preventable maternal and child deaths, and empowering women and girls to become leaders. “I told my daughter, ‘I almost died giving life to you.’ She said, ‘If that’s the case I’m going to be a doctor’ — and she’s a doctor now.”
• Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, co-founder and ED/CEO of MomsRising. “You are all amazing. Our democracy…is about our continual engagement doing what we can do every day to make sure our country reflects the needs of all of us.”
• Hundreds of RESULTS advocates and partners working to organize their communities and end poverty in the United States and around the world.

We’re just getting started. Over the next few days, we’ll have dozens of workshops, plenaries, and advocacy training sessions before attendees take their message straight to lawmakers on Capitol Hill. We’ll be documenting all of it daily here on the RESULTS blog, and you can follow the hashtag #Voices4RESULTS on Twitter and Instagram.

Stay tuned.