Grassroots Spotlight: Micha Chishti
We caught up with Micha Chishti, co-leader of the RESULTS Atlanta group, as he zipped between meetings on Capitol Hill during the last day of the 2018 RESULTS International Conference.
Q. How long have you been involved with RESULTS?
A. I’ve been involved with RESULTS for about 3 years now. My first International Conference was in the summer of 2016.
Q. With everything going on politically right now, what motivates you to stay involved?
A. Honestly, RESULTS is just a really effective organization. It does valuable work, and a lot of RESULTS’ policy priorities resonate with my own personal life. I grew up overseas in resource-poor countries, so I really appreciate that RESULTS cares about international development and global health.
Q. You’re here on Capitol Hill meeting with your members of Congress today. What’s it like?
A. The first time I did this it was really daunting. I felt like I couldn’t do a lot of things I was being asked to do. This is my third time here now. It’s special because you get to remind your members of Congress that technically they work for you, which is a fact that often gets lost in conversations about policy. Also, it’s really great to put issues on their radars that they otherwise wouldn’t think about or prioritize. We get to be that nexus between constituents and members of Congress to make sure that issues of poverty don’t get ignored.
Q. You mentioned that this is your third International Conference. What makes it worth returning year after year?
A. At the conference in 2016, our group happened to meet some people from the National Tuberculosis Controllers Association based in Smyrna, Georgia. It’s weird – we wouldn’t have made that connection in Georgia, but we made it at the International Conference in DC. It led to us hosting a symposium with them on TB that fall. Connections like that are obviously extremely valuable, and networking with other advocates is great, but the best part of the International Conference is feeling in solidarity with everyone else who does this kind of work.
Micha Chishti lives in Atlanta and works at a global health and humanitarian relief organization.