Today’s post comes courtesy of Nicole Stipp, an account coordinator in Fenton’s NYC office. Nicole was on site at the UN Digital Media Lounge, billed as a venue that “brings the conversations from this historic UN Summit out of the halls of the UN and into 92nd Street Y — where digital media will deliver it to the world.”

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The day in the UN Digital Media Lounge started off with a chocolate bar from Save The Children – it was a sign of how great the rest of the afternoon would be.

The first panel was a fantastic mashup of a teenage member of Key Club and the leaders of DoSomething, Girl Up and Women for Women International, a long-time Fenton client. W4W’s  Zainab Salbi, an incredible woman and the dynamic leader told us about women she had met 17 years ago. Victims of the Bosnian “rape camps” or “rape factories,” they told her to “move on, help someone else.” These women had lost their hope.

As someone who traveled to a post-conflict area where rape was used as a tool of war – I thought Zainab captured something that we don’t often talk about: you must give people hope and you must consider it as part of your aid programs. It’s a very Harvey Milk-like ideal (“You gotta give ‘em hope!”), but studies (AusAid & DFID) show that even if physical needs are tended to through international aid, psychological needs are what will make the difference. Mandela didn’t hand out food from his podium – he handed out hope. But maybe we don’t talk about hope a lot because it’s not exactly tangible and certainly doesn’t plot well on a bar graph.

However, the campaign “Girl Up” capitalizes on just that thing: the hopes of girls in the US. Kim Perry of Girl Up made the case that, once American girls are told about the struggles of girls in developing countries, they will be empowered to give, organize and tell the story. And what better way to do that than through their Girlifesto (I love a good replace-the-man-with-female-term word game and this is currently my favorite!) which has five points:

• Take 5 minutes to learn 5 facts
• Share the facts you learn with your network
• Share the Girlifesto
• Make a $5 donation
• Challenge 5 others through an event or fundraising effort

There were other the stories and commitments that gave me hope today:

Babalwa Mbono is a Jjunior trainer for mothers2mothers in South Africa. When asked what the one message was that she wanted to deliver to the bloggers in the room she said, “I have a message to all HIV positive women: let’s stand up and fight and be the example. Let us show that HIV may be there, but HIV must not destroy you. There is still life beyond HIV.”

Ethiopia reported a 61% decline in child mortality and a 51% reduction in malaria deaths. Rwanda has achieved a 48% reduction in infant mortality and a drop of 64% in maternal mortality. Rwanda is also implementing “gender responsive budgeting” in their healthcare programs.

I’d never heard of gender responsive budgeting – can we get some of that in America? How cool would that be? Today was an exciting day for women around the world – but for this American woman, it was a day to see global leaders coming together with the primary goal of making women and children the hinge upon which the global development door swings.

“By empowering women – we empower our societies.” – Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, MDG Summit | September 22, 2010