Gretchen Steidle Wallace is the founder of Global Grassroots, which supports conscious social change driven by and for marginalized women in post-conflict Africa. Gretchen produced the Emmy-nominated documentary, “The Devil Came on Horseback” and co-authored a memoir of the same title about Darfur.  She holds an MBA from Dartmouth’s Tuck School and a BA in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia. Gretchen is also an integrative breathwork practitioner, which she hopes to offer to survivors of war and sexual violence.

Gretchen Wallace and the folks at Global Grassroots live in the midst of death, rebirth and transition on a regular basis. They work with women who’ve experienced the ugliest sides of humanity. Women who’ve experienced brutal rape and the results of genocide and yet in spite of the hardship fully intend to make their lives better.


Rape is a powerful way to gain control of a people. It causes families to shun their female relatives. It has the power to break apart families and communities. And it can forever take away the victim's sense of self. In places like Darfur, the location of “The Devil Came on Horseback,” women leaving refugee camps to get water or collect firewood are often vulnerable to attack. Global Grassroots brings support for these women in the form of social entrepreneurship, the bridge between business and social change.

Gretchen has been supporting people in developing countries since the mid-1990s, but it took the story of a determined young South African woman that had her begin pursuing the work she does today. Zolecka Ntuli, who she met in 2004, told Gretchen about a 12-year-old girl who was raped by her boyfriend simply because he felt he had the right to her. This was all too common and Zolecka called her community together. They came to discuss this issue over and over again. First just the women, then men came too until 45 people were meeting weekly to right this injustice, all because of the outspoken voice of one woman.

Gretchen herself has been determined to right injustices since she was a child. Because her father was a Navy Admiral, she spent her childhood in the Philippines where she got to witness the diverging lives of herself and others. Working with folks in countries like South Africa, she became more and more interested in what she could provide, how she could bring change on a wide scale. She believed that if somehow the ideas that were developing among folks like Zolecka could be put into motion there could be something beneficial for everyone involved. Gretchen believes that those in business have a way to influence positive social change. She used her skills as an international investment banker the inspiration she found in organizations like Ashoka, that works globally and invests in social entrepreneurs, to begin making the connection between business and social change.

The story of Seraphine Hacimana of Rwanda perfectly illustrates the benefits of Global Grassroots' training:

“A 39 year old mother of 8 children with a 1st grade education, Seraphine identified access to water as the most critical issue facing her community. Women and children in her rural village of Gahanga have to walk 2-3 hours round trip every single day down a steep hill to a dirty creek to collect the water they need for drinking, cooking, cleaning and bathing. Those women who may be elderly, ill from HIV, or physically disabled cannot make that walk. Though they can arrange for water to be delivered to them on bicycles, if they cannot afford to pay the fee, they are frequently forced to trade sex for the water they need just to cook rice and beans for their children's daily meals. With our training and a small seed grant, Seraphine and her team of 19 other local women, including widows and illiterate farmers, designed a social venture, “Hard Workers” to bring clean water to their community. They collect and purify rainwater during the rainy season and pay for delivery by truck from the city in the dry season. The project now serves over 500 people - providing water for free to vulnerable women and orphan-headed households, while sales to the rest of the community support new jobs, school fees, health insurance and a small microenterprise fund to help women advance their lives. Most significantly, the project has fostered a sense of possibility, confidence and hope.”

You may wonder why Global Grassroots just addresses the needs of women, and not men. Men are also victims of genocide in these countries. But statistically women are most often the primary caretakers in their communities. Caretakers in the broad sense of the word. Women not only care for their children--and others' children--in many developing countries they are the people who do all of the work, plowing, planting, bringing the crops to market, taking care of the children, taking care of the house. This is true in countries like Rwanda, where girl children fall behind in school simply because they start working as soon as they get home while their brothers have no obligations. Women's role is to work. And yet ultimately they have very little voice politically or personally. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that, “Study after study has shown that there is no effective development strategy in which women do not play a central role. When women are fully involved, the benefits can be seen immediately: families are healthier and better fed; their income, savings and reinvestment go up. And what is true of families is also true of communities and, in the long run, of whole countries.”

Gretchen remains centered and motivated to continue this work because of her own spiritual practice. For almost 8 years she's been doing integrative breathwork, which she shares with those who work at Global Grassroots. It's a practice that allows you to be more present. Without it, it would be far more difficult for Gretchen to face the reality of what’s happening in places like Rwanda, Uganda, and Darfur. She explains, “Deep practice helps me bear witness to the suffering I see in places like post-genocide Rwanda and the Darfur refugee camps. It helps me find compassion for the pain that drives the perpetrators of human rights abuses. Practice helps me examine and work to transform unconscious behaviors, structures and institutions that uphold hierarchy, exclusion and violence. It allows me to stay attuned to the changing needs of the population I aim to serve, so I do not get attached to my own agenda, and also helps me recognize when I need to invest in self-care so I don't undermine my work by burning out. Finally, through practice, I constantly seek clarity around what I feel called to do or what may be the highest response in each moment. I think personal transformation practice offers other activists and change agents a path by which to inform their social justice work from a place of deep consciousness. Practice,” she says, “is critical for being fully alive.”

It's also a practice she hopes to bring to the women she works with. Though it could clearly have great potential for these women, it's also “culturally delicate”. Gretchen has to carefully navigate cultural traditions and practices, along with the women’s traumatic experiences, to successfully bring breathwork practice to them. It's a slow process but one which could only further the potential of these survivors.

This September Gretchen was curious as to what it would look like if she intentionally engaged her practice at every moment. Speaking to her on the 30th, after a month of doing this, she said, that engaging practice this way would change the she does everything. No doubt bringing this practice to women in developing countries will allow them to change not just the way they do things, but the way things are done.

Sources:

Diversity Matters
www.diversitymatters.info

Ode Magazine
www.odemagazine.com

Global Employment Trends for Women, March 2009
snipurl.com

AlterNet
www.alertnet.org

Global Grassroots
www.globalgrassroots.org