Ruth Messinger will offer community lecture March 26Â
By ERIN ELLIOTT /Â Community News Editor
For Ruth Messinger, many of her career opportunities have happened because she was in the right place at the right time.
“I was very fortunate after getting my master’s at [the University of Oklahoma] to be able to work in what was really the newly federally funded child welfare system in the state of Oklahoma, so I had lots more significant responsibility than most new graduates would get,” Messinger told the AJW. “After I finished 20 years in city government, I came to American Jewish World Service really at the point when it was poised for takeoff as a much more visible and active organization in the Jewish community.”
For the past 11 years, Messinger has served as president and executive director of American Jewish World Service (AJWS), an international development organization providing support to more than 350 grassroots social change projects in 39 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
She will be the scholar-in-residence at Temple Israel in Minneapolis March 26-28.
Messinger will offer a community lecture titled “Jews as Global Citizens: Our Responsibility in the World” 7 p.m. Thursday, March 26 at Temple Israel, 2324 Emerson Ave. S., Minneapolis; admission is $10. The American Jewish World is a media sponsor of the event.
American Jewish World Service President and Executive Director Ruth Messinger holds a Darfuri newborn at a refugee camp in Chad. Messinger will be the scholar-in-residence March 26-28 at Temple Israel in Minneapolis. (Photo: Mia Farrow)
Messinger grew up in New York, where she began her lifelong work as a community and social activist, her passion for which she attributes to her Jewish upbringing — a “significant defining force” in her life.
“I was raised in a household that emphasized the social justice aspect of Judaism and also emphasized the powerful concept in many immigrant countries that if the country’s been good to you, then you ought to give something back,” she said. “I have parents who shared this orientation and gave a great deal of their limited financial resources and their time in helping organizations meet human need.”
Messinger pursued social work at Columbia University before transferring to the University of Oklahoma. Once she received her master’s degree from OU, she spent 15 months running child welfare services in two counties in western Oklahoma.
She returned to New York, where she raised her family, and did casework and community organizing. About 10 years later, she ran for elected office by running for the school board.
Messinger eventually spent 12 years on the New York city council, where she represented about 250,000 people, and eight years as Manhattan borough president, where she represented 1.5 million people.
She was the first woman to secure the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor in 1997, but lost the election to Rudy Giuliani.
Messinger came to AJWS in 1998 and oversees a staff of about 95 people who work to eradicate poverty, hunger and disease in the developing world through an expansive grant making program (the average grant is $20,000).
“The work that gets done in the developing world is work that gets done by local grassroots organizations,” Messinger said. “Unlike some very responsible and good large western organizations, we don’t send staff over to do that work. We find organizations that are already teaching women new farming techniques, establishing a micro finance fund, providing education in human and civil rights to help people help others in their countries whose rights are being abused, and then we support those organizational efforts.”
AJWS also works to educate the North American Jewish community about global responsibility and global citizenship through its service program. Messinger said AJWS takes nearly 600 people a year to help grantees work on projects and to educate participants about “the reality of life in the developing world and about the possibilities of making change and helping people improve their situation.”
Staffers also put together education materials and develop curriculums, and take part in public policy advocacy in areas that affect the organizations AJWS supports: HIV/AIDS funding, foreign assistance reform and ending the genocide in Darfur.
In Darfur, conservative estimates report that close to 3 million people have been displaced after their villages were burned to the ground. Between 350,000 and 500,000 people have died either as a direct result of genocidal violence or as a consequence of life in the refugee camps.
“It ought to be a shock to the conscience of every American that in 2009 we’re entering the seventh year of a genocide that the United States termed a genocide four and a half years ago,” Messinger said. “The situation is desperately serious.”
In honor of her work in Darfur, Messinger received the Jewish Council for Public Affairs’ prestigious Albert D. Chernin Award in February 2006. AJWS is a co-founder of the Save Darfur Coalition, of which Messinger is a board member.
The Forward named Messinger one of the 50 most influential Jews of the year for seven consecutive years.
“We come from a faith that first of all says that prayer and study are only important if they lead to action, and then says that poverty is the worst evil in the world,” Messinger said. “We need to remember our own life history and what it meant to be ‘the stranger’ or ‘the other,’ and we need to respond by reaching out to those people who are today’s ‘other’ or ‘stranger.’ We need to pursue justice and that, pretty much, defines what it is that AJWS does.”
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For a complete schedule of Messinger’s events in the Twin Cities, contact Temple Israel at 612-377-8680 or visit: www.templeisrael.com. For information on American Jewish World Service, go to: www.ajws.org.
