Helene D. Gayle Quotes

Any discussion of investment or putting monetary value on the environment must start with the populations who rely on those resources.

There are plenty of risks when we encourage "investment" or commoditization of natural resources, as power dynamics may mean that poor people (who are often marginalized and have less power) are sidelined by more powerful interests when money is involved.

You can't marginalize more than half of the globe's population and expect to see any meaningful solutions to the problems that ail the world.

The difference between rich and poor is becoming more extreme, and as income inequality widens the wealth gap in major nations, education, health and social mobility are all threatened.

CARE and our partner organizations have found that one of the most effective ways of stopping child marriage is to tap into a parent's love for their child. When parents learn about the consequences of child marriage, they're far less likely to push their children into it.

My father had the main barber- and beauty-supply business in the African-American community in Buffalo.

When I want to explain why empowering girls and women is critical to fighting poverty, I often tell a person's story. It's easier to relate to a personal story than to global data telling us that the majority of the billion people who live on less than $2 per day are women and girls. We are often told to never treat a person like a statistic.

I always knew that I wanted to do the most that I could for the most people.

Real, sustainable community change requires the initiative and engagement of community members.

The environmental community has an opportunity to create and leverage partnerships with the development community on social issues, rather than trying to develop new expertise of its own.

In order to counteract income inequality, it's essential to tackle poverty in an integrated way that has long-term impact. We need to give people the capacity to be resilient, to take on challenges and to learn the skills they need to work toward more prosperous futures.

At CARE, a leading humanitarian organization, we recognize people live their lives in a holistic manner. Issues such as health care, education and economic empowerment cannot be addressed in a vacuum. Thus, effective programs need to tackle the multiple root causes of poverty.

If you educate a girl, you educate a nation.

Early marriage is most prevalent in communities suffering deep, chronic poverty.

No matter how you measure it, women and girls bear the brunt of poverty. But it's also clear that women are also our greatest hope for ending it. We at CARE have long believed that if you change the life of a girl or woman, you don't just change that individual, you change her family and then her community.

What keeps me motivated is going out to the field and seeing programs that incorporate a focus on both people and the planet, and seeing how mutually reinforcing they can really be.

Learn to forgive yourself and move on.

There is no doubt that a woman's economic empowerment is very much interconnected to her health and the well being of her children.

The more you look into health and health inequalities, you realize that a lot of it is not due to a particular disease - it's really linked to underlying societal issues such as poverty, inequity, lack of access to safe drinking water and housing. And these are all the things we focus on at CARE.

At the Centers for Disease Control, I rose up fairly quickly into management positions. The first team I led there included many people who had been my supervisors in previous roles or were more senior than I was. So it was kind of a daunting challenge.