In 2010 she joined CARE, a nonprofit that runs 890 projects in 95 countries. Fifty-one of those countries—mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America—have programs related to CARE’s Sexual, Reproductive and Maternal Health initiative. “There are so many women dying in childbirth in the developing world,” she says. “There are huge numbers of refugees who have no access to contraception, no access to safe delivery services, newborn care.” With a 15-person team based in Atlanta and many international team members and stakeholders, Galavotti works to empower communities to change all that.
In crisis-affected parts of Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, CARE has helped more than 82,000 clients access and use contraceptives. For the mostly young and female garment workers around Dhaka, Bangladesh, Galavotti says, CARE is working with retailer Marks & Spencer and pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline to bring doctors’ services directly into factories, along with classes and demonstrations on birth control, breastfeeding and hand washing.
Among the most important and promising CARE efforts, Galavotti says, is its work to help citizens hold service providers accountable. She points to the Community Score Card process developed by CARE Malawi, through which CARE facilitates discussions among community members and health service providers about the issues and challenges they face. Each side assigns scores from 0 to 100 on various factors—such as “Relationships Between Clients and Providers”—and then they come together to identify steps to solve problems and increase the scores.
Taking a page from the tech world, Galavotti’s team is now developing an “accelerator” program: they’ll figure out how to replicate and adapt their most successful projects, to bring them into yet more communities in need.
