Gaia Gozzo, CARE governance adviser, with members of Tz’ununija, a women's movement in Guatamala. © CARE

Gaia Gozzo, governance adviser for CARE International UK, gives her views on how aid impacts on people’s lives and why voting is important.

“I am the governance advisor for Latin America and Caribbean, based in our London office. I provide support to programmes which focus on strengthening poor and marginalised peoples’ voice and participation, and government accountability.

Developing countries are generally constrained by restricted budgets. Very often poor people have very little say on how to allocate and spend limited public funds. Aid funds, including those from the British government, support poor countries to meet people’s fundamental rights. This includes the right to have at least a basic education, to be able to go to a health centre when you are sick, and the right to a decent life.

Aid is more effective when it goes beyond treating the symptoms of poverty to addressing its causes. In Peru, CARE had worked with nearly 300,000 people from 2,000 communities to ensure that 3,366 children no longer suffered from malnutrition, a problem that affected 40% of children under five in rural areas. But, we need to support the right to food for all children in Peru, not just those we are able to work with directly.

So, at national level, CARE in Peru formed an advocacy coalition, the Child Malnutrition Initiative, and got the ten main presidential candidates in 2006 to sign a commitment to cut malnutrition by five percent in five years, and close the urban-rural gap. Based to a large extent on recommendations from CARE and our partners in the coalition, the new government developed a multi-sectoral strategy and worked with us at local and national levels to achieve the targets.

Between 2005 and 2009, malnutrition was reduced nationally from 22.9% to 18.3%, with greater reductions in rural than urban areas, meaning that 130,346 children under five are not malnourished who would have been otherwise (61,564 in rural areas).

Whether in the UK or elsewhere, elections are still the main opportunity for us to fully exercise our citizenship and to influence the way that public funds (our money!) are spent. Politics is so ingrained in our everyday life; it affects our life here, and what our governments do affects the lives of millions of people in developing countries. We need to have a say and make politicians feel we are choosing and checking on them!”

Attachments:

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Download CARE's Election Manifesto	1930 Kb