BY KAREN BOSSICK
Maria Cavalcanti broke new ground for women in Latin America when she built one of the most significant impact investment funds on that continent.
And a year ago she accepted the role of president and CEO of Pro Mujer, a nonprofit organization founded 18 years ago to provide women in Latin America with financial, health and human development services to break the cycle of poverty.
The organization, for instance, has helped an Argentinean doll maker get a loan to grow her doll making business, using the profits to put her youngest daughter through nursing school. And it’s provided mobile health clinics providing Pap smears and diabetic testing for those in rural areas.
Cavalcanti will talk about “Women on the Margins” at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 27, as the speaker for the annual Bonni Curran Memorial Lecture for the Health and Dignity of Women.
The lecture, which launches the 2018 Family of Woman Film Festival, will be held at 6:30 p.m. at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Ketchum.
“Maria Cavalcanti is the perfect speaker for this year’s festival theme, which is ‘Women on the Margins,’ ” said Festival Founder Peggy Elliott Goldwyn. “Latin America has the highest rates of income inequality in the world. Marginalized women in the region experience overwhelming levels of gender-based violence, chronic health problems and discrimination.”
The Festival will also feature two other internationally known speakers at two Point of View (POV) Breakfasts for donors who contribute $500 or more to the festival.
The first, Ugochi Daniels, is chief of the Humanitarian Branch of UNFPA, the United Nations agency for reproductive health and rights of women. Daniels, a native of Nigeria, will address her work with women and their families marginalized by war and natural disasters in Nigeria, Nepal and the Philippines on Thursday, March 1.
She will also lead a discussion following the presentation of the Festival’s opening film, “Mama Colonel,” a documentary about a Congolese policewoman striving to stop sexual violence and physical abuse against women and children, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 1, at the Sun Valley Opera House.
“She will be able to talk about what’s happening in refugee camps right now and she’ll be able to address whether refugee camps are breeding grounds for terrorism,” said Goldwyn. “The short answer is they’re not breeding grounds for terrorism—they’re full of women, children and old people.”
The second breakfast speaker, Susan Sygall, is a MacArthur Fellow who founded Mobility International USA (MIUSA), a Eugene, Ore.-based organization designed to promote international exchange for people with disabilities.
“She became a paraplegic in a car accident at 19 and has gotten women to band together to demand the right to be full participants in life, rather than being marginalized,” said Goldwyn.
To find out how you can attend the POV breakfasts, visit www.familyofwomanfilmfestival.org.
The Family of Woman Film Festival launches with a free retrospective film screening on Feb. 28 and runs through March 4. Most of the films presented at this year’s festival will also feature discussions with the filmmakers.
The films include “Sami Blood,” about a teenage Lapp girl who is told her people are inferior to the Swedes, and “Girls’ War,” a look at female Kurdish soldiers on the front lines.