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MADRE Featured in New York Newsday

Reaching out to women in troubled countries

BY JILL HAMBURG COPLAN

May 7, 2005

Vivian Stromberg, a single mother with two daughters, was running a Bronx elementary-school music program in 1983 when she felt called to the international arena.

The daughter of a working-class Turkish immigrant, she'd been a civil rights protester in the South. Then, on a trip to Nicaragua, Stromberg visited a child-care center and a farm.

"I visited groups of mothers whose children had been killed [by Contra guerillas]," she recalls. "When we came back, we realized we needed to found a new kind of organization."

They called it MADRE - "mother" in Spanish - to do relief, long-term development and human-rights campaigning guided by the needs of women in troubled countries.

The Manhattan-based group, which she runs with a staff of nine, operates in 11 nations, including Iraq. "Since this latest war, there's been a tremendous rise in the incidence of violence against Iraqi women," Stromberg says.

MADRE supports Iraqi organizations that build shelters and safe houses, as it did in Afghanistan, for women and children fleeing war or domestic violence.

At 63, Stromberg continues to grow her own international family. One adopted goddaughter is Monica Aleman, 28, a Nicaraguan Mesquita Indian and the daughter of an indigenous leader who helped inspire MADRE's creation. Stromberg tries not to let quintuple bypass surgery, two hip replacements and an auto-immune disease slow her down: This year, she drove seven hours in Kenya to do HIV/AIDS program development for rape survivors.

Click here to read the entire article, featuring Lucretia Jones of Mothers on the Move; Lilliam Juarez of the Unity Housecleaners cooperative; Elizabeth Thunder Bird Haile of the Shinnecock Nation Cultural Center and Museum; and Barbara Allan of Prison Families Anonymous.

Click here to download a pdf version of the article.