From Rilee Buttars

Why I want to be involved with Courage to Hope?

Well, I guess its because I am an extremist, an extremist with a myriad of ambitions. Not many people think its possible to combine communications with development and activism. "Opposite sides of the spectrum" they say. This year I began the journey as a copywriter in the creative track of the advertising sequence. I've quickly come to realize this introduction automatically deems me as "the creative type", all stereotypes included. I hate stereotypes. I'm not one-track minded, and quite honestly, feel suffocated by the expectation to fit into any mold. With that said, I end this preface with one connecting thought:

Some of us know how we came by our fortune and some of us don't, but we wear it all the same. There's only one question worth asking now. How do we aim to live with it? (Poison Wood Bible.)

I don't know why I was blessed to be born in the US, to a middle-class family and given the ability to attend a univesity etc. But I do know that I have the power to do something, and for me that something is using my talents and education for a better cause than selling people things they never knew they needed or wanted.

Yet, I do believe in the power of communications, the power of words and images, the power of speaking out, the power of dreaming, and yes, the power of women.

I was once asked to describe my life goal, and I explain it with two words: categories and mattering. I fit into three very distinct demographics. I am an LDS American woman. As such, I want to go out beyond the bubble and beyond the security to stand up against the oppression, negative perception, and stigma tagged to each of these traits.

Secondly and in short: life is about mattering. If at the close of the day you cannot say you personnally mattered to someone then the day was for naught. The path of international development, NGO's, and fighting domestic violence may be the extreme of this simple thought, but what else would you expect from a highly opinionated, passioanate, energetic extremist.

OR, you can just put it this way:

Because it feels right!

From Zack Oates

It was almost 21.00 on a chilly fall night in Donetsk, Ukraine. And there she stood—dripping with blood.
I was living in Ukraine at the time participating in humanitarian work and was on my way home when I saw her. I still don’t know her name, I still don’t know where she lived, and I still don’t know if she survived through the night …I just know how helpless I felt.
When I asked her what happened, her dodgy eyes locked onto mine, “My husband.” Her nose was broken, her eyes black, her body shaking and nerves burnt on fear. She was at a bus stop and I asked her where she was going, “Home,” came the chilling response. Wait, I thought, Home?! Back to your husband? I implored her to not return.
With a hopeless gaze she said, “Where else am I supposed to go? I have nowhere, nowhere else to go.”

I looked around for something or someone to help. A police officer stood 10 feet away with no intention of doing anything. The woman then limped onto the bus and left...
I was changed forever.
Courage to Hope is the organization created to answer her question.

It is my hope that we will be able to continue to strengthen the rights of women across the world through the facilitation of international support. Come, let us join together and combat that which is given every human: the right to love, life and hope.