Asia Pacific Breakthrough was designed to convene women, faith and development organisations in Australia, the Pacific and in Asia in order to galvanise collective efforts to achieve Millennium Development Goals 3 and 5, to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment and to improve maternal health.

This global Summit was an initiative of the Melbourne-based International Women’s Development Agency, in collaboration with key faith, women’s and development organizations from both the government and non-government sectors.

The synergy that was achieved by these three usually distinct sectors, faith-based, women’s and development organizations, was itself unprecedented.

The challenges facing women and girls globally remain extreme. More than one billion people worldwide are living on less than $1 a day, with a life expectancy half that of the average Australian. The majority are women and girls. New and ambitious initiatives for women and their communities are not just timely but urgently needed.

The aims of this Summit were three-fold:

• To draw fresh attention to the specific needs of women and girls and the programs that can most effectively support them and their communities across the Asia Pacific and in refugee and Indigenous communities in Australia
• To bring together for greater effectiveness and co-operation faith, women’s and development groups already working for women and girls
• To highlight programs for groups, corporations, organizations and philanthropists not yet engaged with projects for women and girls and to facilitate their effective engagement

The advent of the global economic crisis during the early days of organising Asia Pacific Breakthrough added another imperative in staging this initiative – to highlight both the deep impact of the global economic crisis on women, and the pattern of the needs of women and girls being placed on the backburner at times of economic crisis.  This saw millions more women and girls in poverty and eroded the advances made in addressing the causes of poverty and its impact on women and girls.
Our vision for Asia Pacific Breakthrough was to catalyse a new movement in our region, that brings together women’s faith and development agencies in the common call to act together to eliminate poverty, and the feminisation of poverty by empowering women and girls. The focus of Asia Pacific Breakthrough was on Millennium Development Goals 3 (gender equality) and 5 (improved maternal health) and embraced speakers, stories and strategies to:

• Reduce violence against women and children
• Increase women’s economic security and justice
• Promote equality through political engagement
• Improve girls and women’s access to education – especially literacy
• Address key environmental issues – land rights, food security, water and climate change
• Improve access to appropriate and affordable reproductive and maternal heath services

As an international summit, the initiative offered a tangible, high profile opportunity for governments, NGOs and corporations to demonstrate their support for women of Asia and the Pacific, indigenous women and refugee women.

We sought the following specific outcomes through Asia Pacific Breakthrough:

1. Present a clear and compelling case for investment in women and girls as key to alleviating global poverty
2. Make visible, strengthen and launch a unique alliance among the women, faith and development communities by gathering key leaders and manifesting a public commitment to the Breakthrough advocacy platform.
3. Build political will and accountability by engaging national, regional and international political leaders as champions of the policy and legislative changes favouring investment in women and girls.
4. Promote monitoring processes to track progress towards increased investments in women and girls on both national and international levels.
5. Educate the media regarding the importance of targeting women and girls in the efforts to eliminate poverty.

Asia Pacific Breakthrough galvanised the energies of the women, faith and development communities and sought to ensure greater effectiveness by creating a new alliance and collaborations.  It attracted new partners and stakeholders to the common goal of ending poverty by empowering women.  The initiative generated significant new financial commitments to benefit women and girls. It allowed Melbourne and Australia to engage women, faith and development organisations and leaders from the Asia Pacific region and to take a leadership role.  Asia Pacifc Breakthrough also impacted and influenced the dialogue at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, both formally and informally – for this Parliament and, it seems, for future Parliaments.

Key Outcomes

• Over one billion dollars in new commitments were generated to fund and implement programs that will benefit women and girls in the Asia Pacific region.  These commitments were made by Women, faith, development organisations as well as from the business, philanthropic and government sectors.
• The Asia Pacific Breakthrough Women, Faith and Development Alliance was formally launched at an official ceremony on day two of the Summit.  This initiative represents a broad-based agreement and commitment to realise an alliance to monitor and track the progress of recommendations and the commitments made at the Summit, and strengthen ongoing collaboration.
• A  comprehensive suite of recommendations were developed to drive the Alliance forward on key areas of interest on Day 2 of the Summit.

For the first time organisations across many different sectors came together to collaborate on issues affecting women and girls in our region, united by the Millennium Development Goals.  The most significant outcome was the acceptance and acknowledgement that despite the diversity of the organsiations represented; there was a strong commonality of intent and purpose and benefit in working with the different perspectives they embodied.  It is this commonality that is driving a collective will to move forward with a strong and powerful alliance to make change happen in communities in which we all serve.

The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) has invited the Asia Pacific Alliance to present the outcomes from the summit to their meeting in February.  The Asia Pacific Breakthrough Alliance will collaborate with the Women’s Faith and Development Alliance in the United States to present the Breakthrough model at CSW in New York and launch a global women, faith and development movement. While the potential to grow the network and expand the movement was not specifically articulated in the objectives, this is a very important outcome for the Alliance.

The Asia Pacific Breakthrough Declaration and the recommendations reached at the Breakthrough Summit were presented to the Parliament of the World’s Religions and were extremely well received.  The response from the faith communities to the outcomes of the Summit demonstrated their collective will to support the recommendations.  The Steering Committee is encouraged by this response and believes the Alliance can successfully engage this important and critical sector going forward.

There has been international interest in and support for what we have achieved. A critical and significant outcome from the Parliament of the World’s Religions was the expression of interest from a European delegation in staging a Breakthrough Summit in Europe next year.

The voices of women at the front line of poverty and oppression in Australia and across the Asia Pacific were raised and heard as they told of their work to empower women in their own communities.

Communication with faith-based organisations in the Pacific has led to involvement from a wide range of grassroots organisations who are interested in becoming involved building the Alliance.

Engagement of Philanthropic organisations and the Business community including the Australian Women Donors Network and Business 4 Millennium Development.