Charity Promotes Women’s Role in Fight Against Hunger Via Hundreds of Book Clubs

On the fourth Monday of each month, Rufi Natarajan gathers with friends at a Houston café for a book-club meeting. The conversation begins at 6:30 and typically lasts for two hours – but one recent discussion is continuing well beyond that. Ms. Natarajan’s book group is one of more than 430 that are participating in a project by Mercy Corps, the international aid charity, centered on a new book by the journalists Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

The book, Half the Sky, argues that many of society’s problems can be alleviated by improving the status of women. Mercy Corps, which recently started a campaign to advance the idea that investing in women can fight global hunger, is using the book to win support for that effort.

The charity issued a challenge to book clubs around the world: Don’t just read the book, take action. Raise money for Mercy Corps’ campaign, recruit others to read the book, and draw attention to global hunger.

The book group that compiles the most impressive “record of activism” by mid-June 2010 will receive a visit from Mr. Kristof and Ms. WuDunn, who will hold a discussion with the winning book-club members. Participating book clubs also get exclusive discussion questions from the authors, bookmarks from India, and updates on events for Half the Sky.

Fortuitous Timing

Joy Portella, director of communications with Mercy Corps, says the charity learned about Half the Sky shortly before its publication and realized its message dovetailed perfectly with the group’s new antihunger campaign focused on women, called One Table.

The charity hasn’t done much marketing – mostly relying on Facebook, Twitter, and other online networks as well as e-mail messages – but its participating book clubs so far include groups from the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and many other countries.

While Mercy Corps hasn’t set a goal for how much it hopes to raise from the book clubs, says Ms. Portella, the overall fund-raising goal for the One Table effort is $3-million.

First-Time Donor

Like many of those participating in the book-club effort, Ms. Natarajan, who works in real estate in Houston, had never contributed to Mercy Corps before. But she persuaded her book club to get involved after reading an article by Mr. Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times, which eventually led her to sign up to get regular e-mail messages from Mercy Corps and learn about the book-group effort.

Ms. Natarajan considers herself educated on women’s issues and world affairs. She grew up in Pakistan, holds a master’s degree in South Asian history, and has served on the board of a local Planned Parenthood.

But she says she still found the book, with its discussions of honor killings, forced prostitution, and mass rape, very difficult to read. “There was anger and disbelief that women actually live under these types of conditions,” she says. “Across the board, everyone felt like we had to do something to help.”

Her book-group members plan together to make a donation to Mercy Corps – they have not yet decided how much – and have been recruiting other clubs to take action. She says she has also been purchasing copies of the book for friends and acquaintances and has convinced her son, among many others, to read it.