Mothering Across Continents

Written by Katrina Daniel Thursday, November 04 2010

Snapshot: Patricia Shafer

High Hopes Haiti project leader Lauren James and a community worker

A growing number of people in the world want to make a difference internationally, says Patricia Shafer, founder and chief catalyst of Mothering Across Continents.

Shafer helps those people figure out how to do it by assisting women who want to make a difference in the world accomplish their dreams.

In addition to her work with Mothering Across Continents, Shafer is the owner, founder, and CEO of two for-profit consulting businesses. Shafer earned no less than three master’s degrees, in journalism, business, and consulting and coaching. Her undergraduate degrees are in political science and communications.

So what does an über-achiever like this do for fun? She trains for marathons.

A teacher and preschoolers at a children's center in South Africa

“Every time I start feeling too sedentary, my husband and I put ourselves in a marathon race,” she says. But she’s not talking about just any old neighborhood marathon.

“Our philosophy is that it has to be in an unusual place. Shafer and her husband have run in – of all places – Antarctica. “There’s nothing like putting yourself in a Russian ice-breaker bounding across one of the most dangerous bodies of water in the world,” she says. “Now we’re preparing to run in Greece, the 2,500th anniversary of the Battle of Marathon in 490 AD – the run of Pheidippides from the battlefield to the city of Athens.”

Womenetics: Mothering Across Continents was founded to do what, exactly?
Patricia Shafer: We connect women with projects where they can make a difference around the world. Today we have projects focused on providing education, nutrition, health, and joy in South Africa, Rwanda, Southern Sudan, and Haiti. We launched on Mother’s Day 2007.

Rwanda project catalyst Jerri Hatch and student in the new Arts Club

Womenetics: What inspired you to do this? What need did you see?
Shafer: It began simply as an idea and an initiative. I was with a leadership delegation of Save the Children in Uganda, to understand programs to provide HIV/AIDS education to teenagers. I will never forget a song the teenagers sang to us, the refrain was, “Though there’s dying, there’ll be no more crying.”

Womenetics: Upon your return to the United States, you wrote an op-ed piece for The Charlotte Observer?
Shafer: I proposed that if you took the percentage of children who were orphaned by AIDS – it would fill Bank of America’s stadium for the Charlotte Panthers, twice. I proposed that if Charlotte wanted to be a world-class city, it would take more than good restaurants and winning sports teams; it would take engaging with global issues. After the article appeared, women came out of the woodwork, wondering where there was a need or where they could make a difference.

Mothering Across Continents founder Patricia Shafer visits a Rwanda project for girls

Womenetics: How do women who want to make a difference get started?
Shafer: Someone, usually a woman, comes to us with a dream that she wants to adopt. Here is a need she sees, or she wants to make a difference in a place that is underserved, impoverished, and where – if we don’t do something – there are no other resources.

We consult and coach her so that the project is both strategic and grass-roots so that it can be started on seed funding but get dramatic results, so that the project can be replicated, taken to scale, and turned over to the community.

The project always has a school, education center, or place of learning at its center because learning is a universal value, especially in developing environments. Learning is the force that leads to economic environments and the end of conflicts.

Katrina Daniel is an award-winning journalist and broadcast reporter/anchor. She has worked in Miami, Los Angeles, New York, and as a national correspondent for several networks. She commutes between Miami and the Carolinas, writing for magazines and news organizations. She lives with one horse, four dogs, and a cat.