Sisters Taking on Global Issues

Who: Clara Halpine & Anna Halpine
Age: 20 & 30
What: Clara won scholarship for an essay she wrote on poverty & Anna started World Youth Alliance

These two sisters interest for global issues when they were young has continued to grow and keeps growing stronger every day. This article can be found at Times Transcript.


Sisters make a difference

A young Salisbury woman was one of five students in North America to be awarded a $10,000 scholarship recently for an essay she wrote on poverty.
In the spring of 1999 Anna Halpine became the founder and president of World Youth Alliance.

Clare Halpine of Salisbury is the only Canadian to receive an international scholarship from S.E. VEN fund.

Mount Allison University third-year fine arts student Clare Halpine, 20, was the only Canadian amongst the winners.

But, perhaps Clare's winning shouldn't come as a surprise.

As it turns out, Halpine is surrounded by family members who have more than just a passing interest in world issues, whether it's poverty, AIDS or hunger.

Clare's older sister Anna, 30, herself a Mount A graduate, founded the World Youth Alliance (WYA) shortly after she graduated from university.

The organization, described on its website as a "global coalition of young people committed to promoting the dignity of the person and building solidarity among youth from developed and developing nations" now has offices in five regions in the world.

The organization trains young people to work at the regional and international levels to impact policy and culture relating to hunger, education, human cloning, AIDS and other global issues.

The Halpines' sister Mary is now the president of WYA in New York. Two of their brothers, John and David, helped build the first office of WYA in New York.

Youngest child Peter is a high school student still living with parents Stuart and Judy in Salisbury, and the whole family has visited Anna in her home base of New York a few times providing support for her work.

The girls' interest in global issues began when they were young and has continued to grow.

Clare, who has spent several summers working for her sister's organization, was recently encouraged to submit an essay to the Boston-based Social Equity Venture Fund (S.E.VEN), a virtual non-profit entity.

The entity is run by two entrepreneurs and its strategy is to "increase the rate of diffusion of enterprise-based solutions to poverty."

Clare's scholarship-winning essay addressed the statement, "Poverty can be regarded as a matter of exclusion from networks of productivity, and not simply as having an unequal portion of what is imagined to be a fixed number of economic goods. In that sense, ending worldwide poverty is serious business. Describe enterprise-based solutions to poverty in this context."

Clare took that idea and turned it into an essay that she never expected would be considered "valid" by those behind the S.E.VEN Fund.

"I really never imagined that I would ever win it based on my very little experience and knowledge of economic structures," she says. "I'm not an international relations student, I'm not an economics student, so I didn't think that my solution to end global poverty would be valid or one what would be taken seriously."

She says the scholarship, which was given directly to Mount Allison University to support her studies, has further encouraged her to study global issues.

She plans on working with WYA in New York again this year, and she is considering working at the group's African office at some point to learn more about AIDS in suffering countries.

Older sister Anna was only 21 when she founded the World Youth Alliance in 1999.

She had finished up her Bachelor of Music degree at Mount A and was living in New York continuing to study music.

She was invited to attend a United Nations conference addressing population and development that featured a small group of youth presenting ideas, but what Anna was hearing at the conference did not address issues she felt were key.

Instead of touching upon issues such as clean water, housing and sanitation that plagues many in developing countries, the issues being presented were abortion as a human right and sexual rights for children.

"So I went into that conference, and said these young people do not represent all of the world's youth they were claiming to speak on behalf of, and I offered some other proposals rooted in this idea of the dignity of the person."

Anna's proposals stalled the hearings for two hours and the impact of what she had to say was immediate.

Representatives from developing countries thanked her for speaking on their behalf and she was encouraged to have a greater presence at similar conferences.

Thus, the World Youth Alliance was born.

Anna says she has always been encouraged by her family to have strength in her convictions and to follow them.

This allowed her to make a stand in front of the UN conference.

"I think it's important for young people to be encouraged within their families and within their formative years to know what they believe and to have the courage to stand up for that," she says.

Having said that, she had no idea at the time what she was getting into.

"I always say thank goodness I didn't know what would be involved," she says with a laugh.

"Because nobody in their right mind would have taken this on. But looking back and looking at the growth and success and the liveliness that we have today in the Alliance, it's just kind of a miracle."