Worldy Solution To Abuse Spokane Woman Lures Experts For India Meeting

One after another, the teachers, dentists and school counselors whom Dawn Davis sent around the world returned talking about education, empowerment and something else they’d seen:

Child abuse. Spouse abuse. How badly some families treat one another.

“What can we do about that?” the Spokane woman wondered.

Scrolling through her electronic organizer as her young daughters ate breakfast one morning, Davis came up with 20 names.

The names became a steering committee. The brainstorm became the World Conference on Family Violence in New Delhi, India, to be conducted next September.

Tuesday at the White House, Davis will meet with Hillary Clinton’s staff, inviting the first lady to give the keynote address.

The conference will bring together experts in family violence, much as the United Nations conference did for women in Beijing, said conference co-chairwoman Davis, of People to People Ambassador Programs. The Spokane company specializes in educational travel programs for students and adults.

Davis, 36, is director of adult education and social sciences. When she took her idea to John Ueberroth, chief executive officer, he kept asking: “What’s really going to happen there, what’s the outcome?”

“People can share what works for them,” she said. “That’s the heart of it.”

“It’s a wild dream,” Ambassador president Jeff Thomas remembered thinking.

The enthusiasm of committee members convinced them the plan was right. Among them: Marian Wright Edelman of the Childrens’ Defense Fund; and the past president of the American Bar Association; and professionals from Nigeria to Pakistan.

“The number and range of people who have a concern over this is astounding. This is not a small issue, not a closet issue,” Thomas said.

In the Dwight D. Eisenhower building on Sprague and Freya, nearly 120 people work at Ambassador Programs Inc., sending 10,000 U.S. high school students abroad annually. Adult delegations include thoracic surgeons, economists and academics who travel to meet their counterparts. The company will send more than 20 former congressmen and senators to China next spring. They’ve sent clowns to Russia and Head Start teachers to South Africa.

Davis knew all about global gatherings, but little about family violence. She found the expertise she needed from the YWCA of the USA, which has programs in 93 countries. She also found a co-chairwoman in the Y’s national president, Prema Mathai Davis.

“No other single organization in the world has the impact the Y does as far as family violence,” Davis said.

The committee deliberately chose the capital of India to expand interest beyond North America.

They also chose a place where religious and cultural practices sometimes end in violence, such as the practice of suttee, the Hindu custom of widows cremating themselves alive on their husband’s funeral pyre.

“If we hold it in New Dehli and are successful, the impact will be greater there than in New York,” Davis said.

But India presents numerous transportation and logistical hurdles. The number of participants - 2,000 - is limited to the size of the only building secure enough for officials to safely speak in.

Staff expected the conference to generate some hostility. But in four trips, Indians have overwhelmed them with support and interest.

With an e-mail address, a Web site (www.wcfv.org) and fax line, inquiries have flowed in. Among the invited speakers are South African President Nelson Mandela; Mary Robinson, the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights; and Queen Noor of Jordan.

Davis envisions that a network formed at the conference will continue to formally share information on public policy, family law and impacts on children.

While her company has promised two years of resources to make the conference happen, Davis has already spent 18 months working with people from the American Bar Association to the American Medical Association to UNICEF.

But pressed on the issue of family violence, she speaks of a baby who was critically injured after being shaken recently in Spokane.

“The thought of children being abused tears at me,” she said. “We all know the stats and that it exists. Until we focus on solutions, it’s never going to get anywhere.”

Davis, a Spokane native, is married with two children, 6 and 9. Monday, she’ll send her own daughters to the Spokane YWCA workshop on preventing family violence. Then she heads to Washington, D.C.

People will ask if she’s from Seattle. Most will have never heard of her alma mater, Eastern Washington University. Even neighbors don’t know her company exists.

“But we can make a difference,” she said. “We’re in Spokane and we’re doing something on a world level. It’s our step into the global community.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo