Top 21 Quotes by Helene D. Gayle

With political will and strategic initiatives, we can prevent more and more of our global neighbors from falling into the abyss of poverty and instead give future generations the opportunities they need to rise to their fullest potential.

The more you look into health and health inequalities, you realize that a lot of it is not due to a particular disease - it's really linked to underlying societal issues such as poverty, inequity, lack of access to safe drinking water and housing. And these are all the things we focus on at CARE.

In Nueva Esperanza, Honduras, community members pooled their resources and organized a local water committee that with CARE's technical guidance built a gravity-fed water system that now provides clean water directly to people's homes.

At CARE, a leading humanitarian organization, we recognize people live their lives in a holistic manner. Issues such as health care, education and economic empowerment cannot be addressed in a vacuum. Thus, effective programs need to tackle the multiple root causes of poverty.

At the Centers for Disease Control, I rose up fairly quickly into management positions. The first team I led there included many people who had been my supervisors in previous roles or were more senior than I was. So it was kind of a daunting challenge.

Ethiopia's government is doing a commendable job of working closely with donors and humanitarian organizations to educate parents about child marriage, and to support organizations like the Hamlin Fistula Hospital.

When I want to explain why empowering girls and women is critical to fighting poverty, I often tell a person's story. It's easier to relate to a personal story than to global data telling us that the majority of the billion people who live on less than $2 per day are women and girls. We are often told to never treat a person like a statistic.

In order to counteract income inequality, it's essential to tackle poverty in an integrated way that has long-term impact. We need to give people the capacity to be resilient, to take on challenges and to learn the skills they need to work toward more prosperous futures.