Ruth Messinger spent 20 years in the thick of New York City politics, serving on the city council and running for mayor. Now, as the newest president and executive director of the American Jewish World Service, the world is her stage.
Most recently, the New York-based international aid organization has been concentrating its relief and reconstruction efforts on Central America, namely Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras, following Hurricane Mitch’s devastation this fall.
Messinger visited the Bay Area in mid-December to educate people about the Central American situation and raise more dollars for the region.
Messinger’s current job is a major shift away from her former life. She served on the New York City Council from 1978 to 1989 and then as Manhattan’s borough president from 1990 to 1997.
“This job isn’t as taxing as politics,” the third-generation Manhattanite said. “Nothing is.”
She achieved the milestone of becoming the first woman to secure the Democratic party nomination as a New York mayoral candidate. Messinger, 58, began to move away from the political arena in 1997 after losing to Republican incumbent Rudolph Guilliani.
In early 1998, she did some writing as well as management and social-service consulting. She began teaching at Queen’s College and Hunter College.
But Messinger was still looking for a new challenge
“I wanted an organization to run that could use my commitment to social justice issues and my background and expertise in management, fund-raising and promotion,” she said.
When an offer from the AJWS came her way in July she jumped at the chance to add a Jewish component to her work.
“I was looking for the right not-for-profit with the right social justice agenda,” she said. “It’s a huge plus that it’s Jewish. I was very much raised in the Jewish traditions of tzedakah and tikkun olam.”
Coming from a high-profile political arena, Messinger said one of her goals in running the 13-year-old agency is to increase the organization’s international visibility.
With the slogan “helping people help themselves,” AJWS supports development projects and sends emergency relief to such places as Russia, India, Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.
In recent years, the organization has helped Senegalese women organize a ban on female genital mutilation in 26 villages, helped build new libraries for Guatemalan children, aided Mexican women in confronting domestic violence and organized dance groups for Ukrainian Jews.
Since 1994, the organization has also sent 125 men and women to offer direct aid as part of a Jewish version of the Peace Corps.
Messinger will travel to Central America this month to assess the impact of the AJWS aid so far and to figure out what more the organization can do.
As of mid-December, the organization had raised more than $450,000, of which $130,000 had already been released to grassroots organizations in those countries.
Unlike some other aid organizations, AJWS has direct pipelines to the communities in need, according to Messinger. “We already have several non-governmental partners who are leaders of grassroots organizations in Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador.
“The advantage of having those people on the ground is we can guarantee that our relief efforts will go directly to people who are going to spend it in their own villages. We can promise it will be used by grassroots leaders in their neighborhoods and they’re accountable on how they use it.”
AJWS has used the donated funds for Central American emergency relief, such as buying food supplies, drinking water and plastic sheeting, and for reconstruction efforts, such as helping farmers whose crops and livestock were destroyed.
“The groups we’re working with down there are already figuring out how to give every farmer a few hens,” Messinger said. “Also, they’re buying seeds to take advantage of the soft ground to start re-planting.”
Additionally, AJWS sent three doctors from Beth Israel Hospital in New York to Nicaragua for a week in December, primarily to assess the public health-care needs but also to treat patients and train health-care workers in handling a national health emergency.
Messinger, a former social worker, teacher and college administrator, is an active member of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism and serves on the boards of several nonprofits, including the Jewish Foundation for the Education of Women.
She was known in politics for being most concerned with issues related to education and social and human services.
“I was most outspoken that the government has the obligation to take care of poor people. That hasn’t been popular for a long time, but I kept right on saying it and winning a fair number of battles,” she said.
“For me, it’s related to Jewish values. I didn’t advertise it that way, but that’s what I was in politics for.”