>From July 1993 to the end of 1994, Barack Obama's mother was hard at work in New York City convening experts, compiling surveys and drafting papers for a major United Nations conference in Beijing, where she hoped to show how much good can be done by lending small sums to poor women.
As Ann Dunham-Soetoro's colleagues brainstormed, they agreed that one advocate would electrify their panel: then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Dunham-Soetoro never made it to Beijing. By the time of the 1995 conference, she was in Hawaii, suffering the painful last stages of cancer that would soon claim her life. But Clinton did speak at the panel co-sponsored by the International Coalition on Women and Credit that Dunham-Soetoro had brought together at the U.N.'s initiative. Two years later, Clinton helped launch a campaign to extend microfinance to 100 million families, a goal the coalition pushed at Beijing - and attained two years ago. read more http://tinyurl.com/6sp8n6
