Lisa Kristine

While exploring wine country over the summer, I ventured into a little photography studio in Sonoma which turned out to be the highlight of my trip (beside the Roche Chardonnay I discovered, of course). Lisa Kristine has made a life for herself by traveling the world and taking the most amazing photographs. I had seen her work before, but only in small doses. Walking into this studio was a much more enveloping experience. I was surrounded on all sides by huge, vibrantly colored images of people and places that I cannot wait to see for myself. She does an amazing job of capturing an image, or a lifestyle which many of us have yet to see, and will probably never fully experience or understand: yet in that image my heart is there... or very badly wants to be there. I love her work, I think she is amazing. So next time you're in Sonoma (or Santa Fe, or Sausalito) check out her gallery (The website is cool... but doesn't compare to being there...).

The Hunger Site

I know I've talked about The Hunger Site before... But just as a friendly reminder; It's so easy to go to the site once a day and click to give a donation to help fight world hunger, fund breast cancer research, promote literacy, or help many other causes. If you want to do more than click, you can brows the stores which are full of free trade items, and items that help local economies, or go to the 'do more' section and pay a midwife's salary for one week ($25) or buy food for families in need (starting at $1). There are so many options and so many amazing resources you can provide for people who do not have the options that we have here. In the spirit of the holidays, lets do a little giving :)

November Kiva Loan

I had been waiting to do November's Kiva loan until I had time to go through and choose one that had a particular draw to it, but then I got email from Kiva about a man who has a stay at home wife who raises his two children. He is requesting a loan for $250 so that he could afford winter clothes for his children. They had grown too much over the summer and he fears they will get sick if they do not have pants and jackets that fit them.

How sad is it that honest, working people can't afford to clothe their children...

Mario Alejandro Meza Nevares - Acuna, Mexico

Breathing Earth

Check out CO2 emissions as well as death and birth rates for every country in the world.

http://www.breathingearth.net/

October Kiva Loan

Today I made my loan for October. To find this one I sorted the fourteen THOUSAND available loans by expiring soon and chose one of the people at the top of the list. Mauricio Martínez García is from El Salvadore and is a single father of sixteen year old twin girls. He chose to open a restraunt many years ago so that he could be available for his girls and is seeking funds to increase his menu options for his customers. Can you imagine being a single parent of twin sixteen year old girls?? drama drama drama :)

What A Relief!

Today I thought I had sad news. A few months ago I lent to a group of women in Pakistan who each had their own means of income. One was a seamstress, one a hair stylist, etc. The reason I had chosen to make a loan to Pakistan was because I had been seeing how many people were being displaced due to the US' presence along the boarders where there were supposed Taliban hide outs. I hate how the 5 o'clock news shows missiles flying overhead and entire towns being blown to smithereens. Um, there are people there. I don't want to sit here eating my bowl of cereal watching people die. But that's another story. Anyway, I was watching and reading these stories about how so many people were being pushed out of their homes and had no where to go. So I did what I could to help keep their economy going by lending to their people. (as we all know by now, government aid rarely actually helps. Giving Pakistan government money would do no good. We need to get money into the hands of the people. Go Kiva for being awesome.)

Today when I logged in, I noticed that this lending team was delinquent on their payments and my heart dropped. Not only could one person in this group not pay, but the rest of the group was not able to come together and cover the shortage? (lending teams support one another. If one person cannot pay, the rest of the team is responsible. Go read Banker to the Poor for further explanation. It's awesome) I wondered what could have happened that would make it impossible to make their payment. Were their homes destroyed? Was business just that bad? I'd rather they feed their families than pay me back... But then I noticed that Kiva's field partner, Asasah, had a 50% delinquency rate and got suspicious. Kiva has a 98% repayment rate, how could this ONE lender have a 50% delinquency rate. So I investigated... and found good news.

The reason for the high delinquency rate is because they are having trouble transferring money out of Pakistan. I know how difficult it can be to move large sums of money in to or out of countries, I can empathize with them. They have the payments from their loanees and as soon as the Bank of Pakistan sorts through the issue, all of the money will be disbursed. So I can sleep well tonight - It is safe to assume that my Pakistani women are safe and sound and prospering in their business.

Whew!!

A Lesson in Ethics

Unicef is an organization that does everything they can to protect children from all kinds of harm, help solve gender inequality issues, and provide an education for children who otherwise would never touch a book, learn to read, or learn to write. They are an amazing organization and have done a lot of good in our world.

(www.guardian.co.uk)

One of the projects that Unicef supported was ending the use of child labor in garment factories in Bangladesh. It's 'child labor'. It's bad right? Of course ending these practices would be a good thing, right? Unicef thought so too, until they learned of the consequences of pushing children out of relatively safe work environments and into a workforce much less friendly.

Garment factory workers are relatively well paid and work reasonable hours which leaves both time and money for children to put themselves through school. Without factory jobs, many children are forced to work as maids who have no time off for attending classes, and who make about half as much as factory workers. Or worse, they work 'off the grid' in unsafe, under paid, sweat shops.

So what did we learn? Imposing morals and practices followed in the US may not work for all countries. Unicef backed this movement to get children out of factories because we would never do that here in the US, but didn't take the time to think about how pushing them out of those jobs would simply push them into others. Their families still need to pay rent, they still need food, and they still need money to fund their own educations. Pushing children out of factory jobs actually ended up doing more harm than good.

See an awesome video on the topic here