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Investigating Gender Inequality in Tanzania

admin — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 04:49:40 +0000

A Post by Guest Writer Jess Shorland

WOMEDA in Karagwe, Tanzania

I have just returned from visiting Tanzania. I was there from July 5th through July 12th. On this, my second trip to Karagwe, Tanzania, I had only one week to learn as much as I possibly could about local conflict - the reasons behind it, who was often involved, and possible solutions. Thanks mostly to Juma Masisi, Director of WOMEDA (the Women's Emancipation and Development Agency), I managed to talk with over thirty women, all of whom shared their amazing stories with me. The women’s experiences all demonstrated the seemingly archaic gender gap that remains not only in the town of Karagwe, but in many villages across the globe. So I began my work to speak with these women connected to WOMEDA in this small rural village in Tanzania. In front of a clay brick house, kneeling on mats woven by the calloused hands of the women sitting opposite me, I began with my own story of how my rights had been violated when I was 17 years old. I had hopes that being open and candid with the women would bridge some of the cultural gaps and language barriers that I thought could prevent the comfort that fosters honesty. With repetitive "Poles" (which means sorry in Swahili) as Juma translated, the women grew more serious. After I explained my experiences and how they influenced my interest in gender inequality, I asked them if they would share their stories with me. One by one, the women elaborated on their struggles. The Women’s Stories Zainabu, 28, has a family of eight children, three wives and one husband. When she married her husband, she had no idea that he would eventually take two other wives, and that one of those wives would live with them in the house that she built. "I thought he would at least ask me, or even tell me, but it was very abrupt," she said. She explained expressionlessly that she still loves him, but would have never married him had she known that this was his intention. She finds it painful and difficult to share her husband and no longer wishes to have sex with him. But if she refuses, she faces a high risk of being beaten or kicked out of her house. And she fears leaving him because her husband will keep her children, who are a source of labor and potential income (especially female children because of the dowry system still in place). Looking down at her clasped hands, she said that she could never bear to leave her children. What she did not know is that under Tanzanian law, children younger than seven are usually left in the mother's custody, and children older than seven are given the right to make the decision themselves. Because of the lack of information and awareness of these laws, Zainabu thought that she had no other options. For her, it was either deal with it ...

What We Did in Africa

admin — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:39:02 +0000

July 5th, 12pm - I'm looking out the Virgin Atlantic airplane window at Mt. Kenya as we end our twelve day trip to Kenya and Uganda. We've begun the twenty-eight hour journey home. East Africa is a beautiful region with substantial economic opportunity, and very worthy of a visit. This was my second trip to Uganda, but first to Kenya. What Drew Us In We went to learn. We went to visit some of the non-profits The Humanity Campaign has worked with in the past and those we are considering supporting in the future. We came back changed permanently having seen the juxtaposition of the beautiful rising Africa against the constant suffering of unlistened to and forgotten millions of people just like you and I. In the developing world, 2.6 billion people live under $2 per day (PPP adjusted) according to the World Bank and 49,300 people die each and every day needlessly from preventable disease and starvation according to the WHO. Some of The Stories That Sear Themselves Into Your Memory For just a second, imagine 139 girls from your local elementary school have been kidnapped by an armed rebel group and taken to a jungle 400 miles away. One hundred and nine of them are negotiated to be returned but 30 of them stay and are raped, abused, and are forced to be sex slaves for as long as thirteen years. Six of these thirty girls are killed attempting to escape. Imagine hiding in a snake-infested ceiling drop at your high school to avoid being kidnapped by the LRA. Imagine being 17 and living in a slum in Africa with over 1 million residents. Both your parents died of AIDS, then your grandfather was killed, then your pastor who took you in abused you. Now you're on your own, struggling everyday to survive. These are just some of the life altering stories I've heard over the last twelve days. Day By Day, What We Did

Bob Phoenix, Jess Shorland, and I left the iContact parking lot at 4:30pm on Wednesday June 24. We drove over to Raleigh-Durham International Airport for our flight to London. We arrived in Heathrow Airport on Thursday morning, took the Heathrow Express to Paddington, took the Underground to Waterloo, and were on the London Eye by 10:30am in good tourist form. In our twelve hour layover in London we rode the Eye, took photos on the lions at Trafalgar Square, ate Bangers and Mash at The Clarence, saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham, and visited the London office of Credit Suisse in Canary Wharf to visit some of Bob's co-workers. We departed from Heathrow that Thursday night and arrived the next morning in Nairobi. After filling out our Kenya arrival cards and swine flu papers, we made it through immigration in about an hour. Three $25 Kenyan Visas later, we picked up our luggage at baggage claim and excitedly met Mary Muhara from Africa Rising at international arrivals. ...

What We’ll Be Doing in Kenya & Uganda

admin — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:57:00 +0000

From June 25th through July 5th I'll be in Kenya and Uganda with Jess Shorland and Bob Phoenix. The purpose of our trip is to:

Visit the non-profits that The Humanity Campaign and iContact have provided funds to in order to see and document how they are using the funds and to learn about their operations and needs;
Find additional qualified non-profits for The Humanity Campaign to invest in;
Find companies with unique innovative technologies that address local social needs and for-profit companies with a social mission to invest in;
Learn as much as we can about conflict resolution, IDP camps, food and water distribution, rural health care provision, and rural primary and secondary education; and
Dance, dance, and dance some more like Matt from Where The Hell is Matt!

On our first day in Nairobi we'll be meeting with Amon Anderson from the Acumen Fund and Mary Muhara from Africa Rising. Amon is a friend of mine from back when we went to UNC together and from when he was in charge of the entrepreneurship minor at UNC. Mary is the in-country local representative for Africa Rising who vets the non-profits that Africa Rising contributes to. Mary will be taking us to visit TULIP Nairobi a program supported by AR. TULIP "strives to deliver hope for girls subjected to poverty and its vices: teenage pregnancies, HIV/AIDS, drugs, crime, and prostitution." On day two in Nairobi we'll be visiting with Carolina for Kibera. CFK works in Kibera, a slum in North Nairobi to "promote youth leadership and ethnic and gender cooperation in Kibera through sports, young women's empowerment, and community development." CFK was started in 2001 by a UNC students Kim Chapman and Rye Barcott. Rye has since completed five years of service as an officer in the Marines and completed a MBA/MPA joint degree from HBS and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, which is what I'd love to be doing in a few years. They operate a soccer league, medical clinic (Tabitha Clinic), and a reproductive health and women's rights center (Binti Pamoja). I'm so excited to be seeing their operation first hand. On day three, we'll be flying from Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta Airport to Entebbe, Uganda. We'll stay the night in Kampala with our friend Louis Ntale, the brother-in-law of Duke's Christopher Kigongo, and then wake up early to catch the five or six hour Posta Uganda bus from Kampala to Gulu and traverse once again the adventurous roads of rural Uganda. Upon arriving in Gulu we'll be meeting up with Andrew Morgan of Invisible Children. Over the past ...

OptInNow.org – Opportunity International’s New Kiva-Like Site

admin — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 01:10:00 +0000

This is something really cool. I had coffee this evening at the HW55 Starbucks in Durham with Sam Serio from Opportunity International. Opportunity International is a Christian microfinance organization that's been around since 1971. Opportunity International has launched a site called OptInNow.org. OptinNow allows you to make small loans directly to entrepreneurs in developing countries. Comparison to Kiva OptInNow is similar to Kiva, with the exception that the loans made are contributions to Opportunity International and are re-loaned over and over again to entrepreneurs with microenterprises in developing countries instead of paid back directly to the lender. Another difference is that Opportunity International has a Christian affiliation whereas Kiva does not. OptInNow.org is in the early stages, so the site does not yet have as extensive inventory of loans and projects as Kiva, but does allow loans to be made to entrepreneurs in Kenya, Ghana, the Philippines, and Mexico with many more to come soon. Props to the folks at Opportunity International for creating a well-designed usable interactive site that will get a lot more visibility and unique donors for their organization. Aid 2.0 As opposed to the old-school 'top-down' Easterly-criticized bi-lateral government-to-government aid model where funds were given to oft-unelected semi-corrupt dictators for cold-war geopolitical reasons that indebted the populace without providing much benefit to them while sometimes forcing the funds to be used to pay Western contractors (okay I'm being a bit harsh here but do read Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and Stiglitz' Globalization and Its Discontents), OptInNow's model is from the grassroots--from the bottom-up. It gives small amounts of funds that can make a world of good directly to the local entrepreneurs who know how to best use them. It's market-based aid versus the top-down centrally controlled aid of the past. Who Is It Run By? Opportunity International is currently run by CEO Christopher Crane, an entrepreneur, YPO member, and Harvard MBA who took commercial real estate information provider COMPS InfoSystems to 450 employees and took it public in May 1999 before being acquired by CoStar (NASDAQ:CSGP) in February 2000. I haven't met Christopher yet but look forward to meeting him soon. Here's a video about OptInNow. Spread the word! ------------------------ About Opportunity International Opportunity International, the largest not-for-profit microfinance organization in the world. OI began in 1971 and specializes in working with the poorest of the working poor, those who make less than $2 a day. OI has 1.2 million active loan clients in 28 countries and 85% of their clients are women. Here are some key facts. ------------------------ About OptInNow Our mission is simple. We're working to end global poverty. Faster. How? By providing those who live in chronic poverty with one vital thing they need to transform their lives: Opportunity. Along the way we hope to transform additional lives, like yours. That's why we've made it so simple for good people everywhere to come together, ...

Project Polaroid in Niger and Ghana

admin — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:39:00 +0000

Back in September I posted on Project Polaroid, an effort started by UNC student Carly Brantmeyer to provide children in developing countries like Colombia, Niger, and Ghana with the first pictures of themselves they've ever owned. You can read more on her blog. I wanted to post some of the recent Project Polaroid photos from Niger and Ghana.

Project Polaroid in Niger

Project Polaroid in Ghana

Project Polaroid: Giving A Child Their First Picture

admin — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:04:00 +0000

How do you get the attention of an large global company (Polaroid) and convince them to reverse a key strategic decision? Hopefully, like this... The Birth of Project Polaroid Nine months ago, in early January, I was hanging out in Charlotte with a friend of mine named Carly. Carly is just 20 and a junior at UNC-Chapel Hill. She is an entrepreneur and a social entrepreneur who runs a photography business, Carly Brantmeyer Photography. We were brainstorming. She wanted to be more than a student and photographer. She wanted to use her talents and abilities to give back. Carly had just returned from a Christmas family trip to Costa Rica. There, she took lots of beautiful digital photos. The children were eager to see the picture she just took of them on the back LCD display. She wanted to be able to give the children a copy of their photo, but couldn't. There was no easy way. She thought, "If I had a Polaroid camera with me I could give them a copy of the picture right now." She returned and while brainstorming at her house in January she came up with Project Polaroid. She would bring hundreds of Polaroid instant film with her to developing countries and give children a picture of themselves--something most of them would never seen before, yet alone owned. Project Polaroid in Colombia Carly had the opportunity to visit Colombia over the summer to try out Project Polaroid for the first time. She borrowed my Polaroid camera that was given to me as a gift in 2007 and bought some film. Here are some of the inspiring pictures she took. Take a look especially of the one of the mother, holding a picture of her beautiful young daughter for likely the first time: Project Polaroid in Uganda In July, I went to Uganda for a week. Carly had returned from Colombia so I got my camera back the night before. Here are some of the pictures I took. I was able to take about 60 pictures there while in Uganda while in 4 different locations. Each time I noticed an interesting phenomenon. In one of the locations, I found myself in a small village near the Mirembe Kawomera Peace Coffee Cooperative. This place was about 30 minutes down a dirt road from Mbale, Uganda. I took my first photo of a child and gave it to her. She was very confused as to what it was. I told her to shake the picture. She then ran away, nervous it seemed. Exactly, on the dot, 3 minutes later, a group of at least eight kids came running around the corner jumping up and down with excitement. The picture had developed! Each time I began ...

Endeavor – Promoting Entrepreneurship in Middle-Income Nations

admin — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 20:24:00 +0000

A Non-Profit Profile By Humanity Campaign Writer Ebs Sutton--

Recently, a non-profit organization by the name of Endeavor was profiled in the July issue of The Economist, in an article which gave rave reviews of the group’s commitment to providing not just access to opportunity, but access to the mentoring and investment which turns opportunity into actuality.

When it comes to promoting entrepreneurialism in developing nations, Endeavor believes that a significant part of the problem is not just a lack of access to entrepreneurial possibilities, but a lack of access to the modeling and mentorship which are available in places like the United States. Endeavor seeks to address this need by using successful high-impact entrepreneurs in developing nations to select and mentor budding entrepreneurs in developing nations.

The Purpose of Endeavor

Endeavor is a non-profit organization whose vision is to change communities and countries by promoting entrepreneurship where it is needed most. Using their internal Search and Selection teams as well as panels of successful entrepreneurs from across the globe, candidates for the Endeavor program undergo a rigorous selection process which can take up to 18 months. Endeavor uses six main criteria to evaluate candidates:

Entrepreneurial Initiative
Business innovation
Value and Ethics
Role Model Potential
Development Impact
Fit with Endeavor

Additionally, through the course of this process, each entrepreneur is given valuable feedback and advice, whether or not they are selected. Once entrepreneurs are selected according to the criteria, they are set up with mentors and access to support and advice. Endeavor matches the entrepreneur with selected mentors who can help him or her with specific challenges faced. Some Endeavor Entrepreneurs can have over a dozen mentors.

Interview with Elmira Bayrasli

I had a chance to interview Elmira Bayrasli of Endeavor's Outreach Team via email. She described the Endeavor process this way:

“Generally Endeavor looks for high-impact entrepreneurs who are leading companies that are generating between 500K to 20 million in revenues; and entrepreneurs who have role model potential – who will give back to their emerging market communities and not only inspire, but lead, mentor and support aspiring entrepreneurs. Endeavor Entrepreneurs generally are those who have a business that has great high-impact potential to go to scale – to create jobs, generate revenues and investment opportunities.”

The Process

Here is an image showing their selection process from their 2007 annual report:

Many selected entrepreneurs go on to become mentors themselves. Some serve as panelists or as members of local boards of directors.

Before this process even begins, Bayrasli says, Endeavor does its homework:

“Before Endeavor starts to identify and support high-impact entrepreneurs, we spend quite a bit of time building local operations. Endeavor will ...

Seeking Part-Time Writer for The Humanity Campaign

admin — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:47:00 +0000

Seeking Part-Time Writer

The Humanity Campaign is a start-up non-profit organization based in Durham, North Carolina. Its mission is to reduce poverty and hunger in developing countries by working to increase access to education, healthcare, nutrition, technology, and entrepreneurial opportunity in North Carolina and in developing countries.

The organization wishes to begin to publish content in its web site in order to raise its profile as a contributor within the field of sustainable development. To accomplish this goal, The Humanity Campaign is seeking an individual to research and write content for its web site at www.humanitycampaign.org and build a network of sources and writers in developing countries.

Topics that can be written about include, but are not limited to:

Appropriate Technology
Civil Conflict
Compassion and Dignity
Corruption
Direct & Bilateral Aid
Economics
Education
Efforts of NGOs
Energy, Food, & Water
Entrepreneurship & Entrepreneurs
Environmental Sustainability
Financial Systems & Exchanges
Genocide
Government, elections & democracy
Healthcare & Medicine
History
Human Rights
ICT (Internet, Mobile)
Microfinance
Motivation
People Changing the World
Poverty & Prosperity
Private Enterprise
Human Psychology
Public Policy
Religion & Faith
Social Entrepreneurship
The Rule of Law
Trade & Investment
Transparency
Trends
War & Peace
Youth

Organizations that can be reported on include, but are not limited to:

Acumen Fund
Amnesty International
ASHOKA
Doctors Without Borders
Engineers Without Borders
Gates Foundation
Global Giving
Google.org
Idealist.org
Kiva
Human Rights International
Millennium Village Project
Nourish International
Open Society Institute
Red Cross / Red Crescent
Save The Children
The Bookings Institution
The Cato Institute
The Clinton Foundation
The Earth Institute
The Ford Foundation
Transparency International
USAID
UN
UNICEF
UNDP
World Bank
World Economic Forum
World Trade Organization

Philosophy

The organization has a philosophy that all humans have equal worth and that equality of opportunity should be encouraged. It believes that economic development does not always lead to greater happiness or prosperity if it causes environmental destruction, dependency, or materialism. It tends to favor development work that is done through ...

A Mission to Change The World

admin — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:45:00 +0000

While I am optimistic, I am somewhat distressed by the state part of our world is in today. I am distressed by two simple facts... First, while we have prosperity and opulence in many parts of our world--49,000 humans, people just like you and me, die each and every day from starvation and preventable diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS, and diarrhea. Second, while we live in comfort, 2.7 billion humans live on under $2 per day. These numbers are Purchase Power Parity (PPP) adjusted--meaning that 42% of the humans in our world must live a full day on the same $2 that you and I would use to buy half a latte at Starbucks. These facts come from the World Bank and the World Health Organization, respectively. When I learned these facts in Economics class at Manatee High School at age 17 from an inspirational teacher Robert Fletcher, I couldn't ever afterwards pretend as if "I didn't know." I've read a lot over the past six years about the topic of human poverty, global politics, and economics--inspirational books like The End of Poverty, The White Man's Burden, How to Change the World, The Bottom Billion, Globalization and Its Discontents, The Lexus & The Olive Tree, The Road to Serfdom, Atlas Shrugged, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, The Secret History of The American Empire, The Fortune at The Bottom of the Pyramid, and The Mystery of Capital. I've come to a conclusion... I want to dedicate the rest of my life to reduce poverty and hunger and increase access to education, healthcare, technology, and entrepreneurial opportunity here at home in North Carolina and the U.S. as well as in developing countries. This is not charity--this is humanity. We will never have a secure world when half of our brothers and sisters do not have access to basic human needs like shelter, food, primary education, and preventative medicine. Personally, I believe entrepreneurship is an essential part of the solution--commercial entrepreneurship, public sector entrepreneurship, and social entrepreneurship. But being an entrepreneur is NOT easy. The knowledge of how to build a successful organization isn't easily learned. Building a new 'start-up' of any type whether a non-profit or for-profit is definitely not simple. I'm only 23 and I feel sometimes like I have developed the scar tissue of a 45 year-old building iContact to $10 million in annual sales. It's truly been an absolute bliss to come in every morning and know that I've played a big role in creating 85 jobs. I get so much energy from being around our team. Being an entrepreneur is truly my passion. I love it, but the experience is what I can only imagine raising a ...