Their report, called “Microfinance in Africa: Closing The Gap“, explains how community-based savings groups, known as village savings and loan associations (VSLAs), offer an effective, sustainable way to begin meeting the enormous unmet demand for financial services in Africa’s poorest communities.

At the same time, VSLAs offer millions of participants the financial know-how they need to begin seeking vital financial services from formal financial institutions.

CARE VSLAs are open to everyone, but focus on women because experience shows their success creates lasting, beneficial change for entire families and communities. CARE’s VSLAs are typically built by women living on less that $2 per day who collectively save pennies each week, then make small loans to each other to help finance small businesses.

CARE offers VSLA members one year of intensive training in managing money, but no direct capital investment. Because VSLAs are self-contained and operated by their own members, they are sustainable and replicable in communities where traditional financial institutions cannot operate.

Senators Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and John Boozman (R-Ark.) are exploring legislation to improve U.S. microfinance programs. The CARE report urges the adoption of policies promoting financial inclusion for women, and to target such efforts at countries and communities where poverty and discrimination have created the greatest need.

“When poor women have a place to save money, or take a loan to start a small business, they can lift themselves, their families and entire communities out of poverty,” says Lauren Hendricks, executive director of CARE’s Access Africa. “For financial inclusion to become reality, women must be at the center of policies and outreach.”

CARE, a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting global poverty by putting a special emphasis on working alongside women, released a report entitled The Top 10 Myths About Women & the Heroes Who Bust Them.  Dubbed a “reality check”, the report lists the top 10 myths as:
1.  a woman’s place is in the home;
2.  girls can’t do math or science;
3.  it’s a man’s world;
4.  women crack under pressure;
5.  she asked for it;
6.  women can’t be trusted with money;
7.  girls belong in marriage not school;
8.  women can’t lead;
9.  a woman’s health is not a man’s concern; and,
10.  women’s empowerment comes at the expense of men.

Although most of us probably consider all of the above to be ridiculous ideas, the fact that CARE found it necessary to draw attention to these myths and then debunk them with the stories of people both past and present who have beaten the odds and proven the naysayers wrong, means these prejudices are still prevalent and they stand in the way of both social and economic development.

Education, of both girls and boys, is really the key to changing attitudes. Canadian global rights activist and former politician Stephen Lewis said it well. “The single most important struggle on the face of the planet is the struggle for gender equality. If schools can do nothing more than get young boys to understand and respect young girls, you will have made an immense contribution.”

Margie Fleming Glennon, Communications Director of Share Our Strength, kindly gave me some insights into the aid effort as well as about her organization.  Share Our Strength has given $145,000 to five organizations with the capacity and expertise to respond to such a huge crisis.  The funding ranges from $67,500 for Partners in Health, to $25,000 for each of CHF International and the United Nations Foundation, $22,500 for CARE, and $5,000 for the International Organization for Migration.

Haiti’s immediate needs must be addressed first, as aid is struggling to get in and issues around starvation and security loom.  VoicesForOurPlanet.com joins our readers in wishing the aid organizations and the people in Haiti all the very best and pray for them daily.

Once the current crisis settles down, there will be a need for long-term assistance, and that’s where Share Our Strength will continue to help.  The organization specializes in feeding the hungry.  Hunger has been a long-standing issue in Haiti, one which is expected to be even more urgent going forward.

Share Our Strength is in the planning stages with chefs across the United States, many of whom they have long-established relationships with.  And history.  Following Hurricane Katrina, the organization managed the Restaurants for Relief program, which helped raise money to rebuild New Orleans.  Now they will step forward to do the same for Haiti.

So what does Share Our Strength do between major crises, and where does their money come from?  The organization’s mission is to end hunger in the United States.  Having been founded 25 years ago to help provide aid to the Ethiopian famine, Share Our Strength today continues to provide some international support, although it’s a small part of their budget.  They have been addressing the ongoing problem of hunger in Haiti for around 20 years, which takes the largest portion of their international aid budget.  Now, obviously, they are giving Haiti a much greater focus.

The organization is likely familiar to many of you, through some of their well-known events.  The flagship event is Taste of the Nation(R), which started in 1988 and today is America’s largest culinary event.  Presented by American Express, popular restaurants in 55 US cities offer food and beverage tastings, involving over 10,000 chefs.  The events are entirely managed by volunteers, and raise millions of dollars each year that Share Our Strength uses to support over 1,000 hunger organizations as well as its own food programs.

Margie also mentioned several other major programs that her organization manages, including the Great American Bake Sale and the Great American Dine Out events.  Their Operation Frontline program helps teach low-income families to shop and cook on a budget.  They are also starting a new program focused on people with diabetes in 20 communities across the US.

As well, in the summer of 2009, Share Our Strength surveyed American teachers about child hunger in the classroom.  Responses came from 700 teachers in 47 states and a wide range of schools.  Sixty-two percent of teachers reported seeing children who come to school hungry each week because they are not getting enough to eat at home.  Sixty-three percent of teachers mentioned that they use their own money to help feed children in their school.  They likely understand the negative cycle to which hunger can lead.  If you’ve ever been hungry, you may remember how distracting it can be.  Distracted children, unfortunately, are often labeled as misbehaving, a label which can stick and lead to medical and societal problems when the children are a little older.

From feeding hungry children in the United States to the massive rebuilding that needs to be done in Haiti, Share Our Strength is committed to working with other organizations to make a positive impact.  For more information about Share Our Strength and to find out how you can help, visit their website.

Angie Dazé, Senior Climate Change Adaptation Advisor for CARE International, gave me a personal interview today.  She specializes in community-based adaptations, trying to understand the effects of climate change and what the most vulnerable of our world’s people might do to survive the early stages of climate change.

Empower the Most Vulnerable People

A whole community is not affected equally by climate shock.  In pastoral communities, men often manage the livestock while women are responsible for fetching water, tending the garden, and ensuring the family has food.  “What we often find is that women tend to have a higher level of vulnerability because of their role in the home,” Angie told me.  “In agricultural-based communities, in particular, food and water become very difficult within a changing climate.  So women’s traditional roles and responsibilities become even harder,” Angie explained.  Issues related to climate change vulnerability can be social or political.  Although women traditionally have limited decision-making power, when humanitarian managers “empower women to have more power in decisions, they tend to make good decisions that will help the family to manage the resources in a way that will reduce their risk.”  But it’s not just women.  “It’s making sure that the different members of the household have the skills and the information that they need to play the role that they need to play most effectively.”

Get the Right Information

One of climate change’s biggest problems is the uncertainty of what, how and when changes are going to occur.  CARE managers “help people to have a broader range of options open to them, so they’re in a position to make decisions to manage the risks.  And also to ensure they have the information they need to make those decisions,” Angie told me.  This information includes seasonal forecasts, what crops might be better suited to a particular climate condition, and early warnings for droughts or storms.

Find Practical Solutions

While empowering women is an important part of an overall strategy of making a community more resilient, CARE also works closely with all members of the community, and local organizations, NGO’s, and government institutions.  Together, they come up with practical solutions such as different agricultural practices – when rainfall decreases, it’s essential to keep as much moisture in the soil as possible.  CARE is launching a program in Africa in which they do small scale adaptations in different communities and countries to find out what works.  That learning will then be applied widely, both at the community and broader levels, such as trying to influence national policy frameworks.  The focus is always on giving the most vulnerable people a voice and ensuring that the potentially large sums of money that will be donated to stricken areas actually reach the people who need it.  It’s also “building skills and new practices and always providing information,” Angie added.

The Future

Ultimately, the best solution is for countries to sign a binding agreement to reduce emissions and stop climate change.  Adaptation is most hopeful for our current level of climate change, but if it continues to grow (as is likely after Copenhagen), livelihoods are going to become impossible and mass migrations will likely occur.  If that happens, we will be facing a whole new set of social and political hot spots.

The silver lining to the recent Copenhagen conference may be the number of average people who became involved and who care about the effect that climate change is having, and will have, on our planet, its people and its animals.  So please keep caring and helping – You’re needed!

Results of MEDA’s programs in Afghanistan and Pakistan prove that when women have a means of income and control over their personal income, the return on investment is phenomenal for their family, community and country.

Currently, Helen is involved with three of MEDA’s ongoing programs in the embellished materials (hand embroidered fabric) sector.  These initiatives give particularly marginalized women, who are traditionally homebound, important economic opportunities, linking them to markets to create an income.  With homebound women, the solution was to create a woman to woman sales network.  Once the women have an income, they are able to invest it – they educate their children (including their daughters), buy better shoes, buy assets for the house such as a radio, or acquire more income-generating assets such as livestock.  Some women have purchased a motorcycle for their family to use for transport to and from school, and for business opportunities, even though few women use it themselves.

Helen has observed a fantastic leap of confidence in the women involved in the projects.  “The glory of this job is witnessing the effect that this has on the women in terms of their carriage, the way in which they engage with other members of their groups, and ultimately in their communities,” reports Helen.  They become a role model for their children and other women.

As well, as the book suggests, empowering the women lessens terrorism.  The women are their children’s largest influence, and the kids are with their mothers for all of the first seven or so years of their life.  “If the family itself has a business that is viable and growing and shows economic promise, that gives the family something worth holding onto and building upon,” explained Helen.  The communities in which MEDA works line the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan.  A family with no other choice for survival might send a child or father off for $5 a day to carry anything anyone asks them to back and forth across the border.  If you can build something for them to hang onto, that shows hope and gives them dignity, they will engage in that and  defend it – rejecting outside influences of things they know are not right, reports Helen.

Coming from a family business herself, Helen has worked in the private sector in southern Ontario, and has an MBA.  The MBA led to an internship with CARE in India that was her opportunity to test if international economic development work was a romantic ideal or a good match.  Her internship, linking fledgling enterprises to interested multinationals, proved this was where she wanted to be.  So, for the last 3 ½ years, she has worked with MEDA.

Part of MEDA’s success in Pakistan relies on the word spreading through the communities.  MEDA links women new to the program to the marketplace in a culturally acceptable manner and most women just run with it.  Although MEDA workers with western perspectives sometimes have trouble grappling with the depth of the need and the urgency to do something positive, the work is exciting and rewarding.

And while some women keep their business as a very small family venture, other women become real business people.  Some are so enterprising they no longer need MEDA.  They understand competition, and don’t want to share their numbers or the full story on how the business is doing.  Although the humanitarian vocational workers are thrilled by the women’s success, it can be frustrating when annual program reports are due!

For more information about MEDA, or to donate, please visit their website.