Saving the World, One Girl at a Time

Did you watch Oprah today? Her guests were the author of the book, "Half the Sky." Not long ago I heard about this book and bought a copy. Right after that I heard our Minnesota United Methodist Church Bishop, Sally Dyck, speak about it and encourage everyone to read it.

Here's another thing I recently read: The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam. She is a woman who was sold into prostitution as a young girl in Cambodia. Later she got out and has devoted her life to helping save other girls. This was also mentioned on Oprah today, as well as Somaly's foundation which is at www.somaly.org

AND, a third coincidence I have with what they talked about at Oprah today: Just before Oprah came on, I was working on setting up a family team at kiva dot org. Kiva is a non-profit that helps provide micro-financing loans to people of low income around the world. I provided a bit of money (you can lend as little as $25) to a woman in Cambodia who is working on getting a pump for a clean water supply to improve her crop production.

This idea of micro-loans was offered as a way you and I (grassroots level folks) can help solve these enormous world problems!!!

The issues are really big, really shocking... but we can help. In fact ONLY we can help. The government won't do it unless they sense a groundswell from us. So I encourage everyone to read these two books:
Half the Sky by Kristof and WuDunn
The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam (the book is in the UMW reading program, for those of you who know what this means)
and if you can, please either make a donation to somaly dot org or join kiva and see where you would like to offer your $25 (or more). Just go to www.kiva.org

The big problems boil down to this: we need to care. We need to help. We need, especially, to help the girls around the world. Educating a girl will have large ripple effects in families and communities. Educated girls tend to have babies later, when they want to have them, and to avoid many of the pitfalls that bring girls down. When girls/women get money, they tend to use it to help their families and communities.

Finally, please watch the video at this site:
www.thegirleffect.org