I’ve recently finished reading a truly moving book, Half the Sky, by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It’s both horrifying in its graphic description of the atrocities women and girls suffer throughout the world, and ultimately inspiring in its accounts of those who have overcome adversity to survive and even thrive, often going on to make a difference for others.
You can get a quick sense of the book’s message from the website (http://www.halftheskymovement.org/). I can’t recommend this book more highly. It’s more than “just a book” — as the authors explain in the introduction:
So let us be clear about this up front: We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women’s power as economic catalysts. That is the process under way — not a drama of victimization but of empowerment, the kind that transforms bubbly teenage girls from brothel slaves into successful businesswomen.
This is a story of transformation. It is change that is already taking place, and change that can accelerate if you’ll just open your heart and join in.
Some of the specific worthy websites cited in the book include:
GlobalGiving is an online marketplace that connects you to the causes and countries you care about. You select the projects you want to support, make a tax-deductible contribution, and get regular progress updates – so you can see your impact.
Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.
Givology is an Internet online giving marketplace that empowers individual donors to connect with students and communities in need of education support. By leveraging the Internet to support education grants and projects, Givology creates a global community of people connected through their belief in the power of education.
Plan aims to achieve lasting improvements in the quality of life of deprived children in developing countries, through a process that unites people across cultures and adds meaning and value to their lives.
Women for Women International mobilizes women to change their lives through a holistic approach that addresses the unique needs of women in conflict and post-conflict environments.
World Vision is a Christian humanitarian charity organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice.
With your support we fund hundreds of grassroots organizations working to promote health, education, economic development, disaster relief, and social and political change in the developing world. We work with women, youth, ethnic, religious and sexual minorities, indigenous people, refugees and IDPs and people living with HIV/AIDS.
Women’s eNews is the definitive source of substantive news–unavailable anywhere else–covering issues of particular concern to women and providing women’s perspectives on public policy. It enhances women’s ability to define their own lives and to participate fully in every sector of human endeavor.
World Pulse is a media enterprise covering global issues through the eyes of women.
The CARE Action Network, or CAN, is a group of CARE supporters working to educate our nation’s leaders about issues of global poverty. Together, we ask our elected officials to adopt policies that address the underlying causes of poverty, such as gender inequality and poor governance.
You know what I take away from the parade of Obama cabinet nominees who are confessing to tax errors? It strikes me as a loud and clear message that our tax code is too complicated. If these people can’t get their taxes right, how many of the rest of us are making errors, too?
