UEnd:Poverty Blog

Oh Carla… so happy!

Follow Carla’s adventures as she bikes Africa to End Energy Poverty: www.carlabikesafrica.com

Project Snapshot:

Lives affected: 350

Project cost: $7,424

Dollars raised: $408

Dollars needed: $7,016

Twinning is about establishing formal linkages for the purpose of deriving benefits in terms of social, economic, educational and political development of beneficiaries involved. The pilot twinning project established by Healthy Child Uganda in partnership with Faculty of Development was about attaching a student to a village and with the help of a health trainer and the Village Health team, there would be consistent interaction right from needs assessment, planning, design and implementation of an intervention to address the challenge identified. This was a fruitful initiative that provided students with the opportunity of experiencing the process of development in a real life community setting. 

The one year period of engagement with the community enlightened the students to the reality that once a community is mobilized and empowered to benefit from the opportunities in their environment, they can give birth to sustainable initiatives with minimal support from government.

What you can do

Check out the Students For Change project and learn more about why you might be interested in supporting it, giving a gift card or donating directly.

Friday Photo

Micro-Credit For Families Of Malnourished Children

As part of Change for Children’s Agriculture & Micro-Credit to Combat Infant/Child Mortality Project, the micro-credit loans component has the potential to make lasting and sustainable change in the region.

Visit this project http://www.uend.org/dt/projects/140

Give $5 as a gift card to a friend http://www.uend.org/dt/gifts/new?project_id=140#

Project Snapshot

• Lives affected: 300

• Project cost: $13,500

• Dollars raised: $793

• Dollars needed: $12,707

Project Description:

This project will empower women through the improvement of their living standards. This is expected to impact not only their own lives, but the lives of their immediate family as well.

The intention is to provide beneficiary women with micro-credit aimed at helping them get into farming of groundnuts. This will hopefully provide the beneficiaries with economic empowerment that will lead to well-balanced meals for their families, improved health care, and provision of basic needs for both themselves and their children. The project will be for an initial three-year period.

Participants will be taught the best practices in groundnut cultivation for high yields. They will also receive training on how to undertake some simple value-added processing activities using the groundnuts they produce. In the first year, each of the 100 beneficiaries will be given the micro-credit facility to enable her to cultivate one acre of groundnuts.

In the second year, the first group of women will be given training in groundnut oil and groundnut cake production while a new group of 100 women will be selected to benefit from the micro-credit facility. In all this, women will also gain some training on how to effectively manage their resources for maximum benefit. This is necessary since resources are always limited.

What you can do

Follow this project on the UEnd.org website and if you feel like this is something you’d like to donate too, please do. Or if you have a special occasion coming up like a family member’s or friend’s birthday, send them a UEnd gift card for this project.

POTW: Vocational Training for Women - Phase Two.

Project snapshot:

• Lives affected: 35,000

• Project cost: $10,000

• Dollars raised $5,102

• Dollars needed: $4,898

• Cause Sector: Economy - Gender Equality

Project Location: Chipursan/Pakistan 

Project Description: 

The Chipursan valley is located in north Pakistan at the border of Afghan Pamir. Three thousand people live in this remote area and suffer from a harsh climate, inaccessibility, limited cultivatable land, and a short growing season. With people dependent on subsistent farming, livelihood opportunities are very limited especially for women.

Currently there are eleven women’s organizations (representing 300 members) working with the women in the region, 30% whom are literate. Creating livelihood opportunities for the 1500 women remains the primary challenge of these organizations. The goal is to develop vocational training and production centers where women can learn how to use local resources to produce and market various handcrafts.

Each family owns several sheep and the production of products made from the wool of these sheep is a potential income generating activity for women. Traditionally women have been using traditional skills and rudimentary tools to make woolen jackets, caps and other products for home use.

The project aims to upgrade the skills of those women who are already producing woolen garments to put them more in alignment with market needs. This will require the use of improved technologies. Groups of 10 women from each village will be trained to create improved wool products with each village group focused on one specific product. Each group will be provided with basic tools and equipment who can then involve other women to establish a village level business.

UEnd:Poverty, in partnership with HiMaT Indigenous Leadership and Development Centretwishes to continue to assist Guatemalan women and their families in their growth and knowhow, enabling them to become self-sufficient, through education and their own, assisted business development efforts.

Your donations to this project initially touch the lives of a few but the ripple this causes affects generations. With projects like this it is easy to see how a little can turn into a world of difference for someone else and bring us steps closer to ending world poverty.

How can you help? Follow this project on the UEnd.org website and if you feel like this is something you’d like to donate to, please do. Or if you have a special occasion coming up like a family member’s or friend’s birthday, send them a UEnd gift card for this project.

This photo is from a CAUSE Canada project:

To build the capacity of indigenous Mayan women to lead their families and communities to increased well-being, including better health and higher incomes, through microcredit access and business management training.

Visit the project page

Project snapshot:

• Lives affected (including yours): 50

• Project cost: $15,559t

• Dollars raised $595

• Dollars needed: $14,964

• Cause Sector: Education, Gender Equality

Project Description:

To build the capacity of indigenous Mayan women to lead their families and communities to increased well-being, including better health and higher incomes, through leadership and asset management training. Participant savings will be matched one to one (to a maximum of $100) for an investment selected by each participant.

This five year project will improve the quality of life and standard of living of families in marginalized communities in Guatemala through the promotion of women’s education, leadership, health and economic development.

This project provides weekly leadership classes to women in marginalized communities; it utilizes weekly classes to train women in financial management (including budgeting and savings) and family health matters; and, it also promotes asset accumulation among needy women through one to one savings matches (incentives) 

Students will be given the opportunity to accumulate savings in a formal financial institution during their participation in classes as part of financial training; these savings will be matched, one to one, up to a maximum of $100 per student, upon their successful graduation from the Program, and applied toward a project or item benefiting their family or community.

Guatemala is a country located in Central America, bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast. It’s areas is 108,890 km² with an estimated population of 13,276,517.

When researching Guatemala it is remarkable to find that the country suffers from a great imbalance of economic, resource and opportunity distribution. This kind of imbalance can be generally attributed to a lack of education and lack of access to productive resources. Our POTW focuses on rectifying this imbalance to bring productive development into the hands of the very people who can benefit most.

As most of us are aware, deficiencies in education generally lead to higher poverty levels, greater suffering from diseases and poorer living conditions due to an inability to know what to do to better ones situation. By teaching Guatemalan women financial management, dealing with family health matters and by promoting business growth, this project enables their own personal growth and the prospect of betterment and a personal sense of accomplishment that will affect many generations to come.

As of April 2011, a total of 567 women had benefited from micro-loans and/or business training which increased their capacity to generate and control income and enhanced their abilities to manage their resources. This has put the power to grow and thrive in their own hands and has enhanced the lives of the women involved, their families and children and, therefore, prepared the next generation to succeed in the future.

UEnd:Poverty, in partnership with CAUSE Canada wishes to continue to assist Guatemalan women and their families in their growth and knowhow, enabling them to become self-sufficient, through education and their own, assisted business development efforts.

Your donations to this project initially touch the lives of a few but the ripple this causes affects generations. With projects like this it is easy to see how a little can turn into a world of difference for someone else and bring us steps closer to ending world poverty.

How can you help? Follow this project on the UEnd.org website and if you feel like this is something you’d like to donate to, please do. Or if you have a special occasion coming up like a family members or a friends birthday, send them a UEnd gift card for this project.

sources: Wikipedia

I’ve never kept a New Year’s resolution for the entire year. There, I said. They usually last the first two weeks of January. I make a “commitment” to run every day. I “promise” I will finally master that song on the guitar. But I don’t. Feel the same? Still bummed about those 10 pounds you didn’t lose? Or the trip you didn’t take?

Let’s make a different choice for 2012.

This holiday season we introduced the idea of gifting differently. We provided the ability to give the gift of giving through a UEnd gift card. Did you pick one up?

My family got them in their stocking stuffers! Family members who had never heard of UEnd were thrilled to hop on the ol’ internet and check out the website! It was my favourite gift I gave this year.

So with that warm, gooey feeling that made my heart grow three sizes this holiday, my resolution (a manageable one!) is to keep that feeling alive. Why does giving have to end there? We North Americans love our holidays, birthdays, weddings and so forth. So let’s keep gifting different year round!

And why do we have to treat other people? Buy yourself the gift of giving.  Sign up for U:Powered or give directly to a project of your choosing. 

Let’s not pick resolutions that will bring us down. Let’s pick ourselves up and end poverty while we’re at it.