Grameen Foundation. Helping Women One Loan At A Time

The Grameen Foundation has been around since 1977 and one of the things they focus on are microloans to poor women and their families. Some of these people live on less than $1 per day. With microloans, no collateral is needed to receive loans, unlike traditional loans from banking institutions. As the money is repaid it is recycled to others and in this way loans multiply the value of each dollar in defeating world wide poverty.

Much of Grameen Foundation's work is done by a network of volunteers who are committed to the Foundation's mission. In just seven years GFUSA has a global network of 50 partners in 20 countries and has impacted an estimated 5.5 million lives in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Middle East.

Stoves For Darfur

Spencer Brodsky is your typical teenager with girlfriends and parties and school. Except Spencer is doing something most teens do not think about; he is raising awareness about the dangers women in Darfur face every day while looking for firewood to cook for their families. Women are sometimes gone 7 hours foraging for firewood in a country where wood is scarce. They are attacked more often than not.
Spencer compares Darfur to the Holocaust and believes his peers should not stand for this in their lifetime. He learned about the violence and decided to act by raising money for fuel efficient stoves so the women of Darfur would not have to gather firewood as often, keeping them with their families instead.
The stoves cost $30 a piece and Spencer has raised enough money to buy 420 stoves. The project is a joint effort between Brodsky and CHF International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the economic conditions of people in some of the most troubled regions of the world.

This is a story I heard about one night while watching the news and I was so impressed by the action of one teenaged boy who took it upon himself to find an easy alternative for these women. Sometimes something so simple can make such a huge difference. You can donate here. I know I have