What I've Been Reading...in the Last Year

Wow, I can't believe it's been a year since I wrote a comprehensive summary (is it grammatically incorrect to put those two words next to each other? ) of the books I've read. I've mainly been avoiding this because I wanted to do a grandiose post on what I thought of each book, with quotes, summaries, deep thoughts, etc. I'm realizing that might never happen, so something is better than nothing.

Of the three books I was reading when I last wrote something on this topic, I've finished two of the three. I still haven't finished reading the White Man's Burden...I don't think I've even touched it since my last post about it. Oh well, I guess that one will stay on the shelf another year or so.

So, without further ado, here we go.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, by Michael Pollan

I absolutely loved this book. "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." This is the main motto, which sounds a lot simpler than it really is. For example, a lot of the "food" that you eat isn't really food, it's highly processed stuff. So when he say's "eat food," there's a much more significant meaning to what he's saying than you might think ("But I contend that most of what we're consuming today is no longer, strictly speaking, food at all, and how we're consuming it--in the car, in front of the TV, and, increasingly, along--is not really eating, at least not in the sense that civilization has long understood the term."). I think this is a great introductory book to changing eating habits, and how you see the food industry in general. There are some crazy statistics that really make you think about what you're eating, and why you're eating it (think: congressional lobbies). I've been wanting to read some more books on this topic since I finished this book, but just haven't gotten around to it. One of the cleverest suggestions from this book: shop in the periphery of the grocery store: it contains the freshest and least processed stuff (produce, veggies, etc., versus boxed meals). Some of my favorite quotes:

• "Thirty years of nutritional advice have left us fatter, sicker, and more poorly nourished."
• "...the processing of foods typically robs them of nutrients, vitamins especially."
• "By breaking the links among local soils, local foods, and local peoples, the industrial food system disrupted the circular flow of nutrients through the food chain."
• "Foods that lie to our senses are one of the most challenging features of the Western diet."
• "...and Americans are consuming a diet that is at least half sugars in one form or another--calories providing virtually nothing but energy."
• "It's hard to believe that we're getting everything we need from a diet consisting largely of processed corn, soybeans, rice, and wheat."
• MY FAVORITE: "[y]ou now have to eat three apples to get the same amount of iron as you would have gotten from a single 1940 apple, and you'd have to eat several more slices of bread to get your recommended daily allowance of zinc than you would have a century ago." INSANE (emphasis added).

On That Day Everybody Ate: One Woman's Story of Hope and Possibility in Haiti, by Margaret Trost

Jim (co-founder of Haiti Scholarships) sent me this book out of the blue. I actually was a little concerned about who had sent the book to me, since I had no idea where it came from, and someone clearly had my address, and new of my interest in Haiti, haha. But all was well, and no one was stalking me.

This is a really short and quick read, but very inspiring story--which, I'm sure, is why Jim sent it to me. It tells the real st

ory of one woman's journey to Haiti, and how she started an organization to help feed children in Haiti. It was great reading about someone going through a similar struggle with getting an organization started and off the ground, and seeing it succeed. I hope Haiti Scholarships grows to have the same success that her organization has. Some of my favorite quotes:

• "It took Haiti 125 years to pay off the debt to France (estimated at a value of $21 billion today with interest and inflation calculated in), and the effects on the society were devastating."
• "Iwas relieved to be back in the States, where the comforts and convenience and abundance overflowed. But at the same time, I felt nauseated." A feeling that's easily relatable for those who have traveled to similar places, I'm sure.
• "Normally, I planned out every detail of a business trip, complete with a typed agenda neatly placed in a folder." I was just relieved to see that someone else does this.
• A topic Reuben and I have frequently discussed is religion, and how religion seems to be more abundant in poorer areas: "'God is the first and last resource here. We feel God's presence more and more, because there is nobody else some days who can sustain us to allow us to survive. It's only God sometimes...Because the neighbor doesn't have enough, the friend's don't have anything, so we're praising God. God makes miracles. So we live by miracles, and as we live by miracles, we need faith. Our faith sustains us.'"
• "This led to the importing of heavily subsidized U.S. rice, which was cheaper than Haitian rice. After a few years, Haiti's peasant farmers could not compete and most went out of business."
• "Haiti is thethird-largest importer of rice from the U.S.--240,000 metric tons per year. Until the 1980s, Haiti was self-sufficient in rice production." Crazystatistic.
• "Or maybe because I was discovering more and more how unfair the world is, how cruel it can be. The disparity between my life and the lives of everybody I met in Tiplas Kazo weighed on me all the time."

Freedom from Want: The Remarkable Success Story of BRAC, the Global Grassroots

Organization that's Winning the Fight Against Poverty, by Ian Smillie

This book was given to me by Reuben, and it's

another inspiring story about a nonprofit who grew quickly to address some pressing issues around the world (and curiously enough, the nonprofit that a good friend of mine went to work for in Haiti shortly after I finished reading this book!).

The title itself gives you a synopsis about what the book is about. BRAC is similar to Acumen Fund, which I mentioned on my summary of The Blue Sweater, both organizations focus on microcredit a

s a way to relieve poverty. I think one of the things I liked best about this book is that it was honest about what worked and what didn't work for the organization when it was first starting. It's great to know that organizations don't always get things right, but the difference is in manning up to that, and making it better. I'm gonna post some of my favorite parts, but this book is chalk full of great follow up resources, from other books, to articles, to organizations, etc. (I still have to follow up on all of these highlights, of course).

• "[D]eveloping countries are littered with failed income-generation projects that have generated little more than loss and disappointment. While there has never been a lack of bright ideas and good intentions among aid agencies, there has too often been a surfeit of amateurism that, combined with money, can be deadly."
• "It is a sad commentary on countries in Europe and North America that provide foreign aid with one hand--dispensed with lashings of advice about how poor countries must liberalize their economies and eschew subsidies--while simultaneously undercutting the world price of grain, dairy products,and other goods through generous subsidies to their own producers."
• "Generally, increasing the average amount of education in the labor force by one year raises GDP by 9 percent, a statistic that holds for the first three years of education."
• "'The role of education in reducing absolute poverty is decisive. Many research studies...[have] concluded that rising levels of education in a society were often accompanied by a sharp decline in absolute poverty. When poverty levels were correlated with such variables as mean years of schooling, adult literacy, and gross enrollment rates, it was clearly established that absolute poverty declines as education increases.'"

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, by Nicholas D. Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn

I read this book on the plan to and from Haiti. It's a hugely successful book, with a movie in the works, as well as an organization of the same name that exists to combat all the ills against women that this book talks about.

The stories in this book, from real women around the world, are sad, and compelling. It's crazy to think that in our day and age, this things are still happening to women...to people.

Similar to Freedom from Want, this book is full of great resources that I have yet to follow up on.

• "'More weight is still given to the crime of stealing a thing than to the crime of stealing a person.'"
• "...21% of Ghanian woman reported...that their sexual initiation was by rape; 17% of Nigerian women said that they had endured rape or attempted rape by the age of nineteen; and 21% of South African women reported that they had been raped by the age of fifteen."
• "The United Nations Population Fund has estimated that there are 5,000 honor killings a year..."
• "'It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict.'"
• "In just the Congolese province of South Kivu, the UN estimates that there were twenty-seven thousand (27,000) sexual assaults in 2006."
• "One of the great failings of the American education system, in our view, is that young people can graduate from university without any understanding of poverty at home or abroad."
• "The equivalent of five jumbo jets' worth of women die in labor each day, but the issue is almost never covered...Some 99 percent of those deaths occur in poor countries."
• "The World Bank estimated that for every one thousand girls who get one additional year of education, two fewer women will die in childbirth."
• "'Women are not dying because of untreatable diseases. They are dying because societies have yet to make the decision that their lives are worth saving.'"
• "Another study suggested that it would cost an additional $9 billion a year to provide all effective interventions for maternal and newborn health to 95% of the world's population...Suppose that the estimate of $9 billion per year is correct. It pales beside the $40 billion that the world spends annually on pet food..."
• "To deny women is to deprive a country of labor and talent, but--even worse-- to undermine the drive to achievement of boys and men."
• "If we believe firmly in certain values, such as the equality of all human beings regardless of color or gender, then we should not be afraid to stand up for them; it would be feckless to defer to slavery, torture, foot-binding, honor killings, or genital cutting just because we believe in respecting other faiths or cultures."

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo

I think this was the first book we read for our book club. Not as difficult for me to follow as The White Man's Burden, but it's up there. This book tackles many difficulties in getting people out of the "poverty trap," including global health, education, economics, etc. My favorite parts of this book were the parts that made me look at situations through a different lens. Why don't poor people save? Why don't they get medical insurance for when they get really sick? Why don't they go to a doctor instead of a local? Why do they have so many kids? Why don't they realize the value of an education?

I'm not gonna lie, I'm pooped. So if you're interested, I'll have to owe you my favorite quotes from this book.

Discussion on Development: I have never paid the full price for a cup of coffee

Guest post by Mike Goldstein

Alex asked me to write a blog post about what to do in Haiti and that's turned out to be a really fucking complicated task. Haiti is such a persistent source of frustration, anxiety and astonishment to the world that Haiti is not just Haiti the place. We can't look at it that way anymore because it's clearly something more profound to us. It matters to us, it has its hooks in us. So I'm trying to go about exploring what Haiti is by starting with what it represents psychologically. That is, assuming we manifest this, what personal characteristic is dark enough to be Haiti, and what kind of person are we humans?

Well, I think it's this: I think we're an addict with a profound sense of guilt and also a profound morality. I think we're afraid of dealing with what's real, so we cope through addiction, which hurts us and others. Guilt is the pain that demands we reconcile our actions with our morality. And that's Haiti.

How does this translate. We are addicted to buying things for our comfort and security. But in our system, things need to be affordable. Though slavery was outlawed in the US, the exploitation didn't disappear - it had to go somewhere, so it went offshore to Haiti and other spots in the developing world. But it's the same concept: workers make less money than they're owed so that our products are affordable. Their muscles pay the difference, and we also draw against the land. It's the suffering of which we spare ourselves the sight. I've never paid the full price for a cup of coffee.

But we have a sense of this pain and we want to stop it because we're moral - though with one hand we buy the thing that requires their underpaid labor, with the other we try to help.

The best minds have attempted to cure this, but despite the world's well-wishes, prayers, money and work, Haiti is still slow to heal. It hints at a disconnect - if we keep doing what we're doing we will never reconcile our comfort with our morality. The story we normally tell ourselves about ourselves is incomplete because it doesn't include the damage that eventually comes of our addiction.

After traveling the world I've come to some conclusions, one of which is the following: It's a myth that the US has done something right and that Haiti has done something wrong. The comfort we experience is not the result of a superior system. In fact, our system is not our system, it's THE system, it's the global system. We sit at the top of a wheel and siphon wealth from the unlucky places at the bottom.

--

When I was younger it was easy to proclaim that we needed to crash the system because I knew that it would never happen so I could never be proven wrong. Pretty safe position to take. Now, though, I guess it feels a little closer at hand, intentional or not. So while I don't think the following can be prescribed, I present it as my vision of a healthy society and, therefore, the tack I've started taking with my own life (where applicable). My feeling is that we might as well adopt it sooner rather than later because it'll probably happen at some point anyway.

So, I imagine the alternative to material accumulation is a kind of mutualism, in which our actions, relationships and exchanges are mutually beneficial. Here's what a mutualist paradigm might suggest for Haiti and for the US:

1) An emphasis on wisdom in the education system, from the in-body perspective. For some weird reason we're building schools in Haiti and encouraging them to follow our lead. Our education system doesn't even work that great here. It trains people for uninspired careers in a global economy that's teetering.

- Both places should emphasize physical, emotional and spiritual health based on our relationship with the natural world. There should be a focus on nature and natural phenomena (how to slaughter a chicken, how to save seeds, how to hunt, how to make medicine, etc.) and it should be more guided than taught - let kids follow their interest. "In-body" means subjective experience. That is to say, we should give the in-body experience precedence over external authority. For example, science might tell Haitians that Voodoo doesn't exist. Fuck that.

- The value of the internet to the planet's shared wisdom can't be overstated. In Haiti, getting everyone access to the internet should be one of the top priorities. I feel the best thing we can do for Haiti is give them access to the accumulated global knowledge.

- Another idea would be to foster mentorship within a community (which is to say, education does not need to be confined to schools).

2) An emphasis on localizing economies, governments, families and food systems. This reflects a focus on the real (food, touch, etc) instead of the abstract (money, nationalism, etc). This is a matter of being sensitive within ourselves, our relationships and the place we live. With each layer of abstraction we remove, we remove a depth of exploitation. As our current political climate reveals, anybody can say anything. Words are a technology that can be used for good or bad, so any systemic narratives that don't place a person at the center of his or her world should be dissolved. In practice this means starting (and patronizing) small businesses, giving preference to community problem-solving, and transitioning to local food production.

3) An emphasis on earth systems, which means food forests (permaculture), stream reclamation, etc. It's urgent that Haiti build up its topsoil. This can be done by re-introducing native plants and trees that had lived in equilibrium (permaculture) for the millennia before the French started exploiting the land. Haiti needs trees before the oil runs out. If they can't establish a way to feed themselves by the time transport stops, they're going to be seriously fucked (as will many of us). Though this might seem unnecessarily apocalypse-minded, answer me these questions: how long does it take for a forest to grow back from nothing? How many more years can we count on cheap oil to transport food around the world? I don't know the answers, but at least I'm being alarmist. What this emphasis on earth systems means for the US is ripping up our shaved-vagina front lawns and putting in food plants, for gods' sake.

3a) Remove extraneous luxuries. Our western culture needs to engage with the life-death cycle (death being the reality we avoid through addiction). (I don't know about the Haitian relationship with death.) We've been convinced that death is a bad thing, and as long as that's the case we can be controlled by the threat of death. I think even those of us who think we are ok with death would discover the opposite if we inspected our actions (just as every single one of us agrees that money doesn't buy happiness, yet many of us continue to labor as if it does). As essential as it is that Haiti resoil its land, it's just as essential that we lower our expectations for comfort. There's not enough material on this earth for every person to live like a middle-class westerner. I just made that fact up, but I'll bet it's true. In practice this means seeing how it feels to remove extraneous luxuries. How low can you go?

4) Parent no more than one child! This one is mind-bogglingly simple to me, but there's such ego around it that it's taboo. How long would it take for us to halve the population? Fifty years? The strain on our planet is more a matter of quantity than quality. I see this issue as a relative of 3a - as afraid as we are of death, we are equally stubborn about our right to procreate prolifically. I'll bet this is always a linear relationship. In developing countries this probably means continuing to provide access to birth control and sex education, but shit, you know, how's that going? Again, this large-scale stuff can't be prescribed, so we just have to practice it ourselves and talk openly about it. For the US this means getting used to a lot more oral and anal sex.

5) Justice. I have no idea how to accomplish this one, but I think the biggest problem in Haiti is actually the lack of justice that puts people at the mercy of gangs and criminals. There's a combination of fear and loyalty that seems to stall the system. Loyalty is the opposite of justice - remember that, kids. I have no idea what the real-life prescription would be for Haiti, probably a focus on anti-corruption. In our justice system I'd start with reassessing the correlation between drugs and damage.

I know this has been a long-winded answer, but you gotta write something, right? So, in a nutshell, I don't think the Haitians will have a chance at large-scale, sustainable health until their strength comes from the inside and the world stops messing with it. There are dozens of NGOs doing good things on a small scale in Haiti. Unfortunately there are thousands of NGOs there right now. Maybe we should all take a break. Give Haiti two years without any internal NGOs (except maybe some internet installation and medical groups), then let them invite us back one-by-one according to what they determine their need to be. There would be chaos, but shit has to hit the fan sometime. I don't know if it's helping to give them just enough support to keep them alive.

(I feel like I should leave you with a light-hearted message.)

Ultimately, though, the work we're doing there is an ineffective bandage as long as we continue paying people to cut them.

(yikes, that didn't work.)
Some links you might enjoy!
Kurt Vonnegut on addiction and the system

Addiction explained

Video about fear of death

Food forest in Vietnam

A guide to safe anal sex

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A huge thanks to Mike for being the first guest blogger on the Discussion on Development section of this blog!

I love that Mike wrote about this, because I really hadn't thought about my impact when I buy stuff, and that's a damn shame. Shortly after Mike emailed me his first draft, I went to Target and bought a great little sweater, for $6.00. I was stoked on the price, obviously. But then I thought about what Mike wrote, and I thought to myself, "huh, how much did the person who made this actually get paid?" I mean, you've got over head costs you have to figure in to this six dollars: lease, electricity, shipping, customs, not to mention you're paying the people at Target who stock and run the cash register (to name but a few of the expenses). Now, I know these sweaters are a dime a dozen, so the cost spread out across thousands of sweaters is probably relatively low. But that means someone is probably working under intense pressure to make as many sweaters as they can to meet a quota or to earn enough money off of each sweater they make, so they can put food on the table. Food for thought.

A couple more links I find appropriate:

How Many Slaves Work for You?

TED Talk: How to Combat Modern Slavery

Haiti Stories: What Scratch?

Our drive from PaP to Leogane when we arrived was not as emotionally draining as it was the first time we went, but it was traffic heavy, as..I guess..it always is. Bumper to bumper...hot...bumpy roads...bodies and luggage smushed into a tiny car...watching people live their lives around you, as you sit and wait to crawl forward a few inches. Many times I thought we'd be better off walking...like in the opening scene of Office Space. But then the sun would hit me, and I would be thankful we at least had some shade.

At one point while we were sitting in traffic, it seemed as though the cars in front of us were finally gonna move forward a bit, so our driver got a little anxious and moved forward before the car in front of him did. The left front portion of our car hit the right back portion of the car in front of us...I guess to our left...it's hard to tell when lanes don't exist!

Abby and Adri and I looked at each other..."now what?" Our driver got out to survey the damage, the other driver got out to do the same. Meanwhile, everyone else was still waiting for traffic to move forward, so no disruption was caused by this inspection (in case you were freaking out about that). Both drivers took a look at their cars, didn't even look at each other, and then got back in to their respective vehicles. It was literally less than five seconds.

There was no anger, no screaming, no talk about insurance coverage, no exchange of information, no insults. Nothing.

In my opinion, there was simply an understanding that "shit happens." In Haiti, cars are cars. For the majority of Haitians, they are a mode of transportation, not a demonstration of how much you make a year, or how much money your parents have. The cars probably get more beat up by the potholes in the streets than any damage cars make to each other anyway.

Even though it was a five second interaction, I loved what it stood for (again, in my opinion...who knows what the reality is): as long as my car is fine, and I can still get these people to their destination where they will pay me, what's a scratch on the car? The car still runs, my life goes on. At that moment I had to laugh at how different this interaction would have been in the US: can you imagine an Orange County soccer mom who just got her bumper gently tapped by someone else? Yeah, I'm speaking in generalizations here, but I feel like the concern would have been on the scratch, and not the greater picture: nothing really happened.

Unrelated car troubles on our way in. Unbeknownst to us at the time,

Kisa, Mikey B. and Diego were all in that pickup :)

While I'm at it, there was also that time in Haiti when we ate at MaSaJe for Adri's birthday...and Mike's pizza had mold on it. The fries were delicious though!

Haiti Tweet Up

Since I returned from Haiti last year, I started using Twitter and following various individuals and organizations that work in Haiti, all with the hope that I could live vicariously through the work they're doing, and stay informed of events, news, and developments in Haiti.

A few months ago I started noticing that some of these orgs and individuals started interacting and having conversations with one another via Twitter. It was pretty cool to see how they each encouraged and supported one another through their various programs, and sometimes frustrations. Just so you have an idea on the diversity of what they're all working on: one of them helps run a non profit making clean water accesible to people in Haiti, another is a doctor, another an architect, another runs a non profit that works in the areas of healthcare, water and education, another is a great non profit working on sustainable development. You get the point.

In the past week or so they started talking about meeting up, and per Twitter conversations I have gleaned that they all met up yesterday. Again, it sounds creepy that I know this much, but it's not my fault that all their conversations are in a public forum and come up on my home feed!

Anyhow, it goes to show the power of social networks such as Twitter, if used the right way. I think it's absolutely amazing that individuals working in diverse fields, but each of them performing great work within a fairly small geographic location, were able to connect through Twitter and actually meet each other. I'm excited to see what this means for each of them and their organizations: will they collaborate on any projects? Will they join forces on something really cool? Or maybe just stay in touch and continue to be a support group for one another and the work they're doing?

I guess I'll just have to continue to follow the Twitter feeds!

Haiti Stories: Bamboo Bar & Microfinance

It's a terrible picture, but through the wooden window you an see the t-shelter inside which has the sound system and VIP area

Because three bars within a block radius were not enough options for us, Christa recommended we check out a small little bar she had walked by before and was curious to check out. Getting to the Bamboo Bar was much more of an investment than the local bars by the AHV base. This struck me as unfortunate for this particular bar owner, since we all know: location, location, location.

Christa, Abby, Kisa and I headed out anyway. We walked passed Joe’s, Jackson’s, and Meritas’. We passed Christa’s popcorn lady. Turned the corner and passed the church were I saw more funerals take place in two weeks than some people might see in a year. Turned another corner and passed the Mayor’s office that is still in shambles, and the huge water “bladder” that services the local IDP residents. Walked straight past the pale green model home that doesn’t look like any house in Haiti. Passed street vendors and avoided countless mishaps with tap-taps and moto-taxis.

The Bamboo Bar is owned by a woman named Nadia. She gave us the warmest and most sincere welcome I’ve ever received from a complete stranger. She rushed to set up a table for us in the "VIP" area, which was in the t-shelter section of the bar. Nadia had put her temporary shelter to use by converting it into a bar, and enclosed the area surrounding the shelter, probably doubling the size of her bar.

We enjoyed a few moments of normal conversation before the typical level of music in Haiti started: beyond loud. Oh well...screaming is a good way to exercise your vocal chords anyway. Christa mentions some of this in her blog.

It took me a while to place what I saw reflected in this woman’s face. She was so HAPPY. She was happy to have patrons. But I think it went beyond that, she was happy to just be doing what she was doing: running her own business. It’s something most of us in the developed world take for granted: the ability to finance and start your own business. I complain that I don’t have the means or ability to start my own firm, but the reality is that I’m just scared shitless of doing it. If I wanted to make it happen, I could. Sure, my credit might be crap, but that’s my own fault, and I’m sure I could still figure something out to get a small business loan. But for the rest of the world, that hasn’t always been an option.

I want to stop here before going forward and give a disclaimer: I have no idea how Nadia financed her business or how she got started. But the Bamboo Bar got my mind thinking about microfinance (“MF”) again, and I wondered if I had just witnessed micro-lending in action.

So what is microfinancing? In the words of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (“CGAP”): “[m]icrofinance offers poor people access to basic financial services such as loan, savings, money transfer services and microinsurance.”

How is this different than your bank or my bank? Your bank or my bank most likely wouldn’t lend money to the poorest people in the world. They tend to have no credit history, no collateral, and most likely no steady source of income. This makes it difficult for them to get started with a business, since they don’t have the capital to invest in starting a business, and they usually can’t obtain a loan to get that capital. MF gives small loans to people so they can overcome these obstacles, and get their business off the ground. These loans can be as little as $20 or $100, but in developing countries, this might be all that people need to buy into their initial investment.

The idea of MF was popularized by Dr. Mohammed Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank (“GB”), one of the first MF lending institutions (if not the first). GB has some pretty impressive statistics:

• GB’s equity is owned by 95% of the borrowers and the remainder by the Bangladeshi government
• It has more than 8.36 million borrowers (97% of which are women)
• Since it’s inception, it has lent $10.38 billion, of which $9.2 billion has been repaid
• It doesn’t take donations: it functions solely off of loans made and paid (which is pretty impressive given the demographic of who they’re lending to, IMHO).

Malhotra, Heide B. “Microfinance at a Crossroads.” The Epoch Times [Southern California] 21-27 April, 2011, Issue 201100016: A1, A6.

Jacqueline Novogratz wrote extensively about micofinancing in her book, The Blue Sweater . She wrote about the difficulties in starting a MF institution: how do you hold borrowers accountable? How can you ensure that they pay back? It’s certainly no easy feat.

Like all things, there are pro’s and con’s. It seems that MF was mostly a positive solution to the poverty trap dilemma until it started expanding beyond its grassroots beginnings. It started as a movement to help the poorest of the poor, but as the years have passed and momentum has grown, so have the populations it benefits. The problem with expansion? People always get greedy when they start seeing a profit in something.

The 2011 Banana Skins Report states the risks facing MF as the following: “growing commercialism, as evidenced by an increasing focus on size and profitability, a decline in standards, particularly in the area of lending, and a sense that the industry may be drifting away from its original ‘double bottom line‘ purpose,” page 5.

One criticism I’ve read about is the high interest rate some MFI’s (microfinancing institutions) charge. According to Kiva, a nonprofit that works in MF, these high interest rates are attributed to the following: MFI’s have to cover three kinds of costs. 1 & 2: “cost of money that it lends and the cost of loan defaults,” and 3) the transaction cost. CGAP also provides a more in depth explanation for higher interest rates (parts of it are actually identical to each other, not sure which one came first). Basically transactions costs are higher for these smaller institutions, and the cost of loan defaults is most likely higher than your typical loan.

Other criticisms refer to the lack of regulations in the MF world: no one regulates, so institutions can take advantage of people who need these institutions to survive. The obvious solution would be to create a regulatory body, or have government regulation of the institutions. A blog I came across had an interesting point about this: people who benefit from these loans are predominantly in countries where the government isn’t the most trusted, efficient, or transparent regulatory body. So who do you turn to?

A BBC article published just last December (2010) reported that “[m]ore than 80 people [had] taken their lives in the last few months after defaulting on micro-loans.”. Why? “Multiple lending, over-indebtedness, coercive recovery practices and unseemly enrichment by promoters and senior executives.” I think this is bound to happen when you start getting larger institutions involved that want to make sure they get a return on their investment, like Citigroup who is apparently now in the MF industry as well (by “this” I mean “coercive recovery practices,” etc., not suicides--I wonder if that’s cultural or just human desperation?).

For all the criticisms, and I’m sure improvements can always be made, I don’t think it takes away from the fact that MF has actually helped hundreds of thousands of individuals get on their feet and make a living. Organizations like Fonkoze seem to be doing the right thing, and their achievements should not be overshadowed by the shortcomings of other organizations that have profit in mind over the well being of those they are meant to serve.

MF alone won’t eradicate world poverty, but if implemented widely, correctly, and efficiently, it’s a step in the right direction. Like all other problems though, we just have to figure out how to do that...will it be through government, international or self regulation? Or something completely different?

One thing I do know: Nadia was happy.

Haiti Stories: Trash Burning.

Tuesday night Abby and I had to sign up for whatever job we wanted to do on Wednesday, our last full work day in Haiti. I really wanted to go out with a bang and spend the whole day on a rubble site, but the idea of having sufficient time to empty out my home for the last two weeks was nice, I had to take care of a couple things for Haiti Scholarships, plus it was Adri's birthday and we were determined to find her a cake so we could sing happy birthday that night. We opted to find something we could do for a half day, so we'd bust ass in the morning, and take the afternoon off to get everything else done (we had a mental checklist of everything we needed to do). Turns out the only thing we could do for a half day on Wednesday was housekeeping. Less than ideal.

All Hands is true communal living. So someone has to do these things. Someone has to wash dishes. And someone has to take out the trash. And someone has to scrub the toilets. On Wednesday, that was us. Housekeeping chores actually aren't too bad, mostly because Abby tackled the toilets. The one thing we didn't want to do was having to collect all the trash (including bathrooms....), carry it all the way through the field in the back of the base, and set it on fire. It's just not good times.

But it's a good story.

We collected all the trash, then carried it out to the back, where we saw what was supposed to be the easier way of carrying the trash cans to the end of the field: a pull cart attached to a bike. Basic, but word on the street was that it was a lifesaver when it came to handling the trash situation, and the fact that you have to carry it all the way to the end of the Joint Logistics Base. Ok. Easy enough, right? Load it up, peddle those happy feet...unload.

Weeeeeeeelllllllllll. The loading part worked out fine. Then Abby got on the bike and sat on the seat. Then the seat fell off. Then she jumped off. The seat had a tendency to flip back when you sat on it, exposing people of both sexes to injury in areas that are crucial if you ever want to have kids. With the seat no longer attached, you ran the danger of injuring yourself on the metal that was sticking out.

Abby graciously allowed me the opportunity to try my luck. I put the seat back on top, knowing there was no way in hell it was going to stay there. I jumped on the bike and tried to sit on it. That didn't go well. I gave up hope on the seat but thought, hey, remember when you were little and you would ride your bike standing up? Well...that should work. And it did, for about two peddle rotations. At which point the pull cart became unattached to the bike, and I was no longer pulling a cart.

At this point, we'd already attracted a nice crowd of local warehouse workers who were thoroughly enjoying our adventure. Luckily, Abby and I took the higher ground and decided to laugh at our situation, rather than start crying. Ok. We arranged the trash cans on the pull cart so the weight would ensure that it remain attached to the bike (basic physics came into play on this one. Thank you Mr. Dempsey). Reattached pull cart to bike. I decided to give it another go with the stand up method.

Holy ridiculous. I almost wish I could have watched this scene with our spectators, as I'm sure I would have been on the ground laughing. I had some trouble steering the bike without sitting on the bike...which led me to weave back and forth...the whole time trying to remember not to sit on what was sure to rob me of a comfortable trip home the next day. I think these were some of the most frantic and confusing 10 seconds of my trip in Haiti. Pull cart fail.

Since we had condensed the trash to three trash cans, we decided we would each just carry one of the lighter ones to the back, then come back and carry the heavier one together. Which is fine...until you have men propositioning you for $5. Then things get uncomfortable. Mind you, there was absolutely nothing glamorous about us (no offense, Abby). We'd been sweating all morning from cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms, and we were carrying trashcans full of a day's waste of 80+ people. How is that attractive?

As difficult as it was to not reply energetically to kissy noise advances, we made it to the end of the base were we found the three wonderful incinerators where we had to dump our trash and set it on fire. Advice on best ways to start a fire of trash, from a very trustworthy base manager: shit tickets. Yep, toilet paper. Worked like a charm every time. The rest of this story I won't really bore you with. We burned trash. We watched it. It burned some more. It was quite the experience.

And much more of an adventure than we had signed up for.

Thank you pull cart.

Haiti Stories: Deforestation

So until I figure out exactly what I want to say about my trip to Haiti, I'm just gonna share some random short stories on here.

One work site I got to work on was school 9, where I got to observe while they finished rendering, then went in the next day with Abby and a small group, and we did a deep clean of the school so we could start painting the following work day. Getting to this site requires a little bit further of a drive than most other work sites, which allows for a nice view of fields and mountains. Although it was nice to get out of Leogane and enjoy a longer-than-usual drive every morning through some rural country side, the view of the mountains always made me sad.

I can't remember where I read it, but I do remember reading that back in the day Haiti was one of the richest countries in the Caribbean, as far as natural resources and what not. If you can believe it, Haiti was actually called "the Pearl of the Caribbean." It was difficult to keep that in mind when I looked at the bare and brown mountains on our way to and from the school or beach. How did they get so bare and brown? I'm sure there are many reasons, but a big one is the reliance on charcoal as the main fuel source in Haiti. I could go on at this point...but realized I started with a description of this as a "short" story...so I won't digress...

But I will share the following video from a former All Hands volunteer that might give a little hope:

Trees For Life from Keely Kernan on Vimeo.

Alive and Well in Haiti

I told myself I wouldn't spend as much time blogging while I'm here as I did last time. I want to spend more time being effective and doing what I need to do while I'm here...but considering we're on lockdown due to today's elections, I figured I would at least give a quick update :)

So far things are very mellow today, as far as I'm aware from people around here and what I can gleam off Twitter and the internet. The polls opened late and have bee missing documents and people haven't been able to find their name on voting registries, so the outcome should be interesting. I am pretty sure Abby, Adri and I will be long gone before any semblance of results come about, which is when I expect protests of any kind will take place. We are hoping that we can get to work tomorrow. Since I did some rubbling last time I was here, I'm excited to work on a couple other projects that were not here last year, particularly working on school builds and the bio sand water filters. I also want to get my fill of rubbling one of these days!

It's been such a blessing to have Christa here...Abby and I met her on our last trip, and she's been here for most of the time we've been gone. In that year she's got a great understanding of the Creole language, and seeing her interact with all of the members and children of the community is extremely amazing and inspiring. You can simply tell the pleasure that people get when they see Christa: there's so much love in their eyes, and they are genuinely excited to see her. Christa was our fearless leader at the local market yesterday (since it's Sunday, we have no cook, and since we're in lockdown, we can't go eat anywhere, which means we had to load up on food to cook today, yesterday). It was Abby, Adri, myself, and two of the other people that were on our shuttle into Leogane on Thursday: Diego from Mexico and Kisa from....I think Washington state? Basically we told Christa what our menu for today was...and she led us through all the market stalls and translated at each of these until we had purchased our pasta, garlic, carrots, mini-lettuce, tomatoes, mangos, and bananas. Our hope is to use basil grown here and have a nice pesto sauce pasta with a light salad. Sharing the kitchen with 70 other hungry people, however, should be interesting. Anyhow, Christa is awesome, and I'm so glad she's still here!

The last few days have been really interesting...talking a lot about everything going on. Hopefully I'll know how to share my thoughts on all of this once I'm done processing all of it internally.

Until then: I'm a live and well, and happy to be back :)

February 28, 2011

Holy crap, how is it March tomorrow??

What I did:

• Half day at the office
• Did some phone research and make some important calls...which resulted in more calls being added to my to-do list
• Walked Lilo!
• Took stuff to Goodwill..I think my garage will be in working condition again by next week, which is fantastic news
• This weekend I worked a TON on the slideshow presentation for the HBA diner on Saturday, so hopefully I can wrap that up and be done with it by Wednesday
• Helped Karin finalize some silent auction stuff
• Worked on blogs for Haiti Scholarships
• Made dinner! Delicious pasta primavera and asparagus
• Went to church with my mom on Sunday, and watched Amazing Race with Jeff's family

What I didn't do:

• Work on acceptance letters for HS
• Write letter of support for small claims matter (which is no longer such a small claim...16 other couples are also trying to sue this wedding photographer)
• Work on immigration cases
• Research for 31 Bits
• Contact school organizations regarding Haiti Scholarships and student sponsorships
• Figure out what I need to get for my trip to Haiti...I can't believe it's in a little over two weeks, time has FLOWN by!
• Probably much much more...

Countdown Begins...

I knew time would fly. I think the final decision was made around November, that Abby and I would be returning to Haiti. And I knew then that time would fly by. It has. We leave in less than a month! We booked our tickets a couple weeks ago, and I keep looking at my calendar as the days go by, in disbelief.

I have a job interview this Thursday, and I've been working on my oral arguments for a week now: giving me a two week "vacation" two weeks after my start date is actually a GOOD thing! Hopefully I can pull it off...although I'd have to get the job in the first place :)

Things that are freaking me out a bit:

• I need a backpack. If anyone is willing to let me borrow theirs, please let me know.
• I need a sleeping pad. Last time I slept on a sleeping bag over wooden planks...and although in the long term I think it was great for my back...it wasn't great for sleeping. So if anyone has a thick yoga mat or something like that, that they wouldn't mind losing for two weeks, I'd be forever grateful.
• I have to get malaria pills....which means I need to raise a little more cash to buy them
• This whole job situation...

And yet, I couldn't be more excited. I think this trip will be night and day from my last trip. I think my perspective has changed, my purpose has changed, and my plans are bigger. Any my cousin Adriana is coming, which I'm VERY excited about :)

What I've Been Reading Lately...

Over a year ago, I wrote about reading series of books, and how it had become a bit of an obsession of mine. Lately I haven't been reading any series of books, per se, but have definitely fallen into a very particular genre of books. For Christmas, Jeff and I each got a $25 gift card to Barnes & Noble from his parents. Let me tell you, we are both huge fans of reading, so we were pretty stoked about this gift, and didn't wait more than a day to hit up B&N and find something exciting to spend our money on.

Jeff mentioned I should spend my money on getting something "fun" to read this time, since every book I'd read before then was pretty serious in nature. I tried. But I just couldn't. I went to the Spanish section, where I usual find a good, light-hearted and entertaining read (and I get to brush up on my Spanish). There were several titles that looked intriguing, but not nearly enough so to make me want to spend my Christmas gift on them. I was itching to head back downstairs to the section that really interested me. And so it was that my gift card was used for the same type of "serial" reading that I've been doing lately. I feel the books I'm choosing lately are almost a self-education in a new area of study: I can't afford to pay for a masters in international development, but I'm reading a lot of literature about it, and maybe that's enough for now.

So here's my list of serial reading in international development/non-profit development so far:

It all really started with an ad in the online version of the New York Times for Three Cups of Tea. Jeff will tell you I'm a sucker for advertising. The reviews were great, I bought it, I read it. My initial reaction is to say that it was great, inspiring, moving, entertaining, etc. And I think it was (it's been a while), but I do believe it took me a while to actually get into it. If you haven't heard about this book before, it's the story of how Greg Mortenson started the Central Asia Institute, a non-profit that raises money to build schools in Afghanistan, and now Pakistan. It really is an inspiration of how much one man can accomplish, and a testimony to what a difference education can make.

The first book I bought after I returned from my trip to Haiti was Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder. It tells the story of Doctor Paul Farmer, who I've already mentioned several times in Cielo Azul. With this book I started to fold the top corner of passages or quotes that I liked, or stuff I wanted to research more (but still haven't). Here are a few:

• "'Clean water and health care and school and food and tin roofs and cement floors, all of these things should constitute a set of basics that people must have as birthrights,'" quoting Dr. Paul Farmer, page 91.
• Page 116 describes Dr. PF's writing of The Uses of Haiti, which I want to eventually read.
• "There are more billionaires today than ever before...We are talking about wealth that we've never seen before. And the only time that I hear talk of shrinking resources among people like us, among academics, is when we talk about things that have to do with poor people...Margaret Mead once said, Never underestimate the ability of a small group of committed individuals to change the world...Indeed, they are the only ones who ever have." Quoting Jim Kim, page 164.
• "Change the world? Of course they could. [Paul Farmer] really believed this, and he really believed that 'a small group of committed individuals' could do it. He liked to say of PIH, 'People think we're unrealistic. They don't know we're crazy.'" Page 169.
• "If one pushes this ology to its logical conclusion, then God is to be found in the struggle against injustice. But if the odds are so preposterously stacked against the poor--machetes versus Uzis, donkeys versus tanks, stones versus missiles, or even typhoid versus cancer--then is it responsible, is ti wise, to push the poor to claim what is theirs by right? What happens when the destitute in Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, wherever, are moved by a rereading of the Gospels to stand up for what is theirs, to reclaim what was theirs and was taken away, to ask only that they enjoy decent poverty rather than the misery we see here every day in Haiti? We know the answer to that question, because we are digging up their bodies in Guatemala." Paul Farmer discussing his distrust of ideologies, page 195.

Next came Travesty in Haiti: A true account of Christian missions, orphanages, fraud, food aid and drug trafficking, by Timothy T. Schwartz. This book gives a critical look at how foreign aid has really affected Haiti. I think it's a great read for anyone wanting to work in this field, so you know what you're dealing with, and what you want to avoid. He spoke a lot about the effects of food aid, and large NGO's that work in Haiti. With this book, I moved it a step up from folding pages to....highlighting!

• "I came to understand that food aid crashed the local agriculture markets, driving peasants off the land..." (page 47).
• Speaking about what little there was to know about wind generators that had been installed in the early 1990s, and quickly fallen into disrepair: "But it was enough because it is the typical story regarding development all over Haiti: 'It is broken, can't be fixed, and nobody knows anything else about it.'" (page 66)
• "When I first arrived in Haiti...I was enthusiastic. My enthusiasm and belief that I could make a contribution kept me returning despite the hardships, the violence, the coups, and the embargoes. But ten years later I was a different person. Perhaps I was simply burned out...Perhaps more than anything else, by 2000, I no longer was an objective researcher. I was deeply angry at what I perceived to be the widespread fraud, corruption, arrogance, greed, self-interest and apathy that afflicted the entire development community which was, in my opinion, a total failure, serving only to make the poor poorer and the rich richer" (page 216).

Then, per a friendly recommendation, I read The End of Poverty, by Jeffrey Sachs. This book was a little challenging for me, since it's heavy on economics and numbers. Let's just say that in college I took the "economics for dummies" course. It had a lot of interesting information and thoughts on how poverty can actually be eradicated in time to meet the Millennium Goals. Curiously enough, the book I'm currently reading, The White Man's Burden, is a response to some of Mr. Sach's arguments. One of my favorite parts of the book was actually the forward by Bono.

• "More than one million African children, and perhaps as many as three million, succumb to malaria each year...There is simply no conceivable excuse for this disease to be taking millions of lives each year" (7).
• "The rich countries do not have to invest enough in the poorest countries to make them rich; they need to invest enough so that these countries can get their foot on the ladder [of development]" (73).
• "Eliminating poverty at the global scale is a global responsibility that will have global benefits. No single country can do it on its own" (327).
• "American political leaders and the broad public rarely recognize that the U.S. government has repeatedly made international commitments to do much more than the United States is doing, and even less do they realize that the lack of follow-through carries an enormous foreign policy cost" (337).
• On page 350 Sachs discusses the importance of education: "The wider the education, including in social and political principles, the more peaceful, sound, and progressive the entire society would be."

After scanning a few stands at Barnes and Noble, I came across The Rainy Season by Amy Wilentz. What I loved about this book is that it was an interesting way to learn about the historical context of Haiti, including the end of the Duvalier regime, and the rise of Aristide.

• "Haiti's stuck in an uncomfortable position now: the earthquake has opened the country up to all sorts of interventions, speculations, and exploitations, but unquestionably the help is needed. There's very little room for resistance in this disaster. The country's lying there like a rape victim waiting for further onslaught" (introduction, xiii).
• "It took me a little while to realize that if you wait long enough in Haiti, and really not so long, the tyranny and violence is likely to return, and that a people's victory is not always in the end what is seems to be in the beginning" (20).
• "Whenever change is effected without bloodshed in Haiti, it means that an equitable deal has been struck among all interested parties" (129).
• There is an interesting paragraph about the culture of voodoo and it's perseverance despite foreign opposition to it; too long to type out now though :) page 165.
• Page 183 provides great insight to the relationship between poverty and religion.
• Page 267 talks about trees, and how there are many NGO's that want to give trees to farmers in order to improve deforestation, but farmers are weary of planting trees because they can't afford to use what precious water they have on growing trees, trees that are not going to be quick cash returns.
• Speaking to an AID worker about Haitian's that don't support NGO projects because they know these projects fail to follow through on promises made: "'I know, I know,' he said. 'But at a certain point, who cares if they want it? They need it, and they're going to have it. They don't understand. What Haiti needs is infrastructure, and we are going to make sure they get it whether they want it or not'" (284).
• Some of the most sobering passages of Wilentz's book are graphic descriptions of violence surrounding elections.

I then went back to the beginning, and decided to read the sequel to Three Cups of Tea: Stones into Schools, by Greg Mortenson. This book follows Mortenson's quest to start building schools in the most difficult regions of Pakistan. I sadly just realized I didn't highlight much on this one, but I did find it a much more entertaining read than Three Cups.

• "Amid the rush to provide tents, food, and medical supplies, few of the western NGOs seemed to be giving much thought to schools. Based on past experience, however, the militant groups who were busy setting up their aid networks fully understood the power of education under such circumstances" (179).
• Mortension writes about Chritopher Kolenda, and a book written by him called Leadership: The Warrior's Art. On my follow up list.
• "...I am told that there will be roughly 200 children who will study at the school; and that the skills they will learn and the ideas to which they will be exposed may usher in changes--some good, others bad--which no one can foresee" (epilogue, 375).

My last read was The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World, by Jacqueline Novogratz. Novogratz is the founder of Acumen Fund, and talks about how she began developing for-profit enterprises by and for the poorest populations around the world.

• "I began to see what it meant to put into practice the idea of extending basic services as simple as bank accounts that the middle class took for granted to people who are often invisible to those in power" (17).
• "Cote d'Ivoire became a place where just walking down the street filled me with questions about justice and compassion, power and money, and the randomness of where we are born and how much that determines who we become" (23).
• "In this case, well-intentioned people gave poor women something 'nice' to do, such as making cookies or crafts, and subsidized the project until there was no more money left, then moved on to a new idea. This is a no-fail way to keep already poor people mired in poverty" (76).
• "Meanwhile, I found myself frustrated once again by development 'experts' who looked in from the outside and suggested clever solutions that created a lot of noise, distorted markets, resulted in systemic corruption, and accomplished little" (94).
• Somethings to check out: Next Generation Leadership, Three Guineas Fund
• "Patient capital is money invested over a longer period of time with the acknowledgment that returns might be below market, but with a wide range of management support services to nurture the company to liftoff and beyond" (229).
• "That same resilience, however, can manifest itself in passivity, fatalism, and a resignation to the difficulties of life that allows injustice and inequity to strengthen, grow, and solidify into a system where people forget to question until an event or series of events awakens the next generation" (275).
• "They balance their passion for change with an ability to get things done. Mostly, they believe fundamentally in the inherent capacity of every human being to contribute" (277).
• "...scientists are finding, not surprisingly, that the one factor that does bring greater happiness is serving others.." (279).

All in all, I'm quite enjoying my current series. Feel free to send me any recommendations you think might fit in :)

*PS: this is my 200th blog entry. Can't believe I've been boring you guys with my thoughts 200 times already.

Haiti Stories: Presented at the Fowler Museum, UCLA

"Did you dress up for Paul Farmer?" "Yeah, is that creepy?"

So began Abby and my trip to the UCLA Fowler Museum for their conference: Haiti Stories/Istwa Ayiti. And it only got better. The speakers included some of the most fascinating and inspiring people from all walks of life: poets, writers, journalists, photographers, academics, doctors, human rights activists, anthropologists, film makers, and the list goes on. I was honestly star struck.

Damon Winters, a photojournalist with the New York Times, opened with some amazing pictures from Haiti that brought people to tears. I was truly sad when he ran out of time, since it seemed he had a lot more pictures to share.

Right after Damon, Don Cosentino gave an interesting presentation on Haitian vodoo. He shared some great pictures and stories, but most impressive was something that Abby pointed out as he was getting on stage: his cane was black, with red flames coming up from the bottom. Now here is a man I want to buy a drink for, and just hear story after story...

Next up was anthropologist Catherine Maternowska, co-founder of Lambi Fund of Haiti. Her story brought me to tears. She spoke of a baby who had oral and anal gonorrhea after a man cut through her tent, tied up her pregnant mother, and orally and anally raped her. But she also spoke of the compassionate US military personnel who helped her obtain much needed supplies to provide care for these victimes by reporting the materials "lost in transit, unaccounted for." It's insane that she had to rely on conspiring humanists to provide basic materials, since the release of aid materials was/is surrounded by red tape and basically bullshit. But at least she found someone who was willing to look the other way.

Then there was the LA Times writer, Joe Mozingo, who spoke of the increasing responsibility of the media to portray Haiti in its entirety, not only the ghastly stories that create headlines because they're horrific and shocking to us. He called for a focus on the bigger picture, not just the horror of Haiti. I loved his honesty and clarity.

Here's a cool piece another presenter, Maggie Steber, worked on, which are photographs of a whole boulevard in Haiti, kinda cool.

David Belle gave a presentation about the only film school in Haiti, located in Jacmel, which allows Haitian students to learn how to make films and commercials. They just received a contract worth millions of dollars to make commercials for an energy drink in Haiti! He showed several clips of the work Haitian students have done, most impressively a documentary that was presented at the Amsterdam Film Festival. You can check out the trailer here. Please check it out. I'm going to do some research to find out where the whole movie is available...

Claudine Michel is a professor of black studies at UCSB, and she used an interesting phrase in her presentation: "how many cups of revolution..." She used this phrase repeatedly, as in: how many cups of revolution until the little girl in the camps doesn't have to wear a whistle to prevent her from being raped when she goes to the restroom at night? How many cups of revolution until....etc. I might have heard wrong, because I don't know exactly what "cups of revolution" means, maybe someone can enlighten me, but I liked it nonetheless.

I wish Paul Farmer had talked more, but he did have some good thoughts about foreign assistance; basically: good intentions go astray. He mentioned how much rhetoric has been centered around building Haiti "better," and he said we need to build back foreign assistance better also, because there are so many flaws in how it's done. "Good intentions are not enough, actions are what matter." Personal hero.

Bob Maguire, a professor of international affairs and director of the Trinity Haiti program, also had a good quote: "development is not a matter of changing things, but changing people." I think I could write my thoughts about that for a while, but I'm growing sleepy and I'm sure readers are growing weary...

Amy Wilentz, the moderator for the event and author of The Rainy Season, mentioned she was reading a book by Erica James. I believe I have found it on Amazon, and it will probably be my next read once I finish The White Man's Burden, which is proving to be a slow read for me.

This is basically a regurgitation of my notes from the event of stuff I wanted to check out or follow up on; hopefully they're helpful to someone other than just myself.

On a semi-sidenote: when people are given the privilege to address amazing individuals at a conference during the q&a session, they need to save everyone's time and just ask the question so the panel will have the time to fully discuss and answer it, rather than spend five minutes trying to impress the panel with what they've done with their lives and who they are. I'm sorry, but it's true :)

Reflections

I wasn't planning on writing anything on my blog about the one year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake--I figure today is the one day when everyone else will be talking about it, and I don't think there's much I can add that I haven't already shared with readers prior to today, and what every news broadcast is already doing. But I came across a blog entry of a good friend, so I wanted to share some of that with you guys. I'm only sharing a part here, but I recommend reading the whole thing. Here's the excerpt that got me:

"First, I ask you to take a moment of silence with the rest of the world at 4:53 eastern (2153 GMT) to remember the approximate quarter of million people who died in the disaster. But please go further than that. One moment of silent prayer or reflection is not enough for a disaster this large. It demands several moments.

So please also take a moment when you walk into your house. Remember those Haitians (about 1 million) still without a house.

Take a moment when you turn on your tap and water instantly appears. Remember those Haitians who must carry their water miles to and from clean water sources.

When you flush your toilet, remember those who are still using pit toilets, or having to flush only once a day to conserve water.

As you prepare to come back to school, or go to work, imagine your life totally upended. Family members no longer here, plans scrapped. That is reality for millions of Haitians."

This is something that was really difficult to deal with when I first returned from my trip, and something I know is constantly on mine and Abby's mind. How can we not feel guilty about everything we have, when people around the world have so little? How is this fair?

I'm not five years old anymore, so I don't need my mom to tell me that life isn't fair...I know it isn't...but I don't know why is has to be SO unfair (ok, maybe I'm still five). I think about how much water we use just to shower or wash our hands...and people in Africa don't even have enough water to drink. It's crazy, right? (or is it just me...?)

I came across an interesting passage in a book I just finished, called The Blue Sweater, by Jacqueline Novogratz. Novogratz is talking about celebrating the wrap up of a big project in Rwanda, and standing in line at a local store with two bottles of champagne. While in line it hit her that these two bottles cost more than most Rwandans made in a whole year--she was embarrassed when it came time for the Rwandan store clerk to ring her up. In the end, her companion convinced her to buy them: " 'I know it doesn't make a lot of sense on one level. We're working with the really poor, and you and I couldn't be more privileged in relative terms. But don't pretend to be someone you aren't. If you were at home, you'd celebrate with champagne. If you want to remain happy and alive in this work, you need to reconcile this part of who you are and understand the inconsistencies with the work you do and how it all fits into your whole way of being.' " (page 115).

The whole "don't pretend to be someone you're not" is pretty intense, and true. We have been born into privilege, maybe not rich-trust-fund kind of privilege, but we have abundant resources nonetheless. We can't deny that, and we shouldn't. As Novogratz puts it: "The challenge wasn't whether to buy a couple of bottles of champagne; it was instead not to take our privilege for granted and to use it in a way that served the world and our highest purpose" (116, emphasis added).

So today, take a minute to reflect. How can you use your privileges to serve the highest purpose?

Further Adventures in Advertising

Rain. Constant rain.

As I mentioned before, Abby and I are doing our own fundraising for our trip, and the first idea that popped into my head was to do a garage sale, with donations of stuff provided by friends and family. The response was overwhelming. I underestimated how happy people are to have someone come to their home to pick up junk they have already had sitting in a corner of their home for months!

Abby and I prepared by advertising in three different online sources (Craigslist, Pennysaver, Recycler). I didn't feel comfortable listing the full address of the location we were having it at (which was generously provided by my in-laws, thank you again so much!), so I just listed the major cross streets and told prospective customers to look for our signs. We also had a dear friend design an amazing flier which we sent to friends and family, and spread across facebook as much as we possibly could. It's hard to tell if any of that worked, however. I really think most of our customers were just random people looking for garage sales that saw our signs. We did have one customer who came specifically for our event and simply donated $10 without buying anything, which was fantastic! But I didn't ask her how she found out about it, so I guess we'll never know what did it.

But there was Rain.

A few days before the event we noticed the weather forecast. Abby and I were vigilant about that forecast. We saw it slowly climb from 10%....to 30%....to 80% chance of rain. We were honestly so disheartened that all our hard work promoting, and picking up stuff from all over the place was going to be in vain.

Thankfully a friend came through at the last minute and let us borrow her tent, under which we stuffed as much stuff as we could. It wasn't the best organized, by far, but it worked. Although it did rain, and it was constant throughout the day, thankfully people still came and went and haggled (oh they haggled) and paid. We tried to combine it with a bake sale, which was successful to a lesser extent. I think the prime hours for the bake sale would probably be between 6-8am, and unfortunately we didn't get that going until after 8am. I think we'll try just hot chocolate and coffee this Saturday, starting right at 6am. In the end we made $685, which is more than enough for at least one flight to Haiti!

One thing we thought might work to our advantage was to show the work we'd be doing when we go back, so people know what their money is going towards. I did a picture timeline of a volunteer's day with All Hands, hopefully depicting everything accurately for our customers. Unfortunately, and it should've been expected, most people didn't really care, as long as they could save a buck. When people tried to haggle down prices, I told them the purpose of the garage sale in an effort to keep my original price, and all I got was a blank stare, haha. Oh well.

One of the things I kept observing throughout the day, other than the constant rain, was that as much as we sold, there was still SO. MUCH. STUFF. Honestly, anyone driving by around 2pm and seeing everything that was still strewn about would have thought we hadn't sold a single item. What I kept thinking: we have to move this stuff all over again. Sigh.

Fortunately we had a small army of friends and family that helped us pack and move everything. Abby and I are going to go through all the leftover stuff as well as the new donations this week to try to make the next garage sale a little more organized. Yep, there's enough for another one! Hopefully we'll make up the rest that's needed for the second flight.

In summary, I think if you're looking to raise money for something, and willing to put in the time and labor, a garage sale seems to be a good way to go. Advertise as much as you can, but I think the most important thing is to have visible signs at all major intersections, that's the only sure thing. I also reached out to not only friends and family, but also professional contacts, and was lucky enough to get a good response. Don't leave any stone unturned :) And make sure you have a small army of people to help you!

All in all, I think it was a very successful first fundraiser. Now we just have to come up with more ideas on how to make the rest of the money we need. Suggestions?