Kiva & The Girl Effect: Social Activism Among Women - Essay Example

?Running head: SOCIAL ACTIVISM & ACTION Kiva & The Girl Effect: Social Activism Among Women School Affiliation Kiva & The Girl Effect: Social Activism Among Women When considering what the definition of social activism and action might be, what first comes to mind is pinpointing an issue that targets a certain group or demographic and trying to make a difference. Typically, activism and action do not need to take place unless for some reason there is a problem with a tactic, technique, law, regulation or a fault in equality. Social activism means holding rallies, tying oneself to a tree, picketing, going on parades, taking part in spreading the word about an injustice in a somewhat peaceful manner that is created to at least attract attention in some sort of way. Social activism and action are a way to create a difference within an interest group to get people to pay attention to their motive. It borderlines on calm rallying and doing what it takes to create awareness about an issue without quite reaching the point of being rowdy enough to be arrested. Social activism is the start of or a portion of a movement. It is a group with one common goal. Activism is a means of noticing a problem, looking for a solution, creating awareness and trying to get in front of the eyes of the public to get something done. Typically this involves recruiting people or even convincing members of political parties or other groups. While evaluating the Kiva website, what was learned about microfinance from this source is that this website is a means for people in what appears to be third world or developing countries that are trying to create a means to earn a wage. These people do not have traditional means to banking services and loans to earn money. The people taking advantage of these microfinances and loans are extremely poor but still need ways to earn money to feed their families. These people are selling handmade aprons just to put their children in school. However, there is very little opportunity for them to become entrepreneurs (Kiva.org, 2012). Since these poor people do not have access credit or financial institutions that can readily hand them out large amounts of money for loans for them to obtain supplies, they instead are connected with Kiva.org in order to get started. Unfortunately other microfinancial institutions have higher interest rates. At that point, they are able to collect a little bit of money at a time. Typically, these people get money in non-traditional ways and also save the money in stashes. It is surprising by looking at the map on the Kiva website just how many people are capable of surviving on barely a dollar per day of wage (Kiva.org, 2012). When looking at a few different women that utilize the services of Kiva.org to become empowered and figure out how to earn money for their basic day to day needs, there were several to chose from. Some of the success stories include a young woman by the name of Monica who actually is taking out her second microfinance loan because she has learned how to grow her business. She is one of many who are taking out more loans because of the success they have had using Kiva's website for the first one (Kiva, 2012). Another success story is one of a woman named Helen. With the finances obtained from Kiva, she makes homemade peanut butter and native cakes to help support her family (Victoria, 2009). Another woman in the Phillippines has been selling snacks and food through the loans taken through the microfinances of Kiva (Gran, 2009). A fourth success story is that of Iaeli Fanueli who runs a retail shop in her village, seven days a week. Having started out selling rice, sugar flour salt out from the front of her house, she has come a long way. She originally used a Kiva loan to buy basic materials for her shop and continue to keep her shelves full of products for the locals to purchase. Her microfinance loan has allowed her to send her children to school, have a better place to live and better feed her family (Samuelu, 2009). The fifth success story of interest is one of Gogo Samuelu who has been runing an ice cake business for over a year. She used her loan to purchase supplies and pay her electricity bills and in turn has taken her earnings to help her family prosper by earning a decent weekly wage compared to others in her area. Samuelu has already paid back her loan from Kiva and is working on building her business (Samuela, 2009). When consider the five women on the Kiva site who I would be more likely to fund would be the poultry and agriculture business of Gai's Group in Vietnam. This woman raises chickens and grows rice as her source of income, at this point, she is almost three-fourths to the goal of her loan. In addition to Gai, there are three other women who also work with her. They are Hue, Hoa and Van. All three are young women that each have two children, raising chickens, running a wood work station and running a general store are all of their ambitions. The idea of helping contribute to women in agriculture helps to ensure that they can take their loan from Kiva and continue to reproduce on their own as chicken growers. This is a loan that helps multiple women all at once. They all have different amounts that they wish to raise as a group in order to buy materials. With this being a group loan, they can help each other achieve their goals together and upon their success can in turn continue to grow their business as well as make better lives for their children (Kiva, 2012). The second loan I would consider contributing to is one to Karla Cristina Velasque Lopez in Nicaragua. Her loan is small, at $450 and she only has $75 to go. She plans to repay the loan within 15 months and the loan is used for their housing to help renovate her home to better take care of her family. She already is a hard worker as a school teacher and is an inspiration to many of the children she teaches. This is actually her second loan taken out with Kiva (Kiva, 2012). The third loan I would consider would be one of Maame Musaasah in Ghana. She operates a grocery store and can therefore help provide goods to people in her town. At this point, her loan is under a thousand dollars and she still has a way to go. While operating a grocery store, she plans to eventually expand it. She uses her income to help pay for her children's education. Her field partner is the Christian Rural Aid Network which is considered to be a high risk loan. However, she stands a chance to continue to live a decent life (Kiva, 2012). The fourth consideration I would make would be for Actable The Best Group which is a group of 19 borrowers in Tanzania that work in the food and fish selling sector of business. Their total loan is in the amount of $4,800 and at this time they are at 99 percent of their loan. I would be most interested in contributing to their group because it would help a large group of people all at once, especially since they are so close to their goal. Their group working together would help raise money for a lot of people. I think that since it is a larger group of people all dipping out of the same loan, it gives the opportunity for more people to increase the quality of their livelihood by buying goods and supplies to increase their profits in the fish selling business (Kiva, 2012). The last loan I would consider donating to would be that of Grace Villegas in the Phillippines who actually owns her own motorcycle repair business. She has a fairly small loan of $425 and is not quite half way to the loan amount in receiving money from lenders. She originally funded the beginning of this business through Kiva and earns her keep by operating this motorcycle repair shop as well as a food production business. Between her and her husband, they have ten children. It is obvious that while living in a poor area, she needs all the money she can earn to help put food on the table for her ten children that range in age from four years old to 25. She currently owns a good profit for her area and among all of this, I find it interesting that she works in a business that one would typically think of as a man's business, therefore she breaks a gender barrier that could otherwise be an obstacle anywhere else in the world (Kiva, 2012). Looking at the Girl Effect website, I learned that many adolescent girls in developing countries cannot improve their identities, their dates of birth or even vote. Additionally, many people in these countries cannot avoid being married off by her family at an early age. These young girls may never have the chance to get their own job or even earn their own money. Most of all the largest problem is that they are uneducated. These young girls are illiterate and aside from doing labor, they have no means to ever get a good job or to pursue further education for bigger, better careers for themselves. Additionally, these young women are becoming young mothers and the areas in which they live offer them poor health care options that could potentially endanger their lives (The Girl Effect, 2012). Some possible solutions would be to somehow send advocates over to their poor countries and teach these women how to read, write and educate them to the point to where the can rely upon themselves and not their usually much older husband. They probably are not wanting to leave their home land, but when they are in such a poor country, they do not realize the possibilities outside of their own village. It would be important to send people over to these poverty stricken areas to teach the importance of prevention of disease and how to better care of themselves. In theory, it would be wise to get them methods of living a more sanitary life so that their immunity would not be so poor. Even sending doctors over to their countries would help them, and perhaps even teach others how to care for the sick and ailing in order to save their lives. Having previously posted the Clock is Ticking video on my facebook website, I would continuously upload it to my home page to spread the word. I had a few people inquire about what it was about. However, many of my facebook friends are those that, while compassionate to people with extreme needs of poverty, are facing their own economical troubles. It is not that they do not want to help but instead they are either poor college students themselves and are not yet established enough to raise money to give, or hate to even give up a $25 loan that could otherwise pay toward their own debts during this tough time. I do not think it is a matter of not wanting to donate and contribute to the poverty stricken women in these countries, it is just that they themselves do not hardly have the means to care for themselves. The link at least got a few shares but it did not seem to spread like wild fire. I think that some people are desensitized as to how awful it is for women in these developing countries. The scenario of a woman having to walk eight miles a day with a bucket of water atop her head with her eight children in tow is a stereotype and many think: well that is where they are, that is their culture and if they were to be extracted from that, how would they know how to live otherwise from what they have always known? In summary of social action of what I learned from Kiva and The Girl Effect is that really, it is the little things that matter. It seems as though some of our social activism efforts in this country are minimal issues compared to the issues that women seem to face in other countries. We hear the commercials on television about sponsoring a child but I think that these two websites made this concept more real. These people really are starving and struggling to put one foot in front of the other day by day. I think that our culture tries to desensitize ourselves from that type of poverty and way of life because we cannot imagine it. Social action is not all about rallies and protests. It is simply about making some sort of effort to contribute to some sort of part of society so that they too can have the same rights that all of us have, especially where we are from and have grown accustomed to. We take our education and health care for granted. While we are spoiled and do not realize it, most of us do not have to worry about surviving another day while women in these other countries do not know what the next day will bring. I would say that in a way it has made me sick to our own culture. We are so rotten with our Fendi sunglasses and Loubatin heels that we would not know what it would be like to walk a day in those women's shoes. In a way, I think women in our own developed countries should be ashamed of ourselves for what we do, spending money on impulse while people in these other areas do not know even when their next meal will be. Most of us know how to read and while it take a few hours for a person to write a paper about these women, it could take them a lifetime to learn how to read it. It is quite humbling and after evaluating the efforts of these two websites, I find myself wondering how many other people out there have less access to help than the people featured on these sites. References Gran, J. (2009, April 17). Stop.. and have coffe...! Kiva. Retrieved March 9, 2012 from http://www.kiva.org/updates/loan/127679. Kiva. (2012, March 9). About Microfinance. Kiva.. Retrieved March 9, 2012 from http://www.kiva.org/about/microfinance#whatIsMicrofinance. Kiva (2012, March 9) Actable the best group. Kiva. Retrieved March 9, 2012 from http://www.kiva.org/lend/397140. Kiva (2012, March 9). Gai's group. Kiva. Retrieved March 9, 2012 from http://www.kiva.org/lend/394540. Kiva (2012, March 9). Grace Villegas. Kiva. Retrieved March 9, 2012 from http://www.kiva.org/lend/398345. Kiva (2012, March 9). Karla Christina Velasquez Lopez. Kiva. Retrieved March 9, 2012 from http://www.kiva.org/lend/399142. Kiva (2012, March 9). Monica is taking out another loan on Kiva. Kiva. Retrieved March 9, 2012 from http://www.kiva.org/updates/loan/480970. Kiva (2012, March 9). Maame Musaasah. Kiva. Retrieved March 9, 2012 from http://www.kiva.org/lend/400076. The Girl Effect (2012, March 9). Learn: the revolution. The Girl Effect. Retrieved March 9, 2012 from http://www.thegirleffect.org/learn/the-revolution. Samuelu, K. (2009, March 19). Kiva journal for Gogo Samuelu. Kiva. Retrieved March 9, 2012 from http://www.kiva.org/updates/loan/119002. Samuelu, K. (2009, March 19). Kiva journal for Iaeli Fanueli. Kiva. Retrieved March 9, 2012 from http://www.kiva.org/updates/loan/119003. Victoria, K. (2009, August 10). Homemade products made available to everyone. Kiva. Retrieved March 9, 2012 from http://www.kiva.org/updates/loan/164138. Read More