Half the Sky

So I got an email update from a charity that I donate to today. I haven't always been so civic minded: no soup kitchens when I was a kid or really volunteering of any kind unless it made my resume for college applications look better. Fortunately, I was inspired to slightly change my ways after reading Half the Sky. (Here is the link to the "movement's" website.) At the end of the book, they recommended some charitable websites, including globalgiving.org.

I really took away from the book that women in a certain segment of the world are very lucky to be born into that segment, with opportunities to get an education and (mostly) the same jobs as men. Believe me, I'm the last one to say that women, even in the US and Western Europe, are entirely equal, but we are starting to build up some wealth of our own. I feel like I should use part of that wealth to try to help those women who were born into the "wrong" parts of the world.

The charity I selected at global giving was Affordable Sanitary Pads for 1500 Ugandan Girls. In a lot of the world, girls do not have access to female hygiene products and toilet facilities at their schools so, when they start menstruating, they also start missing 25% of whatever meager education they were getting. If there is anything I do believe in is that education can really change people's lives. I believe that the only reason I have the disposable income to give to a charity is that I got a college degree, unlike my parents.

I hope some day I can go work directly for something like this, but in the meantime I can certainly skip a couple lattes to help keep girls in Africa in school a little longer.