At the same time I had formed a non-profit organization (Bridges to Understanding) whose mission was to give students in remote communities a voice by teaching digital storytelling.  Bridges worked with middle and high school students in India Peru, Guatemala, Kenya, South Africa and Cambodia and gave them a voice by showing them how to upload their stories on the web and share their lives with students in the U.S.   As part of the process we would have the indigenous students present their finished multimedia story to their own community.  For me it was the highlight of the trip.  In Takaungu, Kenya we got a generator and held an outdoor movie night so the students could show their movie to their village.  The crowd went wild and cheered for the film to be shown over and over again.

I just became aware of the organization Tostan’s efforts to address the issue of female genital cutting in Senagal by helping the locals create a film intended for their local community.  Check out Walking the Path of Unity—

As I continue to work with media in the developing world I am planning to go in this direction.  I hope to take two to three photojournalism/ film students with me on trips as we help communities in the developing world create their own media for public awareness campaigns targeting social and economic gender issues.

Ted Talk by Kavita N. Ramdas, president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women

Kavita tells the stories of three amazing women that have taken part in the global movement to empower women and girls by embracing and integrating their tradition and culture into their efforts. 

Global Fund for Women

The Global Fund for Women is a nonprofit grantmaking foundation that advances women’s human rights worldwide. We are a network of women and men who believe that ensuring women’s full equality and participation in society is one of the most effective ways to build a just, peaceful and sustainable world. We raise funds from a variety of sources and make grants to women-led organizations that promote the economic security, health, safety, education and leadership of women and girls.

Mt. Nyiru, Kenya                                                                                     Sukulen, 37

As a social documentary photographer and filmmaker I typically have to suggest marketing ideas to the nonprofit organizations I work with. I find it important to get to know what the PR or marketing staff of the organizations are trying to accomplish and then brainstorm with them on projects that could accomplish their goals. For example in talking with Helen Garrett, the marketing director of Amnesty International, I learned that they wanted to conduct a multicity campaign in North America and Europe to celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They wanted to collect 10,000,000 signatures of people rededicating themselves to the UDHR. In our conversations I suggested the signatures be collected in museums and galleries so there could be a backdrop of images at the events they staged. Of course it was my suggestion that I could supply the images and book that traveled with the events. As a result they accomplished their goal and I was able to create my Enduring Spirit series.

Willoq, Peru                                               Lourdes 9, Benigno 18 mos.

Today many corporations are looking for ways to align their marketing efforts around social issues. ‘ Green marketing’ is a fast growing multimillion dollar business. This trend presents opportunities for the university student, retired baby boomer or documentary photographer who is passionate about an issue to find support. It just takes a little ambition and creativity to forge your own path.

Jinka, Ethiopia                                                                 Buzayan 6

Suzy consulting with Tarahumara mothers

Alisun’s findings prepared the way for Suzy Messer another university student who is currently pursuing her Master’s in Public Health with a concentration in Maternal  Health through Boston University’s School of Public Health.  Suzy is now the Field Coordinator for the rollout of One Heart’s pilot program in Chihhuahua, Mexico and is using her work there to complete the requirements for her master’s in Public Health.

Suzy visiting villages in the Tarahumara

As I’ve been speaking around the country on women’s issues for the last few years, many university students have come up to me and asked how they could get involved.  Like most students they didn’t have money to donate but they wanted to do something.  One of the most exciting parts of the Stirring the Fire website is the call to action that offers a myriad of ways — like working with organizations like One HEART — to support women and girls around the world.

When you get a chance check out Take Action on our website with its searchable database of organizations.

By 2000, UNICEF reported that only 4 to 5% of Afghan children were being educated at the primary school level. Fewer still had access to secondary and university-level education.

According to the World Bank, “Since 2002, more than 6 million students and teachers have returned to school.” 

The organization, Ayni Education International, has certainly had a hand in the increasing education, especially for girls, in Afghanistan.  Featured this week in the Seattle Times, Ayni was founded by Seattle based Julia Bolz.

From Ayni’s website, “Our main project, called “Journey with an Afghan School,” began just months after 9-11 and the Taliban were removed from power in Afghanistan. It is a grassroots project to build and supply schools for Afghan children. 

With funds raised by communities across the country, we have defied all odds by building and supplying 19 new schools and repairing over a dozen others, serving about 25,000 Afghan students. We also have provided wells; distributed text-books, school supplies and athletic equipment; provided teacher trainings; and set up libraries, computer centers and PTAs. Most recently, we set up two teacher training centers, training several hundred teachers.”

As I continue to add to the “Call to Action” portion of a new website to be launched soon (www.stirringthefire.org) I am continually amazed by the extraordinary people like Julia Bolz that are making a difference.  Thanks Julia for your wonderful work!

Unfortunately, 800,000 Zambian children have lost one or both parents to AIDS, and others are left to care for themselves because their parents have to work in the fields.**

Severe burns happen frequently because a third of the world still uses open
fires for cooking, heating and/or lighting. Overcrowded living conditions, lack of proper safety measures, loose clothing worn by women and insufficient parental supervision of children are other factors.

Because AIDS takes the lives of so many parents, especially the women who are the main caretakers of children many more children are now suffering burns from open fires.

The story of Mateo represents the typical scenario.  He fell into an open fire while under the care of his slightly older sister.  Actually Mateo was one of the lucky ones, many children go untreated but he received help from Interplast partner Dr. Goran Jovic.

The Forgotten Global Health Crisis from Phil Borges on Vimeo.

I traveled with Dr. Jovic as he flew to remote villages around Zambia in his single engine plane to treat severely burned patients that would otherwise never receive treatment and remain disabled for life. 

Burns comprise half of Interplast surgeries, with 80 percent of them being performed at 12 Interplast Surgical Outreach Centers in nine countries. 

*World Health Organization
**Interplast

I find these numbers a shocking reminder of how insular our country is today.

However, as I traveled around the country promoting the Women Empowered project I found many college and high school students were coming up to me after my presentation and asking how they might get involved.  I began to realize that these students could be a significant source of support for empowering women and girls in the developing world.  For the most part they didn’t have much money to donate but wanted to volunteer their time.  The students who had traveled abroad let me know how much their trips that involved some form of community service had “changed their lives”.  

Of course the most personal way to contribute is to volunteer time.  University students who are not yet tied down with family obligations and mortgage payments are ideal candidates for this type of involvement.  It’s an excellent way to broaden perspectives and get an experiential high by giving to something outside of oneself.

In 2009 I decided to expand and reconfigure the Women Empowered exhibition and website to, among other things, reach this younger demographic by including multimedia pieces and an expanded call to action that offered many more ways to get involved.  I want the exhibition and website to inspire student participation—to make it easy for students to become advocates and to provide resources that would allow them to find study abroad or volunteer programs that focused on the issues faced by women and girls in the developing world.

I’m looking for organizations that have programs that allow university students to take a semester abroad and work with local organizations that empower women and girls.  It would be ideal if the program were structured so the student could choose their specific area of interest (i.e. maternal health, micro credit, girl’s education, child trafficking, etc.)  It would be even more ideal if the student could receive credit toward their degree for their time abroad.  SIT –(School for International Training) is a good example.  If anyone knows of organizations with programs like this I would be so appreciative if you let me know.  I want a list of resources to accompany my website and exhibition Women Empowered as it travels to universities to help students that want to get involved with these issues.

In my work I have had the opportunity to see many of the issues women face in the developing world up close and personal.  I realize that many people that want to help women and girls have not had a face to face encounter with those they would like to help. 

Fortunately, nonprofits have recently evolved some great techniques to make donors feel engaged with the personal stories of those in need.  Along with the desire to feel that person-to-person connection, lenders are becoming savvier and clearly desire an explanation of precisely where their donations are going. 

A recent blog post by David Roodman states, ‘In short, the person-to-person donor-to-borrower connections created by Kiva are partly fictional.”  This information attracted widespread attention.  The “Donor Illusion” debate is outlined well in this article in the NY Times and this is another great source of additional information.

In my opinion the way in which the nonprofit world is evolving is a step in the right direction.  The desire to have a direct person-to-person contribution with no intermediary is in itself an illusion.  Tim Odgen of Philanthropy Action makes this point well.

Kiva gives you a list of photographs and profiles of individuals you can support with a micro credit loan.   Your loan goes to one of Kiva’s worldwide “Field Partners”, (microfinance institutions that service the community where the individual you have chosen lives).  The Field Partner approves and disburses a microloan to the entrepreneur you have chosen and gives them a repayment schedule.  When the loan gets repaid you can collect it or designate another entrepreneur to lend it to.

The Kiva model of lending is currently being used to help worthy students get educational loans in countries where student loans have heretofore been nonexistent. 

Another program for donors (not lenders) administered by CARE that takes off on this idea is Join My Village.  Instead of choosing an individual to contribute to you choose a village in Africa and General Mills matches your contribution dollar for dollar.   The donations to Join My Village support ‘Village Savings and Loan’ programs that enable small groups of women to form their own micro banks.  I visited many of these VSL groups when I was in Malawi last year and was very impressed. 

I created a multimedia piece about the program for CARE if you would like to learn more.

As time goes on I’m sure more programs like these will make giving more personal and transparent.  I would love to hear of your experiences with organizations like these, as well as, similar organization that you have been impressed by?

The UN, UNICEF, the World Bank, CARE and other experts on poverty reduction like Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Farmer have indicated that the key to alleviating global poverty and its attendant ills (like fundamentalism and extremism) is by empowering women and girls. Yet today less than 1% of US foreign aid targets programs that empower women and girls. Evidently it hasn’t gone unnoticed that the countries we are having the most trouble with right now are countries that marginalize their females. Hopefully this realization by the Joint Chiefs will prompt some rethinking about the allocation of our foreign aid funds.

Humaria,11, sells eggs on the streets of Kabul to help support her family. She has never attended school. Today the literacy rate for girls in Afghanistan is 15% in the urban areas like Kabul and .6% in the rural areas.

Fortunately, the citizen sector (non-profit organizations) are stepping up to fill this need. There are literally thousands of organizations providing micro credit loans and educational opportunities for women and girls or addressing the issues of maternal mortality, violence against women and child trafficking.

The big question most of us are asking is how can we help? In my next blog I would like explore how nonprofit models of giving are evolving to become more personal and transparent.