Half the Sky: Four Steps You Can Take in the Next Ten Minutes

{This is a brief excerpt from the book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, which addresses the oppression of girls and women in the developing world–and what we can do about it.  I posted about this book yesterday.   Many of you commented or emailed me and told me how much the book had impacted you personally.  If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to do so.}

Half the Sky concludes with these Four Steps You Can Take in the Next Ten Minutes:

1.  “Go to globalgiving.org or www.kiva.org and open an account.  Both sites are people-to-people (P2P), meaning that they link you directly to a person in need overseas, and this makes them an excellent way to dip your toe in.  Global Giving lets you choose a grassroots project to which to give money in education, health, disaster relief, or more than a dozen other areas around the developing world.  Kiva lets you do the same for microlending to entrepreneurs….”  (I think Kiva looks very intriguing, and I’m putting it on my family’s working list of potential charitable contribution recipients.)

2.  “Sponsor a girl or a woman through Plan International, Women for Women International, World Vision, or American Jewish World Service….”  (I would add Compassion International to this list, through which my family personally sponsors a girl.)

3.  “Sign up for email updates on www.womensenews.org and a similar service, www.worldpulse.com.  Both distribute information about abuses of women and sometimes advise on actions that readers can take.”  (I signed up for World Pulse updates.)

4.  “Join the CARE Action Network at www.care.org.  This will assist you in speaking out, educating policy makers, and underscoring that the public wants action against poverty and injustice.  This kind of citizen advocacy is essential to create change….History has repeatedly shown that where our values are at stake, leadership must come from ordinary citizens like you.”  (I joined.)

What global issues have your heart?  What kind of action are you taking?  Do you currently do anything on this list?  Do you think you will in the future?