Date Archives → April 30, 2009

I Need Your Help!

Crafts in Ecuador
Family and Friends,

As many of you have heard, I was recently accepted for a Fellowship with Kiva.org. While I am waiting for placement (in hopefully Nigeria or Sierra Leone), I will be in a developing country for 12 weeks this summer to assist with their efforts to help alleviate global poverty through microfinance.

If you’re hearing about Kiva for the first time, you’re not alone. Kiva.org is a non-profit that allows you to lend capital to a specific low-income entrepreneur in the developing world. In increments of $25, you choose who to lend to – whether a baker in Samoa, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or even a tailor in Pakistan – and as they repay their loan, you get your money back. You can then choose to re-invest your money, or you can withdraw it. It’s a powerful and sustainable way to empower someone right now to lift themselves out of poverty and an innovative way to see how you make the difference.

children-selling-crafts-in-ecuadorMy job as a Fellow will be to assist my MFI (Microfinance Institution) partner and be the bridge between the MFI and Kiva.org. It will be my responsibility to add new micro-entrepreneurs to Kiva’s website by writing their stories and photographing them, as well as meeting with entrepreneurs that have already received loans to verify the loans disbursement and hear about the progress. In this way I will assist with Kiva work, but I will also help train the staff of (MFI) on how to best implement Kiva’s online platform to help them fund the poor. The Fellowship program is unique in the variety of tasks that I undertake and the potential for a lasting impact on the people of the city I’m placed in, the staff of the MFI, and Kiva.org.

My Fellowship begins in mid-May with a week-long training at Kiva headquarters in San Francisco, and will be truly underway while I leave for my placement on June 1, 2009. The fellowship is not paid and I am responsible for raising support to cover airfare and living expenses for the duration of my 12 weeks abroad. I’d be grateful if you would consider joining with me and financially supporting my fellowship.

Since Kiva was founded, over $33 million dollars have been donated by more than 300,000 lenders in 70 countries. That money has funded over 50,000 entrepreneurs funded in 43 different countries. The default rate on repayment is 2.5%. That means that 97.5% of loans are repaid, isn’t that incredible?

I have created a full budget of my expenses and am looking to raise $7,500. Every little bit counts so please give what you can!

There are a few ways to give:

1) Donate via my ChipIn:

2) Send cash or checks payable to SLOANE BERRENT to:
Sloane Berrent
2 Robin Road
Pittsburgh, PA 15217

3) If you’d like to donate airline miles or help support my trip in other ways, please send me an email. sloane (at) thecausemopolitan (dot) com.

Final notes:
* This is a donation to fund my participation with Kiva.org. Unfortunately due to nonprofit tax laws, Kiva has advised all Fellows to share with you that a tax-deductible letter is not possible since the donation isn’t to Kiva itself. However, I will be sending EVERYONE acknowledgments thanking you for your donation.

* For donations over $100, I will send you a personal postcard from my location. I’ll compile that list before I go.

* Other cool incentives for donations over $100 to come, so stay tuned!

Thank you to everyone! Your support is my inspiration and fuels me daily to help in the fight to eradicate global poverty and help people everywhere be the best they can be and with the help of Kiva, have the tools and resources to make their dream come true.

Sincerely,
Sloane

Dear Dad

Dear Dad,

Happy Birthday! I really wanted to post a picture of you or of us, but I’ve found that since I’m on the road, I don’t have any pictures on this computer. Yes, I’m still vagabonding around the country. I’m like you that way, I can pick up and go and travel and just have this boundless and wondrous energy for overturning stones and finding new places to dig into. Yes, I’m keeping a journal. Yes, I promise to write that book you always wanted me to write.

I wanted to tell you a story. It’s about Joe, or Papa, or my step-dad. Yes, we never really got along when I was a kid, you know that. There was a lot of power-struggling going on and competing for my mom’s attention. You heard a lot of it over the years. But all that really started to change when I left for college and our relationship got better as we both aged. Four years ago, the first Christmas that he and my mom separated, when it came time for the traditional Christmas Eve dinner, I invited you as my date. Having you there sharing that special annual tradition was a one of the best nights of my life.

The following year, you were not able to make it. You weren’t here anymore, we had lost you. After dinner was over, and the guests had left Papa told me this story:

He told me that all those years I had been growing up that secretly he had a relationship with you. Since you and my mom never had a speaking relationship, you would call and talk to Joe. And it was a secret you two shared. You would ask about my grades and then about the types of boys that were coming around to take me out on dates. You called about college and to see how I was adjusting, you called and asked how my post-college blues were and how my job-hunt was going and discussed where you thought I’d fit best.

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Overwhelmed In A Good Way

Liuzza's
It’s all taken a turn, you see. I thought I was coming to New Orleans to volunteer and hang out and see live music and eat good food for a month or so and that would be it. I thought I would finally get to dig into this place and learn lessons, and use them in my next destination, next chapter.

Now I just don’t know.

They say you don’t choose New Orleans, she chooses you. They say once she get you in her sights, it’s hard to break free. They say that even if you do leave, once you’re gone all you can think about is New Orleans and she has this magical power to draw and pull you back.

They say all of this.

And yet they also say that New Orleans is broken, sloppy, politically corrupt, atrocious public education and access to public health and that she will never be what she was…before Katrina.

But they love her. They love her and they revere her and they talk about her ALL THE TIME. Where she’s been, where’s she is now, where she is going. They talk about the emergence of charter schools and revitalization of neighborhoods, economic development and killer tax credits for film, digital media and angel investments. The strong pull of community that is priceless here. A place where you know every neighbor on your street, and probably the second street over and maybe even the third. The kind of place that is visibly struggling in front of us every day but a place that no one is willing to give up on.

The most provincial city in America. A boutique American city. The most European city in America. A place where culture steams up from the sidewalks and around every corner is the possibility of seeing something for the first time.

They say all of this.

They say there is crime and that’s it’s bad. They say there is a threat of a major hurricane every year though the last major one before Katrina was Betsy in 1965. I mean who would want to start a business in a place where they could potentially have to shut down for two weeks every year? Who would want that?

And yet they say that is exactly what people are doing here. Planting roots. Starting businesses. Investing in infrastructure and focusing on “quality of life.”

Who are these magical “they’s?” They is YOU.

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On Recycling

Reuse Reduce Recycle

I’m often asked where the desire to “give back” comes from. If it was something deeply rooted by my parents or something innate inside of me. My family and upbringing in Pittsburgh was very community-based and I was nurtured to pursue any hopes or goals I had.

That being said, through being nutured, I believe it was something always inside of me. Just a part of my DNA. I like to say I was a “little girl with big glasses”, at St. Edmund’s Academy in the Sq. Hill part of Pittsburgh and it was the 4th grade when I asked my teacher, Mr. Sciulli, why our school didn’t recycle.

My first love: The Environment

Now this was Pittsburgh. In the 1980′s. No one really talked about recycling yet and I honestly don’t remember why I got hooked on the idea. Mr. Sciulli told me if I was interested in the idea, he would help make it happen. I took him up on it and within months the program was up and running. I got separate bins for classrooms (being pre-blue bin era) and collected the paper at the end of every week to put aside. The janitors were in on it and helped out.

Cans were easier. We weren’t allowed soda and so there weren’t very many around. Teachers had some, but I don’t remember really worrying about cans. I was worried about paper. It seemed like we threw so much away!

It worked. Both in my school and soon enough it seemed like we were on the cusp of a bigger movement (first sign I’m a early-adopter maybe?) because the City of Pittsburgh started recycling too. It seems like such a necessity in any city what with so much trash and increasingly population, how imperative it is to reduce, reuse, recycle whenever possible.

Since those days of Pittsburgh, I’ve lived in Vermont and California, two bastions for environmentalism. I thought it was a give-in, this recycling thing. Thinking about the effects of the products you used on the environment.

Perhaps, that is why it’s all the more shocking and jarring to see recycling not done in New Orleans. That’s right. No recycling.

Landfill in New Orleans EastDid I shock you? Good. NONE is overkill, there is SOME, but not ENOUGH. But since the storm, very very little. And the citizens have to pay for it. And the City does nothing to subsidize or bring it back to the mainstream.

I understand the City was decimated. And it’s hard enough to get people back on their feet let alone focus on the environment. From the beginning of the recovery post-Katrina, officials said “we don’t have time” to focus on recycling all of the materials from neighborhoods where houses were being demolished. “We have to get rid of the debris to build again.”

In August, it will be four years since the Hurricane and plenty has still not been rebuilt. Makes you think about all the trash and landfills that accumulated four years ago.

But the lack of recycling is worse than the City not pushing for it. There is a general malaise about the situation from the people. From the professional business types to the low-income areas. Styrofoam is served LOUD & PROUD here. Plastic cups and togo cutlery. Cute indie coffee shops, restaurants, hotels – styrofoam! No recycling bins ANYWHERE. How is this possible?

My question to New Orleans is this:

How can you rebuild for the future with such blatant disregard for the future?

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TGIF Video: Playing for Change

“The next song says that no matter who you are, no matter where you go in your life, at some point, you’re going to need someone to stand by you.”

It’s TGIF Video Time! Playing for Change was inspired by hearing one man, Roger Ridley, perform “Stand By Me” on the Santa Monica Third Street Promenade.. Mark Johnson went running to hear who was singing and his vision for bringing peace to the world through music was born. Through this project, Mark believes, that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people.

Playing for Change

Playing for Change

The spirit of these videos is just incredible. It doesn’t hurt that the first two musicians featured are from Los Angeles and New Orleans.

I would hope anyone watching these would see how music is a great unifier and look at ways that we can continue to bring people together, instead of pushing them apart.

You can watch more of the Playing for Change videos or buy their CD online.

They have also recently set up a nonprofit foundation with the same name and you can look around to get more involved there too.