Camfed

Got this email today from Camfed

Dear Helen DeWitt,

On Wed., Oct. 7, the Case Foundation, Parade Magazine and Causes.com launched America's Giving Challenge, a competition designed to encourage more people to participate in philanthropy. Don't worry, you don't have to be in America to participate, and we're calling on our supporters worldwide to join in!

The terms are simple: The charity on Causes.com with the most individual donations by Nov. 7 wins the $50,000 prize. In order to send more girls to school in Africa, Camfed is participating in this challenge, and we need your help!

THE DETAILS:

To win $50,000, between now and November 7th we have to get more people to donate $10 to our Cause than any other. (Each person can donate once per day and have it count as a unique donation.) We can also win daily awards of $1,000 if we can get the most people to donate in any 24-hour period.

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

1) Donate $10, which will provide a year's worth of school supplies-notebooks, pens, pencils-to a girl in Africa. To donate, visit http://www.causes.com/causes/72910.

2) If you can give more, take the time to donate once a day throughout the competition-your generosity will greatly increase our chances of unlocking the $50,000 prize.

3) Forward this email, post a message on Facebook or Twitter, or simply talk to your friends about this competition and Camfed. Ask them to get involved and make a donation.

If you've never given on Facebook Causes before, now's the time. Your $10 donation may be worth $50,000, which would provide a year's worth of school supplies to 5,000 children. One person really can make a difference.

Thank you for all your support!

The Camfed Team

Camfed

Just got this newsletter from Camfed.



Can a book change lives? We believe this one can.
Drawing on years of rich and varied reporting experience in Asia and Africa, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's new book Half the Sky chronicles the stories of women who have escaped from slavery, narrowly evaded death in childbirth, and hoisted themselves out of the depths of poverty.

Among the women they profile is Angeline Murimirwa (née Mugwendere), one of the first students to be supported by Camfed. Growing up in Zimbabwe, Angeline was so determined to attend primary school that she persuaded her teachers to let her wash their dishes in exchange for school supplies. A brilliant student, she graduated at the top of her sixth-grade class-but her parents didn't have the resources to send her to secondary school.

When Angeline's path crossed with Ann Cotton's, the founder of Camfed, she had the opportunity to return to school. Today, Angeline is the Executive Director of Camfed's Zimbabwe program and an inspiration to her community and country. Read an excerpt of Angeline's story here.

Half the Sky concludes with a call to action to end injustices against girls and women worldwide through a massive grassroots campaign for education and empowerment. We were thrilled to see that the first thing Nick Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn call for is a $10 billion investment over five years to educate girls and reduce the gender gap in education.

Half the Sky is an inspiring and compelling collection of stories, but it is more than that. It is a passionate reminder that giving women the resources to fight their oppression and bolstering their potential to succeed will not only benefit their families and communities-it will sow the seeds for a healthier, more peaceful, and more just and prosperous world.


Available from Powell's, here.

Camfed

Readers of The Last Samurai may remember that I spoke in the acknowledgements of my friend Ann Cotton, who had started raising funds in 1990 to help girls in Zimbabwe finish secondary school. Their reputation for exceptionally effective work in this field continues to grow; just found this excellent news on the Camfed website:

President Clinton Highlights Camfed Commitment for Girls’ Education in Africa

Bill Clinton highlighted Camfed’s work for girls’ education in Africa during a plenary session of the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting in New York on Friday. Choosing Camfed as just one of three Commitments to be highlighted by the former US President, Clinton spoke about the importance of girls’ education, and Camfed’s efficacy in delivering its maximum returns:

(the rest, including a video of Clinton talking about Camfed, here)

Camfed has also been chosen for the Financial Times Christmas appeal for the second year in a row (last year $1.2 million dollars were raised). More about this year's appeal here.

Camfed

Chris McGreal has a piece in the Observer on Zimbabwe:

The shelves are bare except for what Zimbabwe's limping factories produce - baked beans at the cost of a month's salary, crisps rationed to two packets per shopper and all the cleaning fluid you want.

The petrol pumps dried up a month ago. Water and electricity are off more often than they are on. The national currency has an expiry date of July 2007 stamped on it but it's worth hardly anything anyway, so nobody seems to care.

Some Zimbabweans find a perverse comfort in all this because they believe, as the American ambassador put it, that Robert Mugabe is committing regime change on himself with his mad economics. It cannot get any worse, they say, but it can.

It's easy for those outside Zimbabwe to think the situation is hopeless and nothing can be done -- nothing by anyone outside Zimbabwe. This is not actually the case. Camfed has been running a programme for the last 12 years offering full scholarships to girls, enabling them to complete their secondary education -- a programme that now helps members in a country on the brink of famine. Camfed concentrates on girls' education because very poor families, if they must choose, will pay a boy's school fees and keep a girl at home; women's education has been shown to reduce infant mortality and improve children's chances of education, so undereducating girls is damaging not only for the girls themselves but for the society they live in.

NGOs whose programmes rely on foreign staff have long since had to close down operations in Zimbabwe as a result of the escalating violence. Camfed has, from the start, made a point of setting up an organisation of graduates from its programme, CAMA, which provides a support network for those still in the programme and also runs a micro-credit scheme enabling members to create employment for themselves -- something of crucial importance in rural districts with depressed economies, where there may be few opportunities for employment. Camfed has also made a point of involving parents, teachers and local leaders in running the programme. The result is that it has not had to shut down operations at the very time when support is desperately needed; it continues to give girls a chance to break out of poverty at a time when the country is falling apart.

It's easy to think there's no point sending a one-off, small donation, because it can't make a difference. Believe me, in a country whose currency officially expired at the end of July, five bucks in a hard currency, now, can make a difference. The link is here.