Women helping women

It was hard not to be drawn to the picture of the beautiful woman in the headwrap on the cover of the New York Times Magazine that Sunday morning at the end of August. Ever since Miss Pat, one of my colleagues years ago from Macon, Georgia, told me, "Honey, people always think it's about the color of the skin; it's really about the hair," heads and hair fascinate me. Headwraps and adornments often tell a story about a woman's culture and her place in it.

The Burundi woman on the cover revealed little as she stared straight ahead, unsmiling. Inside, the feature essay, "The Women's Crusade," by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, authors of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Random House, 2009), provides the shorter version of the message in their compelling book: it takes so little money in US dollar terms to enable a woman to have a decent life. As rich and full of research, facts and figures as this essay and book are (highly recommended), the essay which actually drew my attention was Lisa Belkin's, entitled "The Power of the Purse," about women helping women.

Wait a minute! A small group of women in my neighborhood has done the very thing she writes about. Many dots in my brain suddenly have connection. Prepare for shameless promotion: WMI, Women's Microfinance Initiative, has become the cause d'etre for the women I know and it all seemed to have started because one of the women had a vision, after meeting a group of women from a sister church in Uganda. The work of WMI now includes a project in Kenya, as well. According to WMI, it takes as little as $25 US to enable a woman to start a small business. These businesses enable women to sustain their lives, as other traditional ways of living become eroded and changed by politics and other shifting cultural factors. The hope and the real support provided by organizations like WMI enable women and their families to live with more dignity.

I marvel at it all: how little it takes to improve a life, how dreams become realities for all of the women involved, and how beautiful a global sisterhood can be. There are many ways to get involved should you desire to do so.

Laurel Seid


Video credit: http://www.wmionline.org/