Save a Slave

I love the types of activism advocated in Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide featured on Oprah last week.

Watching the show and researching the many ways to help women it really helped me internalized this world-wide historical fact: Economic Independence is the key to Freedom, Rights, and Liberty.

If girls are poor they are sold into prostitution. If we send aid to governments it rarely makes it into the hands of women and girls. If women are economically dependent they rarely achieve voting rights. If women have no access to healthcare they are victims of rape and then victims of AIDS, lack of prenatal or postnatal care and an inability to care for their children.

The cure to all of this is very. little. money.

Visit the For All Women Registry on Oprah to find out how you can run your very own International Peace Operation.

I, a middle-class American housewife, can literally support a war rape survivor  The Congo for $27 a month. I’m most excited about doing this one with Ainsley, due to the letter exchange. We can save a woman and make her economically independent for $27, and she’ll be our pen pal. Ainsley and I already signed up for this one. We can’t wait to find out who our sister is, where she lives and what her life is like.

I can provide security for a girl sold into prostitution, complete with shelter and security guards for $30 mo. For $250, I can hire her a lawyer.

I can educate a woman and provide her with her own business for $100.

I can pay for one year of school for a girl for $49.

And I can make investments in Third World women’s businesses by loaning her money for a business for as little as $25. They pay you back. So you can re-invest in another woman’s business. Then another. And Another.

This is, honestly, the most powerful thing I’ve heard in a long time. We can DO something to change the situation for women and girls around the world. Something effective. Something meaningful. Something important. Something that doesn’t just change a woman, but a family, a lineage, a country, a world. It’s exponential change. Exponential change for $27.

GO Save a Slave!