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MsRepresentation Weekly Brief: August 9-August 15, 2012
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15 posts categorized "ACUMEN FUND"
08/15/2012
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Palestinian Security Forces Target Journalists
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01/08/2011
What's New A Significant Increase in Sex Trafficking in Minnesota?
A Significant Increase in Sex Trafficking in Minnesota?
The Advocates' Staff Attorney Beatriz Menanteau participated in a panel discussion on sex trafficking in Minnesota hosted by the Sexual Violence Prevention Program on November 5. Along with other panelists, Ms. Menanteau described the issue and the prevention work that is being done. Nearly 100 people participated from throughout the state.
The panel presentation discussed:
12/28/2010
Only 4 Days Left For Our End-of-Year Publications Sale. Become A Member and Save.
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Members take 20% off the member price of publications now through December 31. Only 4 days left. Please Note: Once you purchase a membership, you will be automatically logged in. Use code WIN2010 at checkout to receive the discount on publications.
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09/15/2010
08/19/2010
07/28/2010
Ladder to the Top: Shattering the Glass Ceiling
The United States trails behind the rest of
the world, ranking 84th in the
number of women in our national legislature.
Its no secret: Despite our progress, women are vastly under-represented in politics and in the highest levels of management in nearly every professional sector: business, law, media, you name it. We must stand together to empower women in these diverse fields, and give them a leg up on the ladder to success. Take a night to invest in clear-cut solutions that will make a difference for women.
It's time to shatter that glass ceiling!
Ladder to the Top is a full evening of programming, starting with an inspiring reception at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and ending with intimate dinners across our nation's capital. Together we will draw attention to the crisis of women's under-representation in leadership.
First, raise your glasses to women's
accomplishments on the Hill and beyond at our Hail
to the Chiefs Reception.
Held from 6:00-7:30pm, this tradition shines
the spotlight on the Class of 2010 women Chiefs of Staff who support our leading
members of Congress.
At the reception, we will honor Senator Olympia Snowe, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz for
their distinguished leadership for women.
A new twist on WCF's recently
premiered Voices from the
Ladder performance piece will be debuted.
Then, at 7:30pm, proceed to the Dinner
Party of Your Choice in extraordinary
women-owned DC restaurants. Join WCF-Endorsed Candidates, Chiefs of
Staff, and talented women and men from the fields of politics, law, banking,
labor, media, and more to discuss how we can solve this crisis of leadership.
Mark your calendars for September 23, for a sparkling evening with a serious task at hand: empowering women in every aspect of leadership. Tell your friends, tell your colleagues, tell every woman you know: On September 23, we stand together to say we need more women in leadership - now.
Siobhan "Sam" Bennett, President/CEO
Women's Campaign Forum
P.S. Also mark your calendar for March 14, 2011 for our Parties of Your Choice Gala at Christie's Auction House in New York City.
04/16/2010
WOMEN FOR WOMEN INTERNATIONAL
SOURCE: http://www.womenforwomen.org/
Visit the places where we work
- Afghanistan
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Iraq
- Kosovo
- Nigeria
- Rwanda
- Sudan
- NPR.com: Zainab Salbi publishes "Iraq's Forgotten Women."
- Women's UN Report Network: CEO and Founder Zainab Salbi appointed to a group of independent experts to advise on ways to better protect women in conflict situations.
- The Daily Beast: CEO and Founder Zainab Salbi reflects on the status of women worldwide on International Women's Day.
Field Report: Sudan
Zainab Salbi visits the program in Southern Sudan to share first hand the state of women in Sudan and meets with our new program participants.Watch Now.
2010 Sudan Elections
The first Country Director for Sudan and DR Congo, Judithe Registre, notes that regardless of Sudan election outcomes, we must continue investing in women. Read the Article.
Zainab Salbi states that future agricultural policies need to incorporate the 70% of the world's farmers who are women.
Get Involved in the UK: Join Women for Lunch!
Women for Women International UK invites you to host a lunch for your friends and make a significant difference in the lives of women survivors of war. Learn More...
Make a donation to help women survivors of war.
Learn
more
Make a Difference in a Woman's life.
Learn
More.
- Make a Donation
- Host an Event
- Read Our Notes from the Field Blog
- Run for Congo Women
- Sponsor a Woman
Women for Women International is a nonprofit 501 (c) (3) organization. EIN/Tax ID # 52-183-8756
Visit our UK web site: www.womenforwomen.org.uk
03/14/2010
JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ -- Philanthropy's Transformer
SOURCE: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-09/philanthropys-transformer/full/
by Liz Goodwin
Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of a nonprofit venture capital fund that serves the developing world and best-selling author of The Blue Sweater, is a former banker who is all business about closing the widening gap between the rich and the poor in developing countries. She became a globalist early on in her life, a moment that is crystallized in the incredible anecdote that begins her book. While jogging in Kigali, Rwanda, Novogratz spotted her castoff blue sweater, given to her by her Uncle Ed when she was a kid, on a little boy. She had tossed the beloved sweater in the Goodwill bin in Virginia a decade earlier, after a classmate teased her about it. She ran up to the little boy and tried to explain that he was wearing her old sweater. She turned down the collar and saw her name written on the tag. The lesson she learned was simple, but became a mantra for her: "Our actions—and inaction—touch people we may never know and never meet across the globe," she wrote.
"I think I still have a great sense of adventure and trust and am surprisingly idealistic given all the horrible things I've seen since I was 25," she says.
Novogratz stole moments to write her book late at night while keeping her her nonprofit Acumen Fund running during the day. In it, she recalls her time in Rwanda building a microfinance institution, attending Stanford Graduate School of Business, returning to the country after the genocide to try to make sense of the crimes, and building her new philanthropy. "It turns out it was all about, do you really believe in an interconnected world, and what kind of systems do you create for that world. And it all went back to that blue sweater," she says.
Novogratz, who is participating in The Daily Beast's Women in
the World summit this week, has transformed the way people think and
talk about philanthropy with her idea of "patient capital," a way of
investing in businesses in developing countries at below-market returns
and for longer periods of time. Donors are called investors, and they
expect a return on their capital measured in social change. Aided by a
lot of management support, the businesses are expected to scale up to
serve at least a million customers with basic services. One of the many
topics that gets Novogratz excited is empowering the poor in developing
countries by treating them as customers with choice. Even people who
earn a dollar a day want choices on how to spend that money, and
building local businesses to create that choice also creates jobs for
low-income people, which empowers them to have more choice as consumers.
Some of Acumen's success stories: an entrepreneur who started a bed net factory that employs 7,000 people, mostly women; a chain of hospitals that delivers babies in India for slightly higher prices than the government hospitals but under much better conditions; and a plant in India that provides clean water to a quarter of a million rural poor people. The fund has invested $40 million so far, and hopes to reach $250 million in the next seven to eight years.
• Tina
Brown—Women in the World: Stories and Solutions
Long
before Novogratz founded Acumen in 2001 and shook up the philanthropy
world, she was a just-out-of-college banker at Chase Manhattan. At her
job, she helped write off loans for the elite in developing countries,
and wondered about the nations' middle class and poor, and why they
couldn't get credit. She quit and moved to Africa to work at The African
Development Bank. At her first job in Cote d'Ivoire, she was warned
that her resentful co-workers might try to poison her, and she did
become mysteriously, wretchedly ill for a week, eventually moving home
to recover from the disastrous work experience. Then it was on to
Rwanda, where she helped found a microfinance institution that serves
women. Novogratz worked with 20 unwed mothers, called prostitutes by
their neighbors, to make a bakery profitable. The women quickly went
from earning 50 cents a day to up to $3.
"The reason why they were called prostitutes is the landlord would sleep with them," Novogratz says. "'You can't pay? You give me sex.' And suddenly for the first time, the women could be like, ‘No here's the money, no.' And I saw the transformation that was all about in some ways the ability to say no." She saw that one or two extra dollars a day made the difference between being powerless, having no choice, and being able to make your own decision.
Novogratz left Rwanda before the genocide in 1994, but returned in 1997 to try to make sense of how the massacre could have happened. One of the women who helped found the microfinance institution with her was in jail for encouraging the genocide as the leader of Parliament. Another of her former co-workers had lost much of her family in the mass killings. The bakery she had founded was now occupied by a squatter who had never heard of the structure's former incarnation. No one was left unscathed. But though Novogratz has seen horrible things in her quest to reach the world's poorest, she says she has not lost the idealism she had as a 25-year-old determined to save the world.
"I think I still have a great sense of adventure and trust, and am surprisingly idealistic given all the horrible things I've seen since I was 25," she says. "I think how I have changed is that I have a much deeper understanding of the dark forces in the world, of power."
Although Novogratz got her start on Wall Street, she has occasionally had trouble convincing financial titans of the viability of her particular mission. She says she once got into an argument with someone who worked at a hedge fund about subprime mortgage loans. He said that as long as no more than 90 percent of people default, the system works. Novogratz was shocked, since for Acumen Fund to succeed, it's vitally important that every single person pays back. "What we're saying is, in an interconnected world we have no choice but to think of ourselves as one tribe. And if we think of ourselves as one tribe, there is a place in it for this kind of patient capital that is really used for each others' success since we're vested in each others' success."
Novogratz is not embarrassed to shine a light on the world's problems, and in that way shares something in common with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who is a big fan of Novogratz and worked to bring attention to the genocide in Darfur through his writing.
"I adore Nick Kristof," she says. "Once he said to me, ‘I really like you because you're not anti-sweatshop.' I said, ‘Nick! What a terrible thing to say!'" She laughs. "I think both Nick and I have seen enough of the really awful in the world to realize that the perfect is really the enemy of the good."
In her book, Novogratz conveys the frustrations of trying to transform inefficient charities from within, and of the often Sisyphean nature of making any progress. She skewers the good intentions of unwieldy projects because they are not enough: Results are what matters. She also grapples with the complexities of helping the poor from the place of privilege, and stresses that any change must come from the people themselves.
Novogratz has the simultaneous intensity and calm of someone who is doing what she believes in. "When I see people that are my age and reaching 50, the ones that are really sparkly and full of joy are the ones that are committed to something bigger than themselves," she says.
Liz Goodwin is an assistant editor at The Daily Beast. She has written for the New York Sun, GothamSchools, the Tico Times, and Fodor's Travel Guides.
