Update
First, I would like to apologize for my absence from the blog. It has been a whirlwind of a quarter, but the up-side is that I have some new and exciting adventures to tell you about. I recently took on the position of President for the Fisher Graduate Women in Business organization at school. Our new leadership team has some exciting new ideas for next year and hopefully we can keep the momentum going from the previous leadership team.
Last month, we went to a strategic planning/leadership retreat in Midway, Utah. The overarching theme of the conference was to recognize and develop your strengths to be a more effective leader. At the conference, we also heard a speaker from CARE, a non-profit NGO focusing on alleviating poverty. It was really eye-opening to me to understand different micro-finance projects going on throughout the world and their affect on reducing poverty. For example, CARE began a micro savings/micro-finance project in Niger in 1991. Since its inception, the projects have grown to 400000 participants and they have collectively saved $20 million dollars. Considering the women put in about 10 to 20 cents a week, it is amazing how successful they are. Nicholas Kristof is an important advocate of CARE and their projects. He recently wrote an article focusing on these projects for The New York Times.
This is something that I have found really interesting and am looking into how I can help with these projects myself. Here is the link for Krisotf’s article as well as for CARE’s website. I will write back soon!
Kristof - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/opinion/23kristof.html?src=me&ref=homepage
CARE - www.care.org