Uninhibited

Hello Wordpress!

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 01:24:02 -0400

Hello Wordpress!

Angkor Archaeological Park, Cambodia.

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 23:46:33 -0400

Angkor Archaeological Park, Cambodia.

Good Morning, Krakow.

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 23:40:51 -0400

Good Morning, Krakow.

Not (JUST) FOR PROFIT GOES GLOBAL

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 23:37:00 -0400

Social enterprise isn’t just an American-led concept.

Sure, Americans offer outstanding direction and support to social businesses in developing communities worldwide, but many of those same communities bootstrap their own entrepreneurship ventures in absence of international assistance.

Imagine a near fatal accident turning into the very thing that provides employment and hope for over 50 people and their families - not to mention designs handmade, fair-trade silk products at an incredibly reasonable price.

Meet Chim Kong, a Cambodian entrepreneur who has been paving the way to fellow change agents in her community by creating jobs for Cambodian land mine survivors and their families.

Ta Prohm Silk & Souvenir bursts at the seams with handmade and fair-trade handicrafts including handbags, wallets, scarves, jewelry and home decor.

Ten years strong, Kong’s enterprise works to bring economic opportunities to those who might not have the resources to support themselves otherwise.

A land mine survivor herself, Kong says she began her enterprise “to help them help themselves.”

Littered with unknown millions of unexploded munitions and shadowed under the legacy of recent genocide, Cambodia is one of the world’s poorest countries.

The country’s modern history witnessed an estimated quarter of its population brutally murdered under the communistic Khmer Rouge regime. Today, the country is still struggling to get back on a strong footing.

At twelve-years-old, Kong stepped on a land mine and the direction of her life was forever changed. Her father brought her to the hospital to reveal her leg was destroyed.

“He asked if I could have the plastic limb, and [the doctor] said I was too young. After two years, they could do the plastic limb.” Until then, Kong lived with a dead leg, awaiting its amputation.

“I cried every day,” Kong said. “I could not walk; I could not do anything.”

Now, a smile never leaves her face.

A self-proclaimed hard worker, Kong was determined to support her family after receiving her artificial limb. Twenty years younger than most of her classmates, she enrolled in a trade school for sewing and emerged as one of the top in her class. She was eventually chosen to work in the school’s workshop for customers, which provided her experience in management, finance, and the fabric production chain.

Kong opened Ta Prohm Silk & Souvenir only a few years later and taught herself the intricacies of the business along the way.

Identifying employees through friends and a school for fellow land mine survivors in Cambodia, Kong and a group of 12 “peace workers” work with individuals who were the “most hurt after Pol Pot.”

It makes no difference whether or not the store’s pieces actually sell: Kong’s staff will receive their income regardless.

“We pay them whether we sell or not sell. We must pay them; they need money for their families to eat. They are very poor.”

A legacy of Pol Pot’s communist regime, most Cambodians rely on subsistence farming for their livelihoods.

Disabled people struggle to find a means of income to suit their needs. Ta Prohm offers those individuals and their families hope and a reliable paycheck.

All purchases from Ta Prohm support the continued operation of the business, its workshop, and the staff who rely on its support to provide for their families.

Though on the other side of the map, Kong and her business partner, Sam, ship their goods globally, with frequent wholesale shipping to the U.S. and Japan.

Requests for purchase can be made via email.

It’s A Thing: Watching the Men’s Olympic Marathon,...

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 06:09:51 -0400

It’s A Thing: Watching the Men’s Olympic Marathon, London 2012

Introductions! …….just six weeks late. This video...

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 05:08:34 -0400

Introductions!

…….just six weeks late.

This video took four and a half hours to upload. Enjoy it.

It's a Thing: Mistaken Chinese Words

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 21:41:05 -0400

You Ku! A harmless phrase Scott has been yelling the past two weeks is the Chinese equivalent for the word “tourist.” last night, our new best friend Ted, the Asian sensation, kindly pointed out that Scott has been very, very mistaken in his pronunciation. Instead of yelling “tourist” everywhere we go (and I mean everywhere), Scott has been screaming the word “underwear” with far too much enthusiasm. Perhaps that explains the strange stares and Beijing’s lack of smiles.

"I don't want to freak you out, but they appear to have misplaced our passports"

Sat, 19 May 2012 10:35:55 -0400

In the latest of chaotic hurdles we have been forced to overcome to make this trip possible, the Russian Consulate decided to lose our passports - inconveniently following our expediting our Russian visas.

Oh how the adventures continue.

NOT (JUST) FOR PROFIT: AJIRI TEA

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:35:23 -0400

“I didn’t even really like tea,” says Ajiri Tea’s 25-year-old founder Sara Holby, who now owns and operates a tea company with a reach of over 400 stores in three countries. Despite never previously envisioning herself in the world of business, Sara Holby is a prototype of social entrepreneurs.

Ajri, which means “to employ” in Swahili, was established in 2009 with a single goal in mind: create jobs for Kenyan women.

Now only three years later, Ajiri employs 63 women and uses the profits to send 19 orphans to school.

Ajiri is socially conscious business at its finest—tea is purchased from local, small-scale farmers, and its packaging is handmade by five women’s groups to reflect the Kenyan landscape. Even the boxes themselves are environmentally sustainable, personally designed and crafted from recycled office paper, banana leaves, and harvested water hyacinth—an intrusive plant in Lake Victoria.

Holby stresses her goal of creating a cycle of employment through the company. “The women are there, the tea comes from Kenya, we sell it here, but then the profits go back for them to do it again.”

Farmers and women are given an income with each box of tea purchased, and all the resulting profits are reinvested into Holby’s Ajiri Foundation. All community members who are a part of Ajiri Tea are then able to select the orphans they wish to send to school with the proceeds. “It makes the women and everyone more invested in the project.”

A bit of the funds are also reinvested in a communal fund for which the community can vote on their use. Most of the 63 women have spent their new incomes in their children’s education, larger farming plots and other projects to support their families and communities and have gained greater communal respect in the process.

Not only does it help stimulate the local economy in western Kenya, it’s the embodiment of Holby’s three years of hard work to turn her vision into a reality.

While it’s her full time gig, she has yet to take a profit from Ajiri Tea herself, but still plans on making this project her life’s pursuit.

“It’s just me and my mom, really,” Holby says. But the Kenyan side of Ajiri’s operation is thanks to Sara’s good local friend, Nick. “All this wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for Nick.”

Despite some initial challenges in getting the company up and running, Ajiri Tea has been awarded some of the tea world’s highest honors, and it only continues to grow and complete a self-sustaining cycle of employment and development.

Oh, and just so we don’t forget …

“It’s good tea. Good tea for a good cause. Actually, scratch that—it’s great tea for a great cause.”

Ajiri Tea can be found in Cardullo’s in Harvard Square, South End Formaggio, and Cambridge Naturals in Porter Square, or online for $9 a box or $10 for loose tea.

(Originally published in Boston’s Weekly Dig)

Marry for love? Consider yourself lucky. In Kyrgyzstan,...

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:47:00 -0400

Marry for love? Consider yourself lucky. In Kyrgyzstan, tradition dictates most girls marry upon kidnapping.

Taken by surprise, and sometimes for never-before-seen soon-to-be husband, about one in three Kyrgystan girls under 25 is often forced out of her home by bachelor’s group of friends and taken to the male’s family’s home. Resistance will sometimes last days until the girl concedes, or in worst-case scenarios, finds suicide the only way out.

The groom will address his wife’s family following her kidnapping and look to arrange a bride-price. Families see little wrong with the tradition. It is the women of the groom’s family who often convince the girl to end her resistance.

Despite being illegal since 1994, efforts to end the practice are almost nonexistent.

NOT (JUST) FOR PROFIT: PROJECT REPAT

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:59:00 -0400

“Hopefully we can show with our success that you can make money but do good as well,” Project Repat President Nathan Rothstein says.

Rothstein and fellow co-founder Ross Lohr have a simple goal in mind: “upcycle” old t-shirts into fashionable, engaging products while providing fair wage jobs in the United States.

Project Repat combines environmentally conscious products with socially beneficial results. While in its earlier years, Project Repat focused on repatriating shirts from abroad, the founders decided to pivot their strategy to make their project more financially viable and create opportunities for fair wages at home.

“Everyone has a connection to t-shirts,” Rothstein says. For those who don’t necessarily want to wear them or give them away, Lohr says they thought, “why not just do something with them here?”

Project Repat is all about preserving the memories embedded in t-shirts and helping customers connect on an emotional level. The bags, the company’s biggest seller, are made up of five upcycled t-shirts each, with the final product working to emit a distinctive story or idea. Every article is hand crafted for added value, and each is one-of-a-kind.

But Project Repat doesn’t just stop with upcycling.

“All businesses should think about impact,” Lohr says. “We want to get rich, but we want others to get rich as well.”

Project Repat strives to engage all stakeholders in the process and provide fair wages back home. Repat works with North Carolina cooperative Opportunity Threads to prototype and produce all their products. Opportunity Threads is composed of nine Guatemalan immigrants in a town with one of the state’s highest unemployment rates, and most families lie just one or two checks above the poverty line.

“In this country we don’t do a good job of helping lower to middle class people get wealthier,” Rothstein says. “Jobs like this can help with that.”

Project Repat aims to establish a viable business economically, socially and environmentally at home, where hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost to outsourcing. While many apparel companies won’t disclose their prices for labor, Rothstein and Lohr proudly state Opportunity Threads employees earn $14/hour and part-ownership in their cooperative.

“It’s an amazing partnership,” Rothstein says. And as Project Repat grows, so too can Opportunity Threads.

“We’re all about telling the story about T-shirts and their environmental impact, but we’re also about telling the story of U.S. manufacturing over the last fifty years,” Rothstein says.

“We think we can provide more value to the world by giving people the opportunity to make fair wages and make their own economic decisions, which just adds dignity to their lives.”

Their biggest hurdle now is just getting their products into peoples’ hands.

“We want people to feel it, because it’s actually an amazing product and really sturdy,” Lohr says. “We think it’s really powerful: people share their t-shirts and they come back in bag form.”

Interested? Project Repat merchandise is available online at www.projectrepat.org — $25-30 for collection bags and $40 custom designs.

(Originally published on DigBoston.com)

A rare glimpse into the mysterious cult of personality in one of...

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:23:53 -0400

A rare glimpse into the mysterious cult of personality in one of the most isolated countries on earth: North Korea.

Who needs major up-front funding to have success? The lovely...

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 11:07:45 -0400

Who needs major up-front funding to have success?

The lovely ladies of Kyakasangulu don’t seem to: they’ve got hope, inspiration and enthusiasm. And Empowered Voices doesn’t either.

It started with a desire to help. Not sure where. Not sure how. But day after day, this project has begun to sculpt itself into something beautiful.

I arrived home last night from a typically extra-long day to the most affirming email I could have asked for. Peninah, my Ugandan “sister” and community leader, sent Lene and me the following along with the above flyer.

Your visit to us was a blessing and an opportunity to encourage us
work hard for our children to live a better life than us, we started a
women’s group and named it after you and Lene. We have so far reached
a number of 10 women and we are training hard to and producing a lot
of crafts in order to meet your demand when you start ordering. We
are also trying to learn new methods of farming from the resources at
the district agriculture office to try to earn better to help our
children and our neighbours in the community.

To think this resulted from only a promise and desire to help. We are now speaking with five potential partners, potential donors, and plan to revise our project proposal to cater to the work Peninah and her 10 fellow group members are creating themselves.

What may have been our vision at first has turned into something unique to the ladies, and we hope, ultimately entirely self-sufficient.

One way or another, we intend to make a positive impact on Kyakasangulu.

An interesting look at the racist undercurrents still brewing in...

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 10:30:35 -0400

An interesting look at the racist undercurrents still brewing in the “Rainbow Nation” of South Africa.

Another indicator that education as we know it is changing...

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:23:44 -0400

Another indicator that education as we know it is changing forever.

Don’t know who Joseph Kony is? By April 20, you...

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:24:00 -0500

Don’t know who Joseph Kony is? By April 20, you won’t be able to avoid him.

If you haven’t heard of the KONY 2012 Campaign yet, quite frankly,

where have you been?

Kony is only one of the world’s worst human rights offenders. You know, wielding his power through the Lord’s Resistance Army throughout Central Africa through the abduction, rape and slaughtering of tens of thousands since 1986 (nothing that the world needs to pay attention to or anything…). In order to gain maximum power, Kony’s soldiers abduct and indoctrinate young boys to fight in this rebel army, order them to kill their families and communities and void them of all sense of hope for a life apart from pure horror. Young girls are taken as sex slaves, and many who come across the army are mutilated to the point of non-recognition. Worst of all, it’s not even clear what he is fighting for.

Yesterday, Invisible Children launched a 30-minute documentary aiming to make Joseph Kony a household name and put an end to his army’s atrocities.

Invisible Children co-founder Jason Russell uses the film to raise awareness of the man who the International Criminal Court holds at the top of their list for war crimes. Russel’s goal is to gain support for what he hopes will become the world’s largest social media campaign for human rights, making 2012 the year Kony is finally stopped.

Watch the video, then join the world in “Covering the Night” on April 20 for an old-school poster campaign to make your city listen.

This situation is not unique to this young girl; it is not...

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:07:00 -0500

This situation is not unique to this young girl; it is not unique to Cambodia.

There are more slaves in the world today than during the Atlantic Slave Trade. And a great deal of them are right in front of your eyes.

The Price of Sex at Boston College

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:01:00 -0500

Dear John, buying sex? Your most recent purchase might just be recorded.

Photojournalist Mimi Chakarova takes viewers on an in-depth and intimate look at the sex industry across the whole of Europe and the Middle East in her documentary, The Price of Sex: An Investigation of Sex Trafficking, screening Wednesday, March 21 at Boston College.

Chakarova grants viewers a personalized look into the heart of the blossoming sex industry that has thousands of girls - some as young as 13 - hopeless for a life devoid of violence, rape and mental bondage.

Already the official selection of eight international film festivals, The Price of Sex offers a rare look at the degrading and dehumanizing effects on the everyday women sold into the industry. Personal interviews with women and their traffickers place expose new aspects of the industry and offer viewers unparalleled insight. The film even includes a look at the industry from the Johns’ perspective.

Coercion into the sex industry isn’t as hard to avoid as one may think, and prostitution is a harsh reality for tens of thousands around the world. Difficult economic and social conditions have brought many women to their breaking point: work is hard to come by, and desperation leads them to seek work opportunities abroad to sustain their families.

In fact, most women are trafficked by someone they already know; roughly 60% are recruited by other women to accept job offers internationally - not realizing this “work abroad” is too often an endless, hopeless cycle of abuse, debt, mental anguish and prostitution.

Women are bought and sold multiple times over, often transported across multiple borders, are deprived of their identities, and believe any attempt at freedom is a hopeless cause.

Following the film screening, there will be a Q&A.

THE PRICE OF SEX: AN INVESTIGATION OF SEX TRAFFICKING

WEDNESDAY 3.21.12
BOSTON COLLEGE: CUSHING HALL 001
140 COMM. AVE., BOSTON
617.552.3740
7PM/ALL AGES/FREE
PRICEOFSEX.ORG

It’s a heated month for gay rights, as the world witnesses...

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:40:12 -0500

It’s a heated month for gay rights, as the world witnesses a boom in the media regarding both advancements and setbacks for gay rights nationally and internationally.

To further flame the fire, St. Petersburg, Russia now wants to make even the utterance of the word, “gay” illegal and subject to fines up to $17,000. Gay rights have received more headlines in the past several years than any decade prior. Their open discussion has prompted the Russian government to crackdown on what it sees as “propaganda” to indoctrinate young minds. Read more from the New York Times.

End of Aid, Glimmer of Greater Development?

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 11:42:00 -0500

Despite widespread outcries of opposition from the West, Uganda has reintroduced legislation that could make homosexuality punishable by death. Already illegal under the country’s penal code, the new bill will take find guilty parties imprisoned for life - at a minimum - and capital punishment for the most unlucky offenders.

Countries including the United States, United Kingdom and Sweden have all threatened to cut aid to the East African country if parliament accepts the proposed bill into law. Worst of all, the bill will legitimize, even mandate, Ugandans’ responsibility to report and condemn gays.

While if passed, this proposed legislation can be considered a gross violation of human rights, it nevertheless begs the question of potentially increased self-sufficiency for the developing nation. Uganda’s largest donors stopping aid cold turkey might just spur the thought of something else in the country’s progression: the end of aid-dependency.

Not only could this potential halt on funding prompt Uganda’s government to look at its human rights legislation; it may also force the nation to evaluate its spending, resource allocation and investments.

Mass governmental aid is clearly perpetuating poverty - not working to eliminate it, as so many claim. In fact, so few individuals aid is intended for ever benefit from increased funds. Instead, the billions of dollars in aid cycles through the highest levels of government toward corruption, weak and failed investments, and fosters an incredible dependency on aid’s perpetuation. Governments of developing countries realize prosperity due to governmental aid could mean the money flow could soon come to an end. Thus, there is little initiative to actually progress as intended. An end to aid could mean more thoughtful investments in necessary sectors, reduced corruption and increased accountability due to increasing constraints on the national budget.

Obviously not a conclusive theory, but surely a consideration to keep in mind as global pressures mount for reform.

For further reading on potential scenarios resulting from the end of aid, read Dambisa Moyo’s 2009 book, Dead Aid.