The thing I love best about Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s book (and now documentary film) Half the Sky is that in it, women are shown as being the powerful solution to the challenges they face. It’s not that women are the problem, or that women face problems, it’s that women are full of potential (duh!) and can address their own problems in their own ways. Too often, international aid has focused on bringing in “solutions” dreamed up by people too far removed from the real problems, and they end much as Oprah’s and Madonna’s schools for girls in African ended: as graveyards, or junkyards, or nothing at all.
The future of “aid” is partnership and empowerment. Partnership and empowerment, people!
You only have a until midnight tonight to watch Half the Sky for free at PBS.org. Do it now!
I remember a few years ago when my son (a HS senior then, I think) decided what he wanted for Christmas was to save and raise enough money to micro-finance a woman with a home-based business in Central America. He did, mostly from his own savings. Those of us in the west can either oppress people in developing countries or be empowering partners; I don’t think there is a way not to be one or the other, the way the world’s economy is set up nowadays.
Tim