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 Extreme poverty can be ended.
BFL members are typical of impoverished people around the world – determined,
hardworking, and smart, but lacking opportunities to lift their families from
poverty.
Here are ways you can become an anti-poverty advocate and make a difference on extreme
poverty.
- Make a donation. Donations
to BeadforLife go directly towards eradicating poverty in Uganda. 93 cents of
every dollar is invested in community development work fighting extreme poverty,
including projects in health care, vocational training for out-of-school youth,
affordable housing, and entrepreneurial skills development. BeadforLife is a 501(c)(3)
non-profit organization (tax ID: 20-1683139).
Donations are tax deductible.
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- Host
a BeadParty or bring beads to your community event. It is fun and easy to
bring BeadforLife to your friends. Have a BeadParty and help people living in extreme poverty
at the same time. We make it easy with step-to-step guides, educational materials,
and lots of beautiful beads. learn more
- Buy
Beads. Purchase our jewelry, notecards, CDs and jewelry bags for yourself,
or make them gifts that give twice – once to the recipient and once
to the women in Uganda lifting their families from poverty. learn more
- Buy Fair Trade Products. We have
found that what people really want is the opportunity to support their families
through honest hard work. But in many countries, there are few jobs or opportunities
for the poor. In some cases, trade rules unfairly discriminate against farmers
and merchants from developing countries. Many organizations are working to make
trade fair. Others, including BeadforLife, promote Fair Trade items which pay
people living wages.
- Universal Primary Education. Access to elementary education has a strong impact on countries moving
out of poverty and is one of the UN's Millennium Development Goals. Yet many
countries can't afford to pay for education, and most children remain illiterate
for life. Helping support and fund primary education for all children - educating
girls has an especially strong impact - would build the platform for other development
to take place.
Take Action to Call
for Universal Primary Education
- Debt
Cancellation. Many countries are laboring to repay massive debts and divert
funding for health or education to pay loan interest. An international movement
has sought debt cancellation for many developing countries. Those that have received
debt cancellation have invested in their citizens, providing education, vaccines,
and other basic services.
Take
Action on Debt Cancellation
- Support
the UN's Millennium Development Goals. The United Nations has outlined
an integrated approach to fight extreme poverty worldwide, and has a strategy
to achieve their goals. Creating awareness about and government funding support
for this strategy would go a long way towards creating the kind of coordinated
international approach necessary.
Click here to find out more about the Millennium Development Goals.
- Support increased, and more effective
US
funding for development projects around the world. While many people think
US
international assistance disappears into a black hole, our experience in
Uganda
shows us how effective US aid can be
- many of the HIV-positive members of our group get lifesaving AIDS drugs because
of
US
government funding.
US
government
assistance can make a difference but we need to give aid that is both more effective,
and in higher amounts.
Making
aid more effective involves several things. One is eliminating 'tied-aid,' funding that we require to be spent on goods from the
US
. So our funds are
used to purchase US corn or AIDS drugs, when buying them locally would be cheaper
and create local jobs and industry. We can also increase the effectiveness of
assistance by insisting that dollars go to help the very poor, rather than hiring
US consultants. Finally, we can stop using international assistance to support
relatively rich nations like
Israel
and
Saudi Arabia
, and instead target it towards truly impoverished regions. For
more information on making aid effective, learn more
In
addition to increasing effectiveness, we need to increase the amount of aid we
provide. Among all developed countries, the
US
is last in terms of per capita
international assistance. The
US
has committed on many occasions to devote .07% of our budget
towards foreign assistance but has failed to do so. We currently only spend a
penny out of every dollar the federal government spends for international aid.
- Think Big. Understand the connections between poverty, women's rights, agriculture,
education, and how our personal actions and government policy in the developed
world affect poor people worldwide. For more
background on how many global issues are interconnected, learn more
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