Sometimes

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years,
green thrives, the crops don’t fail.
Sometimes a woman aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some women become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.
—Sheenagh Pugh

Why Women Matter A letter from Torkin Wakefield  “It is ever on just one woman, the woman to dig in the fields, and take care of the children.  It is the children who are the ones to help with the digging. My husband goes in the morning.  He does not tell me where. He may not return at night.  I cannot ask him where he goes.  It is for me to do everything or my children will starve,” says an animated Collins.

 “It’s different in Uganda. Men contribute little,” says Phillip.  “I was raised by my mother.  She did everything. It is our culture. It can be a miracle to find a man who helps.”

I am listening to a conversation that the BeadforLife staff is having at lunchtime and thinking how it reflects what is known about the role of women in developing countries. Women are often looked on as inferior and mistreated while they raise the children, till the soil, and work from early morning until bedtime.  Now research worldwide shows that investing in women is a most effective development strategy. If women get a chance to make money, they will nourish and educate their children as their first priority.

1. 70% of the world’s 1.3 billion poor are women living on less than a dollar a day.
2. Women do 60% of the world’s work and earn 10% of the world’s income.
3. Women produce 70-75% of the world’s food crops.
4. It takes 15 times more expenditure to achieve a similar level in child nutrition when income is earned by the father than when it is earned by the mother.

Healing Ripple Effect

1.  When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children.
2.  An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 10 to 20 percent. An extra year of secondary school, it grows to 15 to 25 percent.
3. When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for a man.

Sources: United Nations, CIA Fact Sheet, World Indies Bank, Inter Press Service

It is for all these reasons that BeadforLife focuses on the education and empowerment of girls and women. It is a direct strategy to end extreme poverty.  The Ugandan women we are honored to partner with have our deepest respect: for their strength and resolve, and their capacity to experience both sorrow and joy as two parts of life that often come together.

To see more about the importance of women in development, check out http://www.girleffect.org/, an innovative collaboration between Nike Foundation and many other groups to focus interventions on women.

In this time of Thanksgiving we want to acknowledge each of you in the BeadCircle for supporting our work by buying and wearing beads, hosting BeadParties, and spreading the “buzz” about BeadforLife. We appreciate everything that you do.  We tell the beaders about you and how you support them.  They always “holler” and “uulate”  when they hear about you and your support.  Women are on the rise out of poverty.   Let’s keep going.

A happy and peaceful Thanksgiving for you and your loved ones.

Torkin Wakefield
Co-Executive Director

Maggie Meets Patricia and the World Get a Tiny Bit Better

Sometimes, people come into our lives and we know from the first second we see them that they will mean something special to us.  For me, Patricia is one of those people.

The first time I saw Patricia, she was sitting apart from the other children in the Namwongo slum, drawing pictures in the dirt with a stick.  At one point, she turned towards me and gave me a shy, beautiful smile then went back to her drawing.  Not being able to forget her or her smile, I asked the headmaster of the local primary school if he could find out who she was. She was not hard to locate:  Her skin condition -- bright white pigment creating large splotches on  her beautiful ebony skin -- made her stand out in a crowd.   She scares people with her appearance, and is alone and avoided.

See how beautiful Patricia is!

Maggie Tidwell is the Deputy Director of BeadforLife Uganda and Patricia’s new best friend.