Microfinance Week: Winner - Vittana

Hey all,

So the winner of the microfinance week competition is Vittana, they are the student microloaning organization which lends peer to peer, which means I get to choose the person I loan my $25 dollars too. If I can I will link it up to this post later, that way you can see who I choose, thanks to your choice of organization.

Thanks for the comments, and I know there are a lot of you who read and don't comment, but I really would love to hear from you lurkers, so please think about commenting next time you enjoy an article or want to add to the conversation. Thanks!!!


This upcoming week is the first week of February, which for those who are unaware is Black History Month here in the USA and Canada. A fact which I would like to commemorate by donating to organizations which work to eliminate racial prejudices and help create a more equal society. Off the top of my head, I was thinking the ACLU, Color of Change, NAACP, or possibly UNCF. If you like these idea's let me know. However, if you have any suggestions of good organizations out their, please let me know. I always love learning about new charitable organizations.

Thanks. :-)

Pakistani Flood Relief

Yesterday, I was reading one of my favorite blogs Racailicious - which focuses on the intersection of race and pop culture. I always find it informative and helps me to look at issues from a different context. If you haven't read it, its a great blog to talk about how race interacts with our culture, I highly recommend it. From there I was directed to some information about the Pakistani Flood Relief effort and was underwhelmed by the US response. First I want to really reinforce the scope of the flooding; here is a link to a map (from the BBC) with a visual overlay of the flooding on top of the US, so you can see the size of the affected area. I think it helps to have that kind of a visual to really understand the extent of the disaster.

Racialicious had a link to an article from the Atlantic - 4 Reason Why American's Aren't Giving for Pakistani Flood Relief by Max Fisher. This article is discussing the dismal response for this natural emergency, in comparison to other's such as the Haiti earthquake. "The figures for the Haiti earthquake, tsunami, and Kashmir earthquake were $1087.33, $1249.80, and $388.33 respectively. For the Pakistan floods, the world has given only $16.36 per victim. These shortfalls have led many to ask a macabre question. Why did the world, particularly U.S. individual donors, give so much for Haiti but show so little concern for Pakistan?" Here's an article in WIRED discussing the difference in response from the US compared to the Haiti earthquake, and the differences are startling." According to the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, a month after the flooding started, the United States has provided an aggregated $200 million for Pakistan. That’s less than half of what it gave Haiti’s much, much smaller population."