The First Wednesday Club: Help Maria buy a barn

Do you want to make a difference ? Bring more meaning to your life? Last year Mamamia’s Rebecca Sparrow did just that. Now, she needs your help.  She writes:

“Fourteen months ago I made one of the best decisions I’d ever made. I decided I wanted to make a difference.  A proper difference. A real difference. I wanted, in my own way, to try to change the world. Or at least a small patch.  And so using my Sunday Mail newspaper column in Queensland I launched The First Sunday Club where I asked my readers to donate ten dollars on the first Sunday of every month to a specific charity or cause. Some months it would be global. The next local. It didn’t matter. What I knew is that by itself ten dollars can’t do much. But as a group? As a group we had the power to change lives. And we did. We bought books for girls in Afghanistan, paid for street swags for our country’s homeless, contributed to an orphanage in Thailand, helped buy a Liberty swing for wheelchair-bound kids in Brisbane, provided fresh pyjamas and storybooks to foster kids, paid for more staff to help educate school kids about the risks of spinal injuries and more counseling time for children who have been sexually assaulted. We funded more research into stillbirths and ensured that more disadvantaged kids had something to open last Christmas.

This week that newspaper column draws to a close.  But thankfully the First Sunday Club will live on thanks to Mia who has offered up Mamamia as its new home.  The one change?  The name.  We’re now calling ourselves the First Wednesday Club.

So I’m here today, on the first Wednesday in March, asking you to come on a journey with me. Let’s see what good we can do with ten bucks.

So who is our money going to this month?

FITE.

FITE is a global empowerment platform powered by Dermalogica, A leading professional skin care brand, and Kiva.org, the nonprofit leader in microfinance.

It stands for Financial Independence Through Entrepreneurship. What does that mean? It means the focus is on giving women entrepreneurs small loans.  To start businesses.  To expand their businesses. To change their lives. Because here’s the thing, more than 70% of people who live below the poverty line are women. And what I’ve learnt over the years is that if we want to change the world, we need to start empowering and educating women and girls.  (A great book to read on this topic is “Half The Sky” by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

The beauty of FITE is that you can help change a woman’s life virtually for free.  That’s right. This first charity isn’t going to cost you anything except a $3.75 transaction fee.  Huh?  Let me explain.  All I’m going to do is ask you to loan a woman $25.

That’s right. You can get the $25 back.

So now you’re thinking, why a loan and not a straight out donation? Because research shows that a loan requires more accountability. It spurs you into action.

So this month I want you to click here to MAKE A MIRCROLOAN and I want you to loan a woman, any one you like, $25. Like Maria. She’s on FITE as I write this post. Maria is in her early 50s, lives in Peru and supports her family by buying and selling sheep. But she has to use her uncle’s stable because she doesn’t have one. So she’d like a loan to help pay to build a stable and so she can buy more sheep to sell.  And she promises to make her loan repayments on time and she has eleven months to pay the money back.  And you know what? I’m willing to take that chance on Maria.  And I hope you do too.   Because once her business is up and going, I’ll get my money bank into my FITE account.  And I can reloan it to another woman or go home and buy myself a few magazines.

Need some convincing?  Watch this.

[youtube KF2WQZ_EGBA 640 390]

Dermalogica are also donating $1 for every product that you purchase with the FITE sleeve wrapped around it (there is a redeemable code inside)

So come with me, Mamamia.  Together we can bring about change. Let’s see who we can help this year.  And let’s start by helping a woman on the other side of the world change her future.

 

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