By
Dress for Success (www.dressforsuccess.org)
The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation (www.komen.org)
I invite you to join me on the Foolanthropy discussion board, where we can discuss these and many other worthy organizations that are making the world a better place to be.
Count-Me-In (www.count-me-in.org)
If you followed our 1999 Foolanthropy charity drive, during which we Fools together contributed nearly $800,000 to five wonderful charities, you were introduced to the amazing concept of "microcredit." Microcredit involves helping those in poverty help themselves by lending them the surprisingly small amounts of money they need to establish livelihoods. In Bangladesh, for example, just a dollar or two can be enough to help a woman buy equipment to make and sell cheese. In the United States, just a few hundred dollars can help a woman launch a hairstyling business.
There are hundreds of microcredit organizations in the U.S. and perhaps thousands all over the world. The outfits that focus on the U.S. are local organizations with little to no marketing budgets. They mainly reach folks through word of mouth within the local community.
At this point, there is no single microcredit organization in America with a high national profile. Enter Count-Me-In. It's headed by some real dynamos. One of them began a little movement called "Take Our Daughters to Work Day" -- perhaps you've heard of it? This organization is determined to raise $25 million in its first year and is soliciting donations of just $5 from women around the nation.
Of course, you can donate more, and men can also contribute in honor of the women in their lives -- mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, etc. The funds collected will be redistributed to qualifying women in the form of small business loans, ranging from $500 to $10,000, and scholarships for business training and technical assistance.
Count-Me-In plans to build and nourish an online community of women helping women. In addition, it aims to revise the current credit scoring system used to evaluate an applicant's creditworthiness to account for women-specific issues, including credit histories marred by divorce and sporadic income histories for women who've taken time off to raise a family.
Please take some time to learn more about Count-Me-In and perhaps to contribute.
This organization addresses a seemingly small but vital problem faced by women who are trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. In the organization's own words: "Consider this Catch-22: If a woman doesn't have a job, she can't afford career-oriented clothes -- but without the right clothes, she can't get the job... Dress for Success is a nonprofit organization that distributes interview suits to low-income women, giving them a boost over one more hurdle on their way to success."
Here's how it works. Generous people donate suits that they no longer wear. Nonprofit organizations like homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, and job training programs refer women who need such clothing to Dress for Success. The organization explains: "Each client receives one suit when she has an interview and a second suit when she gets the job. Dress for Success clients are assisted by volunteer Personal Shoppers and, most importantly, every client is treated with dignity and respect."
Pretty nifty, eh? So here's what you can do. Click over to the Dress for Success website and learn more about it. (Maybe start with its FAQ page.) Find out where you can donate some of your own clothing. Better yet, consider organizing a suit drive at your workplace! You're just one person, but if you can drum up interest and collect 25 suits, you'll be helping dozens of women, which means you'll likely be helping dozens of families -- scores of people in all!
I've been aware of this large and growing organization for some time now, and I've always wondered to myself just who Susan G. Komen was. Spending a little time at the komen.org website, I read her very sad story. Tragically, there are countless other stories just as heartbreaking. With more attention paid to the issue of breast cancer -- and more research funded -- we may one day look back on this terrible disease as a scourge of the past. Please consider clicking over to the Komen website and learning more. The foundation takes donations at the site, too.
Here are a bunch of impressive factoids about the organization, copied or paraphrased from its own website:
According to the American Cancer Society, excluding cancers of the skin, breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, accounting for nearly one of every three cancers diagnosed in U.S. women. Each year, approximately 175,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer are diagnosed among women, and each year, about 43,300 women die from this disease. Only lung cancer accounts for more cancer deaths in women. Let's fight this.
P.S. If you're so inclined, consider sending a copy of this article to some friends of yours. Just scroll down a little and click on the "E-mail this page to a friend" link. You can send just about any page on the Fool website to anyone you want this way!
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