I was searching Flickr to find a photographer based in Katmandu Nepal to do an assignment for me, and in my keyword search using Flickr’s tagging search engine I found the Panos Network. Wow ! Blew my mind, wanted to use ‘Giving for the Global Good’ to get the word out.

Panos in not one site, but 9 individual sites, all across the world, each with a unique look, feel and message.  In writing this post I realize that this site, Giving for the Global Good, actually could help get the word out and inspire people to dial into Planet Earth and help out.

Panos’ mission statement is clear, and yet so sophisticated – the understanding that to get the message out there needs to be a dynamic conduit for, what I call the 3 Ds – the desperate, disenfranchised, and the diaspora, get get their voices heard to the global community.

Twenty years after the creation of Panos, the vision of a global network of institutes striving towards a common goal – ensuring that information is effectively used to foster public debate, pluralism and democracy – has become a reality.

In 1974, UK journalist Jon Tinker started Earthscan, a unit of the International Institute for Environment and Development which offered journalists (and later NGOs) objective information on key global issues and on policy options for addressing them.

By 1986 Jon had transformed Earthscan’s Southern media programme into a new independent institution: Panos.

From the outset, as part of its commitment to Southern-led development, Panos aimed to build a network of independent institutes around the world.

During the late 1990s offices opened in Zambia, Haiti, Nepal, Ethiopia and India, among others. In 2000 West Africa became the first autonomous Southern institute, and six years later Eastern Africa completed the transition.

It was Gordon Goodman, then head of the Stockholm Environment Institute, who proposed that we take the name Panos – meaning ‘beacon’ in the Doric version of classical Greek.

Today, in Nepali, a panas is an oil lamp around which people gather to discuss important issues, and in Amharic the word means a torch.

Appropriately enough, the prefix pan means ‘all’ or ‘universal’ in modern Latin, resonating with our global approach.

Panos

Panos South Asia

Panos France

Panos Caribe

Panos London

Panos West Afrika

Panos Southern Afrika

Panos East Afrika

Panos Canada

Check out Global Agents for Change

On May 31st, more than 20 people will ride their bikes 3,000km from Vancouver to Tijuana, Mexico to raise money and awareness for entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Agents of Change, a nonprofit registered charity, hopes to raise $1 million from the challenge to connect those living in poverty with microcredit – small, interest-free loans. The loans are to help entrepreneurs in developing countries by helping to get them out of poverty.

The organization is raising awareness about how microcredit can help families escape poverty, with help from its partner organization, Kiva. Kiva, a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, provides loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries. Agents of Change, which has so far raised more than $8,000 for microcredit, is trying to raise the million dollar fund so people in developing countries can be provided with loans through Kiva.

Kiva’s website provides a platform for borrowers to post their stories, pictures, business goals and needs. Supporters can view the profiles and get a choice of who they would like to support, as well as receive information on the borrowers’ progress and how the money is being used.

Through Kiva, lenders receive their money back after the loan is repaid, but that money can also be used again to help another entrepreneur. The million dollar fund through Agents of Change, however, isn’t refundable as it’s being set up to be used as a constant source of funding for Kiva.

Through Kiva, the businesses are screened by recognized local microfinance partners. All of the funds go directly to the borrower. So far, Kiva’s repayment rate is estimated to be 97 per cent successful.

Dr. Muhammad Yunus, who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize and is the inspiration behind the cause, founded the microcredit bank, Grameen Bank of Bangladesh.

LINK to Official OLPC site

This post might be a bit out of scope for Giving for the Global Good, but as a fairly serious geek in tune with the current events relative to the various initiatives to find a way to help educate the children of the world and ramp them up the mainstream western industrialized nations about things like the Internet and the World Wide Web, I just wanted to make a quick post about OLPC (One Laptop per Child) Nicholas Negroponte’s initiative to give the third world’s children laptops and the access to the Internet.

Ivan Krsti comments on the challenges of the OLPC and the contentious issues of Windows verses Open Source and really seems to drill down to the important core issues of this subject in his recent post, found here on slashdot

and here on the core blog post LINK

This Mother’s Day is May 11th. Unitus has created a unique opportunity to celebrate the occasion while also helping the fight against global poverty.

Check out the Empowering Women website you tell the story of the inspiring and empowering women in your life. With each online tribute, you’ll also be spreading empowerment and economic opportunity to women throughout the developing world—proceeds from the campaign help Unitus microfinance partners reach more hardworking women with life-changing microfinance services.

Perhaps an answer would be to develop a program engage young adults, to be better citizens of America, by becoming more aware citizens of the world. This initiative might leverage US teen access to modest cash resources and to harness the power of micro-credit to bring about change. I think that these young adults would feel enormously empowered as a result of the tangible difference they make through their participation in such a microcredit program.

]]> http://give4global.com/leverage-us-teen-access-to-money-for-microcredit/feed/ 0 http://give4global.com/natalie-portman-on-microcredit/ http://give4global.com/natalie-portman-on-microcredit/#comments Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:29:46 +0000 admin http://give4global.com/?p=66

“Microcredit is about giving hope. When you’re talking about making loans to women whose income is less than $1 a day, you can easily make the leap to see what a microloan can make possible. The women I’ve met in Uganda and Guatemala are so resourceful, and it’s just amazing to see how, with their courage and diligence, they create small businesses with such tiny amounts of money. These women work so hard, and they manage to pay off their loans, and the first thing they do is educate and feed their kids. It’s amazing that the world is not investing more in this resource.”

Natalie Portman
Actress
FINCA International Ambassador of Hope
Spokesperson for the International Year of Microcredit 2005

Have Fun, Do Good

Britt Bravo is a writer specializing in stories about individuals and organizations that are creating social change. She writes for blogs, produces podcasts and teaches people how to blog and podcast. Britt writes for Have Fun * Do Good, BlogHer and NetSquared. She also produces the Big Vision Podcast, the Arts and Healing Podcast and the NetSquared Podcast. Using her 17 years of experience working with nonprofits, socially responsible businesses, and artists, Britt provides consulting for nonprofits and individuals to help them realize their Big Vision. You can contact her at britt AT brittbravo DOT com.