How Gambian Women Are Turning Trash Into Treasure

By on December 7, 2015   /   Featured Post, Health   /   Leave a comment
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Gambian Women Turn Trash Into Treasure

An initiative in Gambia is empowering women and reducing hazardous waste at the same time. The Waste Innovation Center, launched in August and initially funded by the European Union’s Global Climate Change Alliance, shows women in the Brikama area how to recycle waste into useful materials and products, which they can then sell in local markets, news site AllAfrica.com reported. Wood-like waste is recycled into charcoal, for example, which can be used as an alternative to firewood and decrease deforestation. Food waste is recycled into compost to function as environmentally friendly fertilizers and plastic is turned into everything from paving slabs and gutters to local sanitary toilet holes. Supported by Waste Aid UK and the Gambia Women’s Initiative, among others, the project provides women with skills they can use to become self-sufficient entrepreneurs. Women learning at the center come from five communities, and some of them travel as far as 12 miles to learn these skills that will provide them with an income, according to the Guardian. Isatou Ceesay, who now leads GWI, highlighted the need to focus on economic equality in her country, telling the Guardian, “In terms of education, [women] are the ones who are always behind. Boys are chosen to go […]

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What The U.K.’s Former First Lady Can Teach Us About Mentoring

By on November 30, 2015   /   Featured Post, Leadership   /   Leave a comment
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Women mentoring women

Fast Co. spoke to Cherie Blair to find out how she’s using technology to pair mentors and protégés in unexpected ways with remarkable results. As an international human-rights barrister, Cherie Blair has traveled around the world and met women in impoverished areas. Many had business ideas but lacked the resources and assistance necessary to get them off the ground. She always thought there had to be a better way to help them than the ubiquitous two- or three-day conference. I wanted to do something that used technology and targeted a particular group of women who were not the poorest of the poor, but who had businesses that were employing other people.” –Cherie Blair If she could help those business owners succeed, not only would each woman and her family have a better life, but she would also be able to employ others and encourage the economic development of her region and country. It was an ambitious goal, but Blair is no stranger to tackling big challenges. She came from humble beginnings, raised by her single mother and her grandmother, each of whom had only attended school until age 14. Having made the journey from her modest Liverpool home to accomplished […]

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Women Change Makers, What’s Your Passion?

By on November 17, 2015   /   Arts, Featured Post, Innovation, Leadership   /   Leave a comment
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Women Change Makers

Ronnie Planalp Ronnie Planalp is a producer of documentary films and theater in New York and London through her production company, Clear Eye Productions. She splits her time between New York City and Martha’s Vineyard. I am passionate about living every day with love in my heart and compassion toward others. By letting this inform my daily life, I can see the positive energy everywhere. I am passionate about connecting people and mentoring. Through these relationships, I hope to affect change, in myself and in others. In my work, I tell stories of pursuing one’s dreams and persevering with purpose and determination. Life is full of surprises, and embracing uncertainty and risk-taking without fear of failure is something I pursue every day—with passion! SHAKESPEAREHIGH.ORG | THEYCAMETOPLAY.COM   Jodi Wing Founder, The Art of Peace Club & Academy Los Angeles, California Jodi Wing, education activist and author, evolved from savvy marketer to satirical novelist, and, finally, thought leader to inner-city youth by creating and teaching Art of War-inspired lessons for practicing peace. Having embraced Sun Tzu’s The Art of War in a modern context, I write about how to manage social conflict and competition to make winning decisions. Working within LA’s […]

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Rural Development, The Charakha Way – Gandhi Would Be Proud

By on November 10, 2015   /   Featured Post, Leadership   /   Leave a comment
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Charkha Weaving Cooperative in India

(This post is authored by Rohit Parakh who is Global Chapters Lead with Rang De and has been an active and pivotal part of the fight against poverty in India. He recently went for a field trip to one of Impact Partners organizations, Charkha. Here is his story.) I was recently reading the book India of My Dreams by Mahatma Gandhi which is a collection of his writings and speeches and one of the key points he makes in the book is for India to truly develop its villages have to progress. And for its villages to progress, the poorest amongst the villagers need to be empowered to earn decent wages to help them move out of poverty. He also extensively spoke about production by masses rather than production for masses which could contribute to large-scale unemployment and poverty. It is a testimony how miserably we have failed to live his dreams of India, that after nearly 70 years of Independence we have a situation that in 75% of rural households (nearly 50 crore people), the main earning member of the family earns less than Rs 5,000 a month (i.e. less than Rs 170 a day). Prasanna, who decided to […]

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Gender Gap Reprieve for Women Patrons of a Brooklyn Bar

By on November 6, 2015   /   Featured Post, Heart   /   Leave a comment
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Women enjoy drinks at 77% in honor of the gender pay gap.

How much should a woman pay for her drinks at a bar? Whatever the menu price is, right? Well, not at this venue. The Way Station, a bar in the Prospects Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, had another idea this past summer. In order to address the glaring gender pay gap in which women in the U.S. earn about 77 to 78 cents to every dollar a man earns, The Way Station charged women just 77 percent of their bar tab on July 7th (7/7). Talk about ladies’ night. I have three sisters. The majority of my staff and friends are women. I thought this would be a great way to even the playing field even if it was for one night only.” –Andy Heidel, owner of The Way Station Heidel’s goal, he said, was to get people talking about the issue, which appeared to happen on the discounted ladies night held earlier this month. “This is much bigger than I expected,” Heidel told the Guardian while taking a break outside from a packed standing-room-only bar. And according to the Guardian, once Heidel realized he would have to turn people away, he asked a neighboring bar to join the cause. “I wanted […]

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4 Ways For Millennial Women To Prepare For Leadership Roles

By on November 3, 2015   /   Family, Featured Post, Leadership   /   Leave a comment
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Millennial Women prepare for leadership roles.

Millennial women are set to take on unprecedented leadership positions. Here’s how to prep for them. Coming of age for working women in the “lean-in” era isn’t easy. For millennial women (those born between 1980 and 1994), life and work are blended. The same technology that makes staying connected so easy makes staying “on” after working hours easy as well. Meanwhile, businesses expect more work for less pay, and parenting challenges are leading many women to take more time off work. That helps explain why 34% of millennial women say they aren’t interested in becoming a boss or top manager, according to a Pew Research Center study. Like their male counterparts, millennial women place a higher value on security and flexibility than on pay. But that doesn’t mean they’re satisfied with their working lives. In fact, 75% of millennial women say gender inequality in the workplace is an issue that needs addressing, compared with just 57% of millennial men. Here’s a look at some of those obstacles and what millennial women can do to get past them. No Shortage of Hurdles Despite the presence of several high-profile women at the national level, women hold only 4.6% (or exactly 23) of […]

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Women Flip the Script on Hollywood

By on October 29, 2015   /   Arts, Featured Post   /   Leave a comment
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Sandra Bullock in Our Brand Is Crisis

Sandra Bullock’s latest character, “Calamity” Jane Bodine, is a ruthless political consultant given to rattling off guileful quotes from Sun Tzu and Machiavelli. She’s damn good at her job, tends to pull frat-boy pranks when on a bender and couldn’t care less if she doesn’t have a date lined up. In Hollywood shorthand, she’s as ornery as Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke and wilier than George Clooney in Ocean’s Eleven. And if Jane Bodine sounds two steps beyond tomboy, that’s because she was a he in the original script for Bullock’s new film, Our Brand Is Crisis, in theaters Oct. 30. Inspired by pugnacious political hit man James Carville, the role called for a swaggering archetype–Clooney was once attached to the part–which is exactly why Bullock wanted it for herself. For generations, top actresses fed up with playing the adoring wife or eye candy have bemoaned the relative dearth of meaty roles for women–the kind that bring Meryl Streep awards acclaim on an annual basis. Despite Bullock’s Best Actress Oscar for The Blind Side and a worldwide box-office take of nearly $5 billion, she struggled in recent years to find challenging scripts that didn’t ask her to don another […]

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Facebook expands plans to beam free Internet access to Africa via solar-powered drones

By on October 26, 2015   /   Featured Post, Innovation   /   Leave a comment
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Facebook plans to bring internet access to rural areas of Africa.

Facebook is expanding its plan to beam internet to remote areas of the Earth, using a solar-powered drone flying high above the ground. The social networking giant has been working on the internet connectivity project since 2013, and a new partnership with French satellite operator Eutelsat Communications aims to get more people in Africa online by using satellites to beam internet specifically to areas where connectivity is currently impossible due to the gaps between mobile networks. The system, which will launch in the second half of 2016, will provide Internet access to entire communities in 14 countries across West, East and Southern Africa with Eutelsat’s AMOS-6 geostationary satellite. In order to get the job done, Facebook and Eutelsat will share the capacity and employ cost-effective equipment to build a network of satellites, Internet gateways, and terminals. This is all part of Facebook’s Internet.org project, which aims to provide free basic Internet services to areas of the world where access would otherwise be unaffordable or unavailable. And that’s more areas than you might realize. Currently, according to the Pew Research Center, most people getting online in Africa and other so-called emerging markets are using their mobile phones to do so. Around […]

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Elle’s #MoreWomen Campaign: There’s Room For More Women At The Top

By on October 16, 2015   /   Featured Post, Leadership   /   Leave a comment
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#MoreWomen Elle Magazine Campaign

Elle Magazine UK’s video, #MoreWomen shows how rare it is for women to be leaders on the world stage – by cutting out all the men. The film photoshops out men from pictures of groups of leaders in politics, business, entertainment and the media, revealing that the women left behind often look rather lonely. The treatment is applied to photos from political boardrooms, the UN and Buckingham Palace, as well as the BBC’s Question Time, Saturday Night Live, Masterchef and even University Challenge. The UK parliament would be a drafty place if it replied only on women MPs, as the contrast between these pictures starkly reveals: The pictures aim to highlight how powerful and influential women often stand alone in their field, as part of the Elle magazine #MoreWomen campaign calling for more women at the top. Emma Watson is the only woman left in a picture from the UN: While German chancellor Angela Merkel is alone after all the male leaders are removed from one picture: Hilary Clinton hasn’t got much company when the men in this picture of Obama’s top officials are gone: And Merkel looks lonely once more when the treatment is applied to a group of […]

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Turn Your Purpose Into a 6-Figure Business

By on October 12, 2015   /   Featured Post, Leadership   /   Leave a comment
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6-Figure Purpose

A Message from Carolyn: I know making an impact in your world is important to you. I also get how hard you work to build your business or launch an idea or project so that it can generate the income and the influence you dream of so you can give back BIG. I want to make sure you don’t miss this event for visionary entrepreneurs just like you. I’m joining 28 transformational leaders who have built 6- and 7-figure businesses on exactly how they were able to achieve massive impact with their businesses. I will be speaking on “Creating a Million Dollar Message to Maximum Impact”. My friend Lorna Li is the producer of this summit. She is on a mission to inspire 100K entrepreneurs to build businesses and create projects that make massive positive impact – it’s called 6-Figure Purpose to 7-Figure Impact on October 16 – October 31, 2015. All the speakers are going to share with you actionable, authentic, heart-based business strategies on how you can: Inspire millions of people through social media, elevate awareness and transform our global culture Adopt the success-oriented mindset that millionaires attribute to creating prosperity The keys to overcoming failures and obstacles that have […]

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