CHARLENE'S TUMBLR

Great Class!

Before we finish for the semester I want to wish everyone a great summer.  This has been a truly inspiring class; I’ve learned SO much!  It’s fun to be with people from all different disciplines and see things from different perspectives.  Carrie and Brian both said that they might want to be mentors for my high school entrepreneur kids.  If anyone else is interested, or knows someone who might be, please email me at LAHOJOEL@GMAIL.COM.  

The presentations were very cool last week, and I’m sure they will be this week too.  

Thanks, Tiffany for your expertise and making the class fun.  the Legos were great!

Charlene Shelton

US homeless couple marry in dream wedding

It’s so nice to have a happy story!!

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The groom wore a black tuxedo, a damask-rose pink waistcoat and tie, and an ear-to-ear smile.

He picked out his wedding outfit at a mall in Virginia — his first time ever in one of the sprawling shopping centers that are monuments to consumerism in the suburban landscape across the United States.

During his 14 years living homeless on the streets of Washington, Dante White, 28, never realized that so much opulence existed. Nor had he had much luck in love in his life, having been thrown out of his mother’s home when he was just 14.

Last week, White married Nhiahni Chestnut, 39, a woman whose battles with drugs and alcohol had left her on the streets of the US capital as well. Both are unemployed.

“I was basically living from day to day, trying to survive, and I wound up meeting him,” Chestnut told AFP at the couple’s wedding, held in the tiny chapel of Grace Episcopal Church in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood.

“Something clicked, the chemistry was there,” said the bride, dressed in a flowing white ensemble with a pink flower.

“We’ve been together ever since. That was nine years ago. He was outside. It kind of clicked because we were in kind of the same situation. We started hanging out with each other, talking,” she said.

The two also frequented a Bible study and meal program run by Grace Episcopal Church on Saturdays. It was there, a few months ago, that White, 28, revealed to a parishioner how much he wished he could afford to marry the woman who had brought light into his life on the streets.

“Everyone at the church feels strongly that you don’t need to have money to get married,” said Margaret Davis.

“In good Grace church congregation fashion, everyone got behind the idea: one person managed flowers, I helped with the wedding rings, one woman made the cake, someone helped with the tux and someone else with the bride’s gown,” she said.

Another churchgoer paid for a two-night honeymoon stay at the Key Bridge Marriott Hotel across the Potomac River in Virginia.

For Pastor John Graham, marrying White and Chestnut was a first, but in many other ways, it was just like marrying any other couple.

“It’s the same occasion for joy, the bride and groom are extremely nervous, and so am I,” he told AFP.

“The difference is, they’re homeless.”

After the service, the bride and groom posed for photos and, in the church annex where they gather on Saturdays for Bible study and a meal, they fed each other slices of chocolate layer cake.

Cameras clicked and whirred, and as two of Washington’s best jazz musicians played a smoochy version of “Take the A-train,” the couple had their first dance.

“This is beyond my wildest dreams. This is exactly how I wanted my wedding to be,” said the bride.

The couple’s break from the streets, however, will be brief.

Soon, their dream wedding and honeymoon will be just a memory as they face the very real battle to survive on the mean streets of Washington, where White says: “You have to sleep with one eye open.”

Now that he’s married his true love, White longs for nothing more than a roof over their heads, a place they can call home, where they can “cook pork chops and rice for ourselves,” he told AFP.

And having pulled off the miracle nuptials, Grace Church parishioners are working on the next steps of building a future for the couple: looking for affordable housing, money to pay a security deposit and a few bits and pieces to allow them to set up house together.

“There is a certain element of urgency to this,” said Davis.

“Love will get them through so much, but at the end of the day they do need housing,” she said.

Need a Graduation Gift?

 A comment on Kiva

Columnist Chris Noseworthy of the Western Star from Newfoundland, Canada used his latest column to talk about Kiva.org. For his wife’s birthday this year, he chose to give gift certificates to the microcredit website.

    This year I actually had a good idea. I got her gift certificates, among a couple of other lame things I won’t mention. The gift certificates are ones she needs to spend on somebody else. How is that better than a breadbox?

    Well, the gift certificates are from Kiva.org and translates into micro-loans to someone in the developing world. You may have seen Kiva featured on Oprah a couple of years ago. It’s a charitable organization that has field partners in various countries who work with entrepreneurs in order to get loans.

    The money comes from generous people around the world who fund these projects in $25 increments. Each entrepreneur’s loan will be supplied by a variety of different people.

    It is still a novel approach to sharing the riches of the Western world. To my mind it cuts through partisan boundaries as well.

    Anything that helps the poor, works with lefties and the loan has to seem better than a “handout” to the right-wing contingent.

    According to their site, the mandate is “Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.”

    You might wonder how these people can afford to repay the loans but they do. Kiva is upfront about the fact that there is no guaranteed return on your investments.

    According to Kiva, “Of the $31,143,760 of loans with completed loan terms, the default rate is 1.8%. However, past repayment performance does not guarantee future results. When you lend money, you may lose all or some of your principal. You should be aware of the different types of risk and find the right loan option for you, with respect to repayment risk and social return.”

    Less than two per cent is pretty good. You can visit the site to find out more of the details on the risk associated with lending through Kiva.

Obama’s Stimulus Package Promises $30m for Micro Lending

From Business Week, Feb. 26

A micro lending phenomenon that has been slowly growing in the United States for the past 30 years is now picking up steam as a result of the credit freeze. The latest stimulus package announced by Barrack Obama, US President has provisioned 6 million dollars to fund micro loans in 2009 and 24 million dollars to market and manage micro lending programmes in the country. The money, it was gathered, would be handled by the Small Business Association (SBA), which relies on non-profits to examine and work with applicants.                                                                                                                             

Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO) estimates that there are over 24 million micro enterprises in the US, representing 18 per cent of all private employment and 87 per cent of all businesses. It was further disclosed that one out of six US private sector employees works for a micro-enterprise. The Small Business Association, it was learnt, would be the manager and custodian of the funds.

Earlier, Senator Hillary  Clinton, in the confirmation hearings for her nomination as U.S. Secretary of State,  mentioned the virtues of microfinance during her opening remarks, praising the work of Ann Dunham, Barrack Obama’s late mother, as a pioneer of microfinance in Indonesia.

Clinton said, “In my own work on microfinance around the world - from Bangladesh to Chile to Vietnam to South Africa and many other countries - I’ve seen first-hand how small loans given to poor women to start small businesses can raise standards of living and transform local economies.”

According to her, “President Obama’s mother had planned to attend a microfinance forum at the Beijing women’s conference in 1995 that I participated in. Unfortunately, she was very ill and couldn’t travel and sadly passed away a few months later. But I think it’s fair to say that her work in international development, the care and concern she showed for women and for poor people around the world, mattered greatly to her son, and certainly has informed his views and his vision. We will be honored to carry on Ann Dunham’s work on microfinance and poverty alleviation in the months and years ahead.”