Charlie Gives a One Year Status Update of HUB! Watch Now!

Charlie gives a status update from Liberia one year after HUB’s initial impact there.

My recent trip to Liberia…

Friday, August 7th, 2009

Written by: annette_mccoy

My recent trip to Liberia as part of the HUB team was the jewel in the crown of my 7 week overseas fact finding tour.

What an amazing experience; a privilege to meet so many people from this small, war ravaged yet pulsing and loving country; my honour to meet such inspirational and dedicated souls as Kimmie Weeks, Head of Youth Action International and the Liberian President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Both these people have been born to lead. Ellen and Kimmie are both determinedly focussed on ensuring that every Liberian citizen has a sustainable, healthy and productive life.

So we witnessed these two dedicated leaders in action and in doing so we also saw many others keen to make a difference in their lives and so enhance the lives of those around them.

At the Enabled Project we shared with several young men who have been maimed by landmines.

Annette McCoy, HUB Member with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia

Through the inaugural Empowerment Course for Women Graduation ceremony we met proud, enthusiastic and determined women keen to make a difference in their lives and those of their families by creating businesses using their new skills and confidence.

In a country where most people could tell horrific stories of torture, destruction and grief beyond belief, I was moved and inspired by the love and gratitude, acceptance and forgiveness.

My week in Liberia has verified my belief that we in the ‘western world” which is driven by materialism, greed and fear have much to learn from our counterparts in the “third world” who are rich in the assets that count

Annette McCoy, HUB Member – Purposing Your Brilliance – Liberia ‘09

Photos from Liberia “Purposing Your Brilliance”

Friday, August 7th, 2009

Spryte at the Women’s Center showing off their products

Elizabeth with Becky School Children

Chief Humanitarian Officer, Spryte Loriano with Children at Grand Bossa

HUB Member Hermia Nelson at womens center

Book Gifting thanks to I Am Foundation

CNN recording Kimmie Weeks and Cynthia Kersey

Elizabeth at Heaven’s Hill

Elizabeth with teachers at womens center

HUB Group in Liberia

Children impacted by the Orphanage Programs

New Latrine at Elwou Orphange – donated by HUBie Cynthia Kersey!

Charlie’s favorite position during Purposings

Impact Program Updates: Liberia

Friday, August 7th, 2009

Projects supported through Youth Action International

EDUCATION

Liberia Programs

Community Women’s Center

This is the first center of its kind in post-war Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. HUB helped support its opening phase, as well as supports the ongoing education and training through its six curriculums: Sewing, Tie-die, Interior Design, Beading, Baking, Cosmetology. The first year of the program supported 75 students involved in a six month education and training. In July 09, this first group of women graduated (62 in all) with a certificate of completion and a grant to start their own business. Though they are given a grant, it is agreed that each woman will pay back a portion of her business income weekly into a POOL that will continue to build and support future classes and groups of women! In addition to their training we are also working with them to create fair-trade products viable to a global market that we can offer for sale in HUB’s online Global Village. We have already purchased hundreds of dollars of products and the sales orders continue to grow.

The 2010 school year will have a class of 300 women!

Becky Primary School

HUB Faculty Member Cynthia Kersey donates completion funds to build Becky Primary

Serving 600 students in Margibi County, this is the largest school project generated by Youth Action International. HUB funding has helped to begin building the foundation of the school, as well as organize the design and planning of the entire project as well as will fund the library and computer learning center. The completion of the build-out of the largest primary school in this county is funded by HUB Faculty Leader, Cynthia Kersey through her Unstoppable Giving Challenge.

Temas Orphanage

Serving 78 children, the Temas Orphanage has received funding from HUB for all of its furnishings. When we first visited them in July of last year, they had no furniture in the main room and study area, as well as no beds or mattresses. Now the orphanage has school chalk board, tables and chairs for study area, couches and chairs for main lounge area and bunk beds with fine mattresses for both the boy’s and the girl’s dorms.

Spryte imitating HUBie Marilyn Powers of the I Am Foundation, during the book gifting of 500 I Am Affirmation books to Elwou Orphanage

School Library Projects

HUB has helped to fund the first of three Libraries through Youth Action International. The Special Project High School in Monrovia (serving 1000 students), The Lakerri Mission Library and Becky Primary School (serving 600 students). The funding of the projects paid for the gathering and delivering of all the books, including complete sets of school text books from algebra to science, encyclopedias, dictionary’s, and fiction and non-fiction titles (many of which were donated to YAI) representing an exceptional cross-section, the shelving, tables and chairs for the libraries, and computers.

Mother Goose Teacher Training and Early Childhood Education

YAI is piloting a program with 65 schools that have received a year long Mother Goose Preschool curriculum, that comes complete with teacher training, and each month packaged as a “program in a bag” that includes directions for projects and many of the supplies! If successful, YAI already has the cooperation and financial backing from the Minister of Education to roll this program out nationwide. HUB is proud to be able to support these exceptional educational projects in partnership with YAI. Through HUB’s consistent and sustainable model, we are able to help make this and other important early to secondary education programs possible.

Project Enabled

Currently supporting 75 disabled war affected youth and adults through education and the global marketplace. HUB last year helped to retrofit a building for the official training and education center. This year we have helped fund two of the first vocational training programs: Sewing and Wood Crafts. We are also supporting this program by working with them to create fair-trade products viable to a global market that we can offer for sale in HUB’s online Global Village.

Sustainable Youth Agricultural Project in Grand Bassa

The first Sustainable Youth Agricultural Program for YAI and HUB

The first environmentally conscious planting, harvesting, exporting of natural plants to Liberia such as cayenne pepper, kasava, cocoa and more, on a pilot lot of 50 acres that has been granted to YAI for youth educational and vocational training in Grand Bassa and the creation of sustainable agricultural projects. HUB has also supported YAI in the launching of a nationwide campaign that will inspire the war affected youth of Liberia to leave the overcrowded, high unemployment capital of Monrovia, and create employment and commerce in the rural communities through sustainable agricultural projects like this. Once successful this sustainable agriculture program will roll out to a total of 4000 acres.

A Champion of Yes We Can

Friday, August 7th, 2009

When President Obama presents the Medal of Freedom to 16 distinguished American and international “agents of change” at a White House ceremony on August 12th one of the honorees will link Mr. Obama to both his past and to the future he is so committed to creating. Among the 16 leaders who will receive America’s highest civilian honor is Professor Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which makes tiny loans for self-employment to some of the poorest people in that country. Prof. Yunus is also one of the world’s most effective champions of the “yes we can” spirit.

Decades ago the economics professor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate described his search for new bank clients as a process of “looking for the most timid.” He wasn’t looking for the villagers who were the first to step forward to ask for a micro-loan starting at less than $10, he was looking for those who were last to come forward and who trusted their abilities the least. To those villagers he and his staff would say, “Yes you can.”

Thirty-three years later nearly 8 million members of Grameen Bank (a total of 40 million when you count their family members) are saying “yes we can” to the whole world. Since its inception Grameen Bank has lent more than $8 billion to the poor in Bangladesh.

So how does one start an enterprise that reaches nearly 40 million people in one’s own country and touches the lives of tens of millions more in replications around the world? Dr. Yunus had his own “yes we can” moment as a young economics professor who faced an agonizing famine that left him doubting his value as a teacher and as a human being.

He was so shaken by the sight of people dying of starvation that when he set foot into Jobra, the village next to his campus, all he wanted to do was to see if he could be of use to one person for one day—not 40 million—just one. It was in that village that he met a stool maker who horrified him when she explained that she earned only two cents a day for her beautiful craftsmanship. With no money to buy the bamboo she needed, Sufia Khatun was forced to borrow from a money-lender who demanded that she sell her finished stools back to him at a price he set—a price so low that she made only two cents a day profit.

When he asked whether she could earn more if she was freed from the moneylender, she told him, “Yes I can.” Professor Yunus had a student to look for other villagers who were in the same dilemma. The student found 42 people who needed a grand total of $27 to pay-off the moneylender, buy their raw materials, and sell their wares to the highest bidder. That’s right; all they needed was an average of 68 cents each. With her loan of less than $1 the stool-maker’s profits soared from two cents a day to $1.25 a day.

Now Prof. Yunus has set his sights on titans of business and industry with his social business concept and the chairmen of Dannone, Intel, and BASF are beating a “yes we can” path to his door to create new non-profit/non-loss businesses that have as their sole goal improving people’s lives. The corporations can recover their initial investments in the social businesses, but after that, all profits are plowed back into these new companies. They include a joint venture with Dannone producing nutritionally fortified yogurt for malnourished villagers, another with BASF producing chemically treated bed-nets to protect people from mosquitos carrying malaria, and still another with Intel bringing information technology solutions to rural villages.

When the US President shakes the hand of the Bangladeshi micro-banker at the White House ceremony this week, Mr. Obama will be touching his own past and the microfinance work his mother did in Indonesia. And when Professor Yunus opens the Microcredit Summit next April in Nairobi, Kenya, the micro-banker from Bangladesh will launch the next phase of microfinance in the birthplace of Mr. Obama’s father and throughout the continent.

President Obama should accompany Muhammad Yunus to that Summit in Kenya to join in the micro-banker’s most inspiring appeal—a daring call to put poverty in the museums where it belongs.

Yes we can!

Impact Program Updates: Kenya

Friday, August 7th, 2009

View the following video to learn about Amina
and the impact made in her life by micro loans

Raincatchers:

18 Raincatchers have been installed throughout Kenya through the HUB Impact Partner program, providing fresh drinking water to thousands of people and families. Two of these raincatchers were provided to women who attended the Women and Water Conference in 2009 sponsored by Women’s Earth Alliance.

As we know, lack of fresh water and dirty water that causes disease is the number one killer in the world. HUB is proud to be able to provide such a simple, cost-effective and real solution to thousands in such a short period of time. Our vision is to see every school roof world-wide with a raincatcher as a way to maximize natural resources in the best way possible.

Microloans:

Our Microloan program is Kenya is facilitated by Equity Bank, called the Listening, Caring, Financial Partner, to over 34 million people in Africa! Their mission is to be the champion of the socio-economic prosperity of the people of Africa. Unlike many who may charge higher interest for Microloans, Equity Bank has been able to provide microloans to tens of millions of borrowers at just 1.5% interest! Each Microloan group goes through extensive counseling and financial literacy and business training before loans are provided. And then our HUB Kenya Field agents continue to work with, uplift, empower and provide expanded business opportunities for all of the women. We are proud to partner with Equity in a full-service Microloan program that is enriching lives of women and families in Africa.

The Self-Empowered Women of Korogocho (also known as KOCH) has thirteen women. All but two now have their loans. (The two who don’t just had babies, and the women will decide together when it is best for them to take on a loan for their business, so they are successful. In the meantime, the other women are helping these two women and are still keeping them as part of the group!) The women and their businesses are:

• Monicah – She bought baking equipment and supplies with her loan and is making and selling bun-cakes.


• Jane – She bought large quantities of groundnuts and sells some raw in smaller sizes, and roasts some and sells them in cones.



• Margaret – She bought a sewing machine with her loan, and is finding empty cement bags, cleaning them, sewing them into market/grocery bags, and selling them


• Grace – She buys greens/ vegetables and resells them


• Rispha – She buys shoes and resells them


• Alice – She buys cosmetics and resells, and also does hair styling and has a beauty shop


• Annah – She is a shopkeeper


• Karimi – She buys and sells water


• Schola – She creates tie and dye


• Amina – She is buying and reselling charcoal


• Teresida (Muemi) – She buys greens/vegetables and resells them

All of these women are also being trained by our field agent Rachel Njeri, and working with local experts, to create products like beading bracelets and beading sandals, for sale in the Global Marketplace. They have already made and sold several hundreds of dollars worth of product, which is what provided the funds for them to buy school uniforms and enroll their children in school and begin living with less stress and more hope as they were waiting for their first microloans! All of the women are on track with repayment of their loans and are experiencing a better quality of life. These women are also supported as part of a larger food program through Feed The Children, who because of learning of these women through HUB, have been providing a month’s worth of staple food items to 300 people in Korogocho! Another example of how Humanity continues to UNITE Brilliance!

The Bank of HOPE Self Empowered Women has fourteen (14) women from the rural town of Rui.

These women have had many difficulties in coming together in trust as they come from different tribes. Before they could receive their loans, they had to go through several months of conflict resolution, team training and financial literacy through the help of Equity Bank and our HUB field representative, Rachel Njeri. They all received their loans in April 2009, and are working together as a family unit. They have however, already earned hundreds of dollars through the sale of Obama bracelets in our HUB Global Marketplace, and will continue to be trained to make other products for sale.

Olympic Primary School:

In the heart of the largest slum in Kenya, Kibera, the Olympic Primary School provides two meals a day to nearly 3000 students thanks to the sustained support of HUB through Feed The Children. These children not have food for themselves, but as we personally witnessed, each one of them takes their leftovers home with them each day. The thousands of children who are fed through this program are actually helping to feed thousands more!

The need for food at school is great. When a child is fed at school their test scores are higher, their attention is greater, their social skills are improved – they just learn more, like school more and receive maximum benefit from the education that is provided!

Wisdom Center: Brad Yates – Part 1

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Written by: admin

Everyone’s talking about EFT. Do you know what it is? Want to learn more? This 3-week series teaches you the keys.

The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system. That’s the Discovery Statement of EFT, Emotional Freedom Techniques, a wonderful healing modality for removing the negative emotions that limit our success. It is based on the same principles that have been used for thousands of years in acupuncture – but without the needles. EFT has been reported successful in thousands of cases covering a huge range of emotional, health and performance issues. It often works where nothing else does.

Join Elizabeth Jarosz in this three part series with EFT Practitioner, Brad Yates. Brad will explain how by using this technique you can gain the emotional freedom to truly pursue being, doing and having what you really want in life.

Brad Yates likes to think of himself as an Evolution Catalyst. He feels blessed to be known internationally for his creative and often humorous use of Emotional Freedom Techniques® (EFT). He was trained and certified at the respected Hypnosis Motivation Institute in Tarzana, CA, where he served on staff. Combining this background with training in energy psychology and various schools of thought in the area of personal growth and achievement, he coaches groups and individuals in achieving greater success, health and happiness in their lives.

For more information on Brad Yates, go to www.BradYates.net.