Economic Choices in the Face of Extreme Poverty

You have $1,000 to give away.

In front of you are two women, both widows with families, both living in extreme poverty. If you split the money evenly between them, both will be able to feed their families until their children are grown, both will be able to afford a little bit of healthcare, but neither will be able to properly educate their families. If you give all the money to one woman, it will transform her family forever through nutrition, healthcare, and great education, but the other woman and her family will be left in extreme poverty.

What do you do?

A somewhat more complex version of this problem is faced constantly by non-profits and socially-oriented businesses. Need is great, our resources are limited. Do we spread our resources thinly across as many households as possible? Do we invest deeply in a few lucky families? Do we find some sort of middle-ground?

It’s a gut-wrenching choice. The stakes are literally life and death.

At Ember, we invest deeply in a limited number of families to catalyze transformational, generational change. This means that we work with fewer women than we could, each of those women makes more money than she otherwise would, and instead of basic improvements in nutrition and living conditions, we drive towards deep, long-lasting change, especially university education for their children.

Why? Because we believe that a Ugandan will do more for Uganda than we ever could. And if we provide a platform upon which Ugandan kids can stay healthy, get educated, access opportunity, and become successful leaders, they will transform their communities in more ways and over longer periods than we could hope to do ourselves.

Still, the choice is not easy. It means saying no to people who need and deserve our partnership, people who will go on living in extreme poverty until they find some way out of it.

But instead of watering down our impact to bring them in immediately, our goal is to grow, to work deeply with more and more families and communities, and to see, eventually, the long-term change that new local leaders will create. To help create a new community in which we are no longer needed, only loved.

Last night a great conversation and a poorly timed cup of coffee kept me up into unreasonable hours. I checked my email before bed and found a request from one of my colleagues: Could I come up with a one-sentence soundbite that could be easily shared with busy business people, like rising life expectancy or something?

It’s a good idea – people often don’t have time for longer stories. But last night I couldn’t think of what that line might be. This is what I wrote back.

Michelle Larson doesn’t look the type to wade through knee-deep trash along the border of two developing countries. She’s pretty, stylish, and at the very least hygienic. Nonetheless she points to one such jaunt into the garbage as a formational moment in her life.

“The first time I took a visit to the city garbage dump in Mae Sot, Thailand [a Thai city on the border with Burma], I found myself knee deep in the trash, playing with the children who live there,” Michelle recounted to us by email from Mae Sot.  “Many of them had skin problems, horrible coughs, and smelled like… trash.” The children’s Burmese mother said that settling her family in the dump was the lesser of two evils, that keeping her family in Burma was far more dangerous.

Michelle has since spent the last several years traversing the borderlands of Thailand and Burma, educating herself on the brutal military regime that tyrannizes the Burmese people to this day, and exploring ways to support the many refugees that flee for their lives.

She helped found an organization called Eleho that publicizes the hardships of people in Burma and supports the best organizations serving them. And recently she was asked by those organizations to teach English to Community Health Workers, helping them to better understand the medical texts and drug labels that they rely upon. She is there now, working on a voluntary basis to spread hope in Burma.

We are proud to announce that Michelle is our next Ember Hero, and that 50% of all online sales through the end of October will be donated to Eleho to support Michelle’s work. You can shop online here.

Read the rest of Michelle Larson: Ember Hero »

During the month of July we kicked off a new project – Ember Heroes.  Our goal is to ignite hope by highlighting American women who are leading inspirational lives, and by supporting their projects and passions by donating 50% of a month’s online sales to the nonprofit of their choice.

Our first Ember Hero was Lisa Dougan, a young woman who has inspired thousands with her efforts to end Africa’s longest running war, and by her commitment to building and maintaining deep relationships with people from any political, economic, and social realm.

Case in point, she’s recently been getting to know a group of teenagers in Washington, D.C., kids that have grown up in tough family and financial situations.  When we reached out to Lisa about being our first Ember Hero, she was trying to raise funds to send 35 D.C. teens to a summer camp that had life-changing potential.  We were excited to join her efforts.

Thanks to your response, Ember cut a check to Young Life to send two kids to summer camp, and Lisa reached her goal of seeing all 35 teens glimpse a different perspective on life.  Thanks for helping us, and Lisa, ignite hope.

[Photos from the Young Life camp]

If you live in San Diego, or plan to visit San Diego soon, or need an excuse to visit San Diego soon, then here it is: Urban Girl. A wonderfully stylish and creatively curated boutique right in the heart of world-famous Seaport Village. Check out this look pulling together our favorites from Urban Girl’s offerings for a perfect picnic outfit. Click thru to check out more of Urban Girl’s amazing finds!

Hemline is one of our favorite new stores, or rather, Hemline is a beautiful team of 10 stores, and we love them all. They have invested deeply in the story of our Ugandan partners and are a force for hope throughout the Southern USA. Today their website features a great summer look combing Ember jewelry with HEMLINE clothes and TOMS Shoes. It was created by our very own fashionista intern Laura. Check it out!

[Ember Hero: n - A woman who makes the world a more hopeful place. To show our appreciation we donate 50% of online sales to the charity of her choice for one month.]

Talking to Lisa Dougan you might not know what an important force for hope she is. She speaks with unswerving humility about herself, and would likely turn the conversation to you, your interests and your successes, rather than focus on her own.

In fact even her success tends to focus on other people, on building peace and opportunity for those who find them lacking. She has helped open hundreds of thousands of eyes to Africa’s longest running war, seeded a community that bridges socioeconomic divides, and was recently invited to the Oval Office to meet President Obama in recognition for her advocacy and lobbying for children in East and Central Africa.

She is, in short, an inspiration. And our first Ember Hero.

In appreciation of her contribution to hope in our world we are donating 50% of all proceeds from our online sales through the end of the month to Lisa’s chosen charity: the Young Life Columbia Heights Program, which is investing in the lives of Washington DC teenagers from rough backgrounds with faithful, caring mentorship. Ember’s contribution will specifically go to help 30 of these teens attend a summer camp with Young Life that offers them the chance to connect more deeply with caring mentors and experience a different perspective on life.

Shop online thru July 31, and 50% will go to Young Life Columbia Heights.

Read the rest of Lisa Dougan: Ember Hero »