Emy Gelb-Free the Children

The other day Emy Gelb came to visit our school. She is a former MCDS student who now works for FREE THE CHILDREN.  Emy loves to travel. She flew to Guatemala for the first time without speaking Spanish after she graduated from high school. When she got on a bus to go to the city, the bus looked like a school bus, except it was painted crazy colors and it had shag carpet and disco balls. In the middle of the drive the bus driver pulled over and let a woman on the bus.  She stood right next to Emy. Everything was normal about her except that she was holding a chicken…on a bus. Emy started thinking about how the bus driver didn’t care about safety because he was running red lights. She had never been so frightened or excited in her life.

While she was there, Emy learned about an American woman who sold all her belongings and took the money to move back to Guatemala and make a school.  Emy found that school and worked there for three months. Imagine seeing 40 football fields of trash and seeing kids who should be in school, and grandmothers climbing all over it looking for food, clothing or anything of value. That was what the Guatemalan dump looked like. This dump was right next to the school.  Emy was working with a student named Maria, and Emy asked what she wanted to be when she grew up. Maria said that she wanted to be a teacher so that she could teach her grandma how to read. 

Emy also visited Ecuador with students from Toronto, Canada. They helped a school kitchen get clean water for nutrition. Everyone in the community pitched in to dig a ditch to move the clean water.  Emy saw little old ladies who would dig and dig and helped a lot.  In Ecuador many men think they are better than woman and that woman are their property. In one town Emy visited, she was impressed by women who made beautiful textiles from sheep’s  wool. These women formed groups and worked so that the men could think of them as something more, something better.

One of the things that they say at Free the Children is PASSION+ISSUE=CHANGE. It means that when you put passion into an issue it makes a change.

Emy also gave us three challenges:

1.     Do your research. (Become a expert)

2.     Get creative!

3.    Do Something!

By Lila F.

MATT FLANNERY SPEAKS TO THE FIFTH GRADE

Kiva co-founder, Matt Flannery, came to our school recently and he talked to us about how he started Kiva, what made him start it, what challenges he faced, and how it has grown. One of the pictures he showed us was of a Maasai warrior with a cell phone. He said that the cell phone had technology where you could text amounts of money to someone else. Matt said that this made money exchanging so much easier for microfinance organizations and other people. I wish we had that kind of technology. One of his challenges were that people thought it would never work. They wondered who in the world would lend money to a poor person with a chance of not getting it back or something? Matt Flannery proved them wrong. Kiva’s repayment rate as of 4/5/12 is 98.91%. So only 1% don’t pay back their loans. That’s a pretty high repayment rate. I wonder how much the cell phones cost?

BY MAX P.

Robin Donohoe came with Matt Flannery to speak to fifth graders about how Kiva got started.  She works for a non-profit organization called Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation.  They helped provided the start-up money and business advice to Matt Flannery and his partner when they started Kiva.  Draper Richards and Kaplan Foundation gives money to businesses that they believe will make a change in the world. I think that this is a great organization because it gives businesses the chance to take off and actually help the world and people in it. They have helped ideas like:

Girls For A Change

Living Goods

Room to Read

They are great non-profit organizations. All these organizations help to give people a good push up towards a better future. Robin’s Foundation is a special organization that helps the world thrive!

By Lizzy C-C

CHILDREN'S BILL OF RIGHTS

Children’s Bill of Rights

The Children’s Bill of Rights focuses on the rights of children. It is like the U.S. Bill of Rights, except it has really different rules. In 1989, the United Nations decided that children should have a Children’s Bill of Rights.  Our class made our own Bill of Rights. We added stuff like:

·       no child abuse

·       all children should have freedom of speech

·       children should be treated equally

·       all children should have the right of medical attention

·       no children can be taken away from their parents at birth

·       children should have shelter

·       children should have clean water, and food

·       children’s opinions should be listened to

Then we saw the real Children’s Bill of Rights and compared it to ours. We did pretty well. We got about half of the ones that we wrote down right! Here is the link to the real Children’s Bill of Rights:  http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/humanrights/resources/child.asp.

By Caroline M.

7 Billion

Our class watched a video made by National Geographic about our population hitting 7 billion. These are some of the things I learned.

7 billion people

•It would take 200 years to count to 7 billion out loud.
•7 billion steps would take you around the globe 133 times.
•In 1800 the world’s population was only 1 billion.
•In 1930 the world’s population was 2 billion.
•In 1960 the population was 3 billion.
•In 1974 the population was 4 billion.
•In 1987 the population was 5 billion.
•In 1999 the population was 6 billion.
• Now in 2011 the population is 7 billion.
•In 2045 the population could be 9 billion.
•Every second 5 people are born and 2 people die.
•In one minute our population has increased by 161 people.
•In 2010 the average lifespan was 69 years old.
•In 1960 the average person only lived to be 53 years old.
•For the first time ever in 2008 more of us lived in cities than rural areas.
•A Mega-city has a population of over 10 million. In 1975 there were 3 mega-cities; Mexico City, Tokyo, and New York City.
•Right now there are 21 mega-cities.
•By 2050 70% of us will live in urban areas.
•But we don’t take up as much space as you think, we could all fit shoulder to shoulder in the city of Los Angeles.
•So it’s not space we need, it’s balance.
• 5% of us consume 23% of the world’s energy.
•13% of us don’t have clean drinking water.
•38% of us lack adequate sanitation.
•7 billion people speaking more than 7,000 languages.
•7 billion people living in 195 countries.

by Max B.

Loaning to KIVA

The video above shows what happens when 620,000 lenders fund 615,000 entrepreneurs, students, and other microfinance borrowers around the world.

ROOM 22 JOINED THE KIVA MOVEMENT

This month we raised money to give to Kiva. Kiva is an organization that gives loans out to people all over the world. Each person in the class made a $25 loan. Then we chose to whom we wanted to give the money to. We had a whole class period when people loaned to other people all over the world. Some people loaned to people in Tajikistan and other people loaned to Peru, Kenya and Panama, etc... We all filled out sheets about where the person was from and about why the person needed the loan. Making Kiva loans has inspired me and other people in our class to loan to Kiva more often.

By Julianna

Kiva Fundraising

Kiva fundraising was a real rush. People chose different things. For instance, Julianna and I did a bake and jewelry sale. Other people did things like cooking dinner for people, or organizing book sales. We had to raise a minimum of $25. It was very fun and exiting when you got your first customer (or any customer).

The fundraising was fun but there were also some challenges like trying to make the people want to buy your product. It turns out that you have to, as they say, “sell it”. You have to say things like “cookies, brownies, lemonade, all homemade, come and get them fresh…while they’re still here!” It was hard for some people because of shyness. To help the people understand more about Kiva we printed pages from the website but most of the people already knew about Kiva!

All in all, it was fun and hard but what really felt good was the whole idea that we were helping souls get back on their feet so they could pursue their goals or develop their talents.  It felt great to make a loan.

By Elizabeth

Mac Parish

Mac presenting to us about Kiva

In Fifth Grade we got to raise money for Kiva and loan it to a person who either needs it for personal needs or is starting a business. Kiva is a micro-finance organization that puts entrepreneurs on their website, and people who have a credit card and/or PayPal account and a computer can donate to them. So to learn about that, a former student of our teacher came in to talk to us about Kiva where he works. His name is Mac Parish and he lives in Kenya. His job is the Field Support Specialist for Anglophone Africa, more specifically, to help build sustainable relationships with Kiva borrowers. So that’s the background info about Mac, but here’s the info about the presentation and what we learned from it.  

Mac taught us that when you loan on Kiva, it works like this:
1. Kiva partners with a MFI (Microfinance Institution or Field Partners)
2. Field partners upload the loan and stories onto Kiva’s website
3. Lenders browse through people to lend to, then they lend
4. Kiva disburses the lenders money to the borrower
5. The entrepreneurs or borrowers repay the loan
6. Kiva gives the repayments to lenders

To show us how to loan on Kiva, Mac decided he should loan some money to a person of the grade’s choice. Originally, what happened was we were about to loan to a person who needed some money for... pesticides! At MCDS we are very organic so Mac (and our grade) made an executive decision to not loan to that person. We ended up loaning to a person who looked nice so she was our solution. It was that simple. Now that you know how Kiva works, you should try it for yourselves. Just 25 dollars can make all the difference.

Posted By Henry S