I have been spending a lot of time on domestic issues recently. Post election, many of us seem to be interested in what caused the split in our country and how to heal it. We want to know who stands to suffer most under recent executive orders and policy proposals. Even issues with a global focus like climate change or immigrant and refugee support have tended to be locally-focused. The Global Weeks staff (ok, let’s be real, Kaitlin Fisher and I), spent an hour last week with a Bush School class called The Immigration Crisis: Understanding the Layers. Students will spend the next month improving their understand of the legal, social, historical and personal challenges surrounding immigration, and we are helping them set up some of the experiential components of the project. In addition to visiting the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project office, they will have sessions with ICE, the ACLU, the former Seattle Detention Center, and with recent immigrants themselves. The students and teachers are energized to learn and get involved, and it promises to be a wonderful course.
The Courage to Persist
I was reminded last Thursday that, while we are paying close attention to domestic issues, we must not lose sight of the many important global issues, remembering how closely they are connected to our local challenges. Global Washington hosted a lunchtime event featuring an organization called Sahar that supports girls’ education in Afghanistan. We heard from the Executive Director, a board member, and an Afghan fellow about the difference their work is making to improve girls’ access to education. To date, they have built or rebuilt 22 schools that serve more than 22,000 girls annually. Girls’ education and women’s entrepreneurship programs like this one that was recently highlighted in the Impact Hub newsletter are making a huge difference around the world and in our local communities. What is good for girls across the globe is good for everyone. In related news, I learned at a business event today that Jonathan Sposato, local co-founder of Geekwire and CEO of PicMonkey, made a commitment to invest only in companies with at least one female founder. At PicMonkey, he is committed to maintaining a 50/50 ratio of women to men on the staff.
In addition to learning about how Sahar’s very small initiative has blossomed into a hugely transformative program that works through the ministry of education to change thousands of lives in Afghanistan, we were treated to some pretty sobering statistics about personal giving. Seattle as a city ranks tenth from the bottom in individual giving as a percentage of gross national income. Of course our charitable foundations push up the amount overall we give as a city, but as individuals we fall short. I was quite surprised to see these statistics, and vow to do my own part to both educate myself and contribute what I can to causes I believe in. Girls and women, education, and immigrant rights are definitely on my list.
Seattle at the bottom of the individual giving chart