A Cause That Started Not That Long Ago - Micro-Finance for Women...

and it’s doing great! Micro-finance was the brain-child of Dr. Mohammad Yunus, who began experimenting with lending to poor women in the village of Jobra, Bangladesh during his tenure as a professor of economics at Chittagong University in the 1970s. He would go on to found Grameen Bank in 1983 and win the Nobel Peace Price in 2006.

Nowadays, it’s individual people who have become micro-lenders and the astonishing thing is that in most all of the cases, the loans are all paid back. Kiva.org has become the organization that puts individuals together and according to their website, the average loan amount is about $217.16. What’s more astonishing is that these very small amounts actually engender huge change. Kiva is now partnering with Dermalogica to help spread the wealth! This is what they have to say:

“FITE is a global empowerment platform powered by Dermalogica, the world's leading professional skin care brand, and Kiva.org, the nonprofit leader in microfinance, that is designed to foster Financial Independence Through Entrepreneurship for women in the developing world. Our mission is to provide women entrepreneurs access to small loans that will help them start or grow a business; and to help educate the public at large about the benefits of empowering women entrepreneurs so that they "can hold up their half of the sky." In just the first 2 years, we aim to help at least 25,000 women in this capacity. Leading thinkers in social development, including the World Bank, hail investing in women as "smart economics," an untapped resource that can help solve many of the problems we see in our world today. Indeed, lending to women produces a positive ripple effect of improved health, education, and welfare for all household members.”

Some facts you may not know:

70% of people below the poverty line are women

66% of the work on this planet is done by women

1% - of the land is owned by women

It's the 21st century -- we must do better than that if we are to see any improvement in what is called "the human condition". We believe that the pernicious -- never-ending ills of the specie (poverty, ignorance, disease) can not only be helped by women -- but is the reason we have not solved these issues as yet. You cannot keep half the specie in a "depressed/repressed" state -- it's an imbalance that spills over in to every other area of life whether a direct correlation can be seen or not.

Women are the natural born nurturers. As the statistics prove, when women are given money to start a business, the entire community benefits in a broad spectrum of ways. We must supply women with the tools and necessities that enable them to do the work they are best suited for: ensuring survival through nurturing.

Up to now, women have done an astonishing job of keeping the specie going. Against all odds and obstacles, there are billions of us on the planet. Marvelous things have been invented, living conditions are downright luxurious compared to our ancestors, but sadly that is only true for a very small minority of the global populace. We are now coming to realize that this kind of disparity between the have and have nots is unsustainable. If we are to fix the various imbalances that have arisen on the planet -- not the least of which is the ecological havoc we have caused -- then we must start with the primal issue: women. Save the women. Save the planet.

Have You Heard About Westchester High School?

WHS will become Westchester Enriched Sciences Magnet in the 2011-2012 school year!

According to a release from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) General Counsel, the community will in fact be able to attend the school. Eligible students who reside within the attendance boundaries of or have matriculated from the following schools may enroll in Westchester Enriched Sciences Magnets High School provided a Choices application is filled out and submitted by the annual deadline:

• Cowan Avenue Elementary and Gifted/High-Ability Magnet (which includes students from the Windsor Hill area)
• Kentwood Elementary (all students on permits from the Windsor Hills area)
• Loyola Village Elementary and Performing Arts Magnet
• Open Charter Magnet
• Paseo del Rey Natural Science Magnet
• Westport Heights Elementary
• Central Region Elementary #22
• Wright Middle School and Math/Science/Aerospace Magnet ( includes all students from the Windsor Hills area)

Please visit this site to enroll Westchester High School

Principal, Robert Canosa-Carr has devoted considerable time, energy and expertise to realizing the goal of providing smaller learning communities that foster a more personalized learning experience for our students which not only enhances learning, but makes for a safer school as well.

There are four Academies. Each academy is autonomous and functions as a team to establish relationships among students, teachers, parents, counselors, and staff. The ultimate goal of the Academies is to prepare students for their goals and aspirations beyond high school graduation.

Freshman Academy "Preparation for Success"
In the Freshman Academy, all students are placed on a team of three to four teachers who not only share students but also share a common conference period in order to meet and collaborate to serve our student community in an effective manner

Sophomore Academy “Career and Choice” continues the structure of the Freshman Academy. There will be three team teachers with 100% shared students. It prepares students to choose a career sector to be completed during their junior and senior year in one of the Small Learning Communities.

Academy of Letters, Sciences, and Technology
School of Health and Environmental Studies
School of Public Service Leadership, Public Administration, Planning, and Law, Law Enforcement/Security Services
School of Sports Science, Sports medicine, Physical Therapy

Academy of Arts, Humanities, and Career Studies
School of Visual Arts and Film Studies
School of Performing Arts
School of Journalism and Communication
School of Career Studies

Students residing outside of the above school’s attendance boundaries but within the boundaries of LAUSD who submit a Choices application for Westchester Magnets High School will have an opportunity to attend the school, provided there is still space available.

Screening: Race to Nowhere on Wednesday, May 25

We'll be staying on the local scene for a while (Westchester /Playa del Rey) -- but this posting is really for anyone concerned about how we are educating our children. Race to Nowhere, the powerful documentary that focuses on America's over achievement culture and how it affects our children and our schools -- will be screening :

Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - 6:30 p.m
Open Magnet Charter School
Address: 5540 W 77th Street, Los Angeles, California
Sponsor: Friends of the Open Magnet Charter School
Tickets are $10 each in advance and $15 each at the door.

There will be a discussion panel led by the school principal, two teachers, a progressive educational consultant and an administrator for a traditional, highly successful public high school. Books mentioned in the film will be available for sale.

Please join us and spread the word to the parents in your school community to help increase awareness of the film's message and end the race to nowhere.

Details of the event is provided on the link above and you can purchase tickets there too.

Hope to see you there!

Helping Education in Westchester and Playa del Rey

SIT for a cause is participating in a local cause – Saturday, May 21 – the 2011 Race for Success 5K Run/Walk and the 1K Kids Run. Hosted at Loyola Marymount University, the beautiful course runs through the campus and is a great place to bring the whole family. And a fun way to bring charity closer to home. We'll have more after the event.

The proceeds from the Race for Success benefit the local elementary, middle and high schools in Westchester and Playa del Rey. This event has been able to raise funds each year to save programs that would otherwise have been cut due to decline in budgets. Each year our schools face financial hardships and must find many ways to raise more funds just to maintain existing programs and staffing levels. Specific allocation of funds is at the discretion of each school's Parent Teachers Organization.

There’s more news coming on the subject of education – an exciting proposal for Westchester Senior High School. Principal Robert Canosa-Carr has an inspirational pitch that must be seen and heard. Stay tuned...

Charity Begins at Home

We all know the concept, but so often forget to act on it. In this age of causes we tend to think in larger, broader circles of influence. A disease or social ill catches our attention and we are inspired to help. Marianne Williamson once said that if you’re searching for a “ministry” the best place to start was with your phone book – with those you know. Anyone there need help?

That’s how SIT for a cause started – as much an idea to help large, worthy endeavors as it was to help a sister who needed to express the artist – an artist submerged under the stresses of daily life. Or the friend whose business slumped and needed a paying project, or the local church or Little League that just needed some volunteer time.

The ripple effect starts small – but the effects can be as life changing as the discovery of some cure or the eradication of a hideous social blight. Most people that are helped in a personal way – by a friend or mentor – pay it forward, pass it on, as they continue to go through life. That small change in their trajectory that perhaps amounted to no more than simple inspiration and the purchase of a paint box, continues to benefit them and all the people they come in contact with.

So who in your circle could use a little somthin’-somthin’?

Good Friday...a new take

Photo Raymond K. Gehman National Geographic

Whether you subscribe to the Pagan Spring rituals or the old-school religious observances of Easter and Passover, the message is always the same: some great hardship is visited upon us -- the "weeping and gnashing of teeth" kind -- which in the end results in a resurrection or rebirth or new understanding of life.

Usually we are so busy with our own dramas, and for the most part are so "city-fied", we forget that Nature, in binging forth the Spring, probably does go through some kind of pain and certainly a great expenditure of energy, but it all seems so effortless and beautiful, we get fooled into thinking it was an easy, no-sweat proposition.

In the animal kingdom, there's also such an accepting kind of grace in the giving of birth. Cats are so quiet, horses may have a hard time, but they're not cursing like sailors and demanding ice chips. Everyone/everything pretty much accepts the pain as part of some process they have infinite trust in and spend no time dramatizing it. They get right to the business of licking kittens clean or popping the last buds on a cherry tree.

It's only humans, and maybe a few other mammalians, that seem to insist on being nailed to a cross of agony before they accept the gift of life. Pain is one thing. Agony is another. Fear and anger inflame pain and it becomes agony. The new world order that's arising, however seems to get this principal and is busy passing out "fever reducers" in the form of helping some one or some thing experience a less agonizing birth.

Featured on Oprah recently, Invisible Children is n organization that seeks to end the gruesome practice of using child soldiers in perpetuating an even more gruesome 25 year war. The infamous stories of butchered children made to serve the blackest of hearts, are being replaced by stories of schools and rescue shelters being built to rehabilitate and give life back to these children. As it says on their website, if just 1% of the world gave $25, the problem would be well on the way to being totally eradicated. Go read the whole story and do what you can.

In the meantime, none of that grotesque drama that was visited upon these children was necessary in order for Joseph Konys, the lunatic who started it all, to experience whatever power and aggrandizement, he thought he would get from the countless atrocities he continues to commit to this day. Ditto for the rest of us, who "fancy up" our own troubles and then have to spend who-knows-how-long in some rehab or therapy.

Good Friday commemorates an equally unnecessary trauma. The Kingdom and its whereabouts had been revealed long before the crucifixion, but it seems humans wouldn't accept the merely painful lessons to gain entry to the Kingdom. Oh no, they had to literally make a spectacle of it. In a new interpretation, perhaps Good Friday should be spent in trying to sooth and strip away any unnecessary agony we may find in ourselves and anyone else who may need our help. Just a thought...

Simply Irresistible Things for a cause... why do we do it? To keep that ripple going!

S.I.T. the acronym may seem strange – it’s such an inactive verb, but when taken from another perspective, some of our best ideas in life can only emerge if there is a moment, however brief, where everything is suspended before a new shift – a change takes place.

The moment between second and third gear, the moment before you begin the high dive, between the words "I love" and "you", between clueless and the "Aha!", between choosing this path or the other path....All of these are sacred moments where in essence, we sit back – we are still – until we are moved to action once again.

We want to contribute to a more thoughtful and inclusive approach to solving problems. We want to keep the ripple effect going because it's a powerful source of energy that gains momentum and widens the sphere of influence -- and yet the first action to start the effect can be modest.

Our vastly connected world has made it possible for all of us to experience great philanthropic works – we are given a chance to participate in seemingly small and easy ways – but that in the end amount to significant gains. What we lack in individual wealth, we make up in sheer numbers and we believe it’s time to truly take advantage of it.

Our Lotus is special...we like the root

Most lotus legends explain the ancient reason why the lotus is linked to both human and divine consciousness in this way: it has a root deep in the muddy and murky waters – but on top of the water, it floats magically – a resplendent geometry of beauty and color – a perfection that has its roots in the muck. Most images and graphic representations, however, seldom show the root. It's an omission that leads us to forget or at least "discount" in some way the not so pretty beginnings of all endeavors, whether they are the quest for a higher state of consciousness or just the beginning of a messy home remodel.

It's as if we only want to see the finished perfection of something. Fair enough. Nobody wants to see the ten trillion outtakes that didn't work in a movie, or the scraps of fabric and exhausted seamstresses at a couture show...the raspy, off-key attempts at a song. But we liked this little root. It wasn’t ugly or scary at all. Maybe life in the earthy/muddy waters doesn’t have to be ugly or scary either. Maybe we need to remember to honor the whole process no matter how ungainly or frustrating, because without it there would be no state of perfection.

So our root is always visible and we think it makes the connection to the "divine" -- the pathway -- much easier to see and keeps us hopeful while we are slogging away at whatever it is we seek to accomplish. This is our way of reminding all of us that both states are part of a whole.

Why Blogmere? Because it sounds like a place...

a place in the English Lake District like Windermere or Buttermere. A place you might like to come and visit to refresh and gather in some ideas and beauty.

Apparently, some time during the early 19th century, adding the suffix "-mere" to a town name became all the rage and displaced the French suffix "-ville". "Ville" was thought to be old fashioned and quaint, while the hip and cool "-mere" means to be part of something – from the Greek "meros" meaning part. In like manner, sitforacause.com is part of something -- a collective of people anxious to help solve some of the most pressing issues and forming a kind of global township to accomplish the task.

So there you have it – the latest 19th century thinking applied to a 21st century medium : )

Everyone Has a Cause...and that's a good thing!

Have you noticed how many people are starting their own causes? There’s a sense of urgency and a need to be hands-on because things aren’t moving fast enough to keep up with the demand….So we come together in smaller groups to focus our energies and help gather the answers that are all around us.

In starting our own cause, we found that virtually everyone we came in contact with actually does believe in a cause of some sort. Expressed or not, contributed to or not, when the subject comes up, everyone has something they champion.

We will be launching a retail website dedicated to contributing 10% of all product purchases to three core causes for cancer research and treatment, and three rotating causes such as – education, wellness and many more. The strategy is to bring awareness to as many causes as possible. When searching for a gift or treating yourself to something new,by shopping sitforacause.com you are not only passing on a contribution to a worthy cause, but becoming aware of the power of your purchase.

Here's a preview of some of the things sitforacaus.com will be offering -- there's something for everyone and 10% of the purchase price for any of the irresistible things on this site will go directly to the core organizations or rotating causes we feature – and you get to choose which one!