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Microcredit is a simple idea. If you give a very poor woman a loan to use in a self-employment venture, you’re giving her a hand-up out of poverty, not a hand-out. She uses this microloan to buy supplies she needs to make her micro-business grow. In Africa, a loan of $50 goes a long way. It isn’t just a small loan; it’s a lifeline to people in need who otherwise wouldn’t have any access to credit. The credit they receive helps them start or build their businesses. The profits they earn are used to keep their families well-fed, housed, educated and healthy.
Many of the USC students working on AMF-sponsored projects earn classroom credit for their work. Service-learning or community-based learning benefits both the student and AMF.
“Service-learning is a method by which students learn and develop intellectually through the combination of traditional classroom work and thoughtfully organized community service. Students reflect upon their experiences in the community and integrate what they learn into their academic courses, using the service component as another text. In the end, the students learn from real-life experiences which enhance their understanding and make their course work more real and personal. At the same time, the students meet a critical need in the community, so an equal exchange of giving, receiving, understanding and learning takes place between the college and the community.”
www.hamilton.edu/levitt/SHINE/service_learning.html
- A Microcredit Program for the Care Givers and the Children Orphaned By AIDS in Mozambique
- Development of a Community Center for the people of Limpopo in KwaZulu Natal South Africa
- Solutions for water purification and irrigation systems for the people of Nd’jili in the Democratic Republic of Congo
“My most profound educational and life experience actually came from within the Viterbi academic setting, in my engineering writing class. As part of this class, everyone worked in groups on real community service projects. In the spring of 2004, my good friend Morgan Hendry and I took this class and worked on a pilot project in partnership with the African Millennium Foundation. The scope of the project was to develop a computer lab at an elementary school in the Democratic Republic of Congo. During the course of our initial research, we studied the politics and socioeconomic conditions in that region, especially in the aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide. I think we matured a few years in those couple of weeks. We realized that before we could worry about computer labs, we had to worry about more fundamental problems like providing clean drinking water and power to light homes. Consequently, we designed our model to tackle those problems instead.
The experience of working with the African Millennium Foundation brought to light the larger looming problem of a lack of access to education, not only in Africa, but all over the world. We are extremely fortunate to be here today, receiving engineering degrees, but there are between three and four billion people who will never have the privilege of an education such as ours. Another couple of billion will not see the impact of our engineering advancements for decades to come.”
Zeeshan Ahmed, USC Viterbi School of Engineering, 2005 Valedictorian
“Considering that it’s only my freshman year, I had never done a project worth more than a grade. However, this project was different. This project was worth much more than a grade because it gave me the opportunity to do something that would make a difference in people’s actual lives. I’m grateful to have had this opportunity and hopefully the project can come to fruition. I wish the best of luck to the women of Burkina Faso and all of those around the world who are involved in improving the lives of women.”
Leo Lehat, USC Marshall School of Business
“Most of the projects we do in the business school have a real world application. They may give us skills and knowledge we need to later solve real problems, but they have no immediate impact. This project with AMF was different; they gave us a little guidance into what they wanted done and we ran with it. The proposal we came up with may actually change lives and women of Burkina Faso will truly benefit from our ideas and plans. In my four years at USC, I have never consulted on a project until this one; it was truly a wonderful experience.”
Rebecca Stuart, USC Marshall School of Business
“I would like to say that working on this project helped me develop in two ways. This project exposed me to a real world engineering type of project that I should expect to encounter in my career. Although the task was not specifically engineering related, it helped me learn about working on a team, writing a proposal, and considering all aspects of a given problem. Because our proposal had the possibility of being considered for actual implementation, we were encouraged to treat it with seriousness and make our best efforts to make it a realizable goal.
Working with AMF gave me the chance to understand the importance and influence of charities that aid in developing countries. I now have a better understanding of what it takes for us to help bring progress to those less fortunate than us and how I can become more involved in that process.
It was a great experience for me to be able to work on this project and I would like to thank you for the opportunity.”
Kiran Mistry, USC Marshall School of Business
- Community Center – Limpopo, South Africa
In partnership with the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering, AMF is creating a welcoming and functional community center which will provide day care, food distribution, health care and community learning opportunities.
- USC AMF Pen Pal Program-Los Angeles and Kenya
The USC African Millennium Foundation Pen Pal Program provides students from the USC neighborhood community expository writing skills and vocabulary growth as well as world enrichment by corresponding with students in Kenya and South Africa, in turn creating global citizens.
Using a cultural and linguistic pedagogy approach, the program introduces participating students to the process of formal essay writing by teaching them correct narrative processes on a theme or topic driven basis with a focus on global issues affecting our Pen Pal Partners in Africa. Through this program the students gain greater exposure to vocabulary, writing, and grammar skills as well as gain knowledge about students and children in Africa that are living in poverty, hunger, civil unrest, and preventable diseases. The USC AMF pen pal program provides academic enrichment for inner-city at risk students. In addition, field trips, activities, and events are scheduled in order to enhance the cultural component of the program.
In its fifth year the program has been funded by USC Good Neighbors Campaign (UNO Grant) and is preparing the students to be successful by providing them with basic writing skills, vocabulary growth, and meaningful writing experiences that will engage students and motivate them to become better writers and prepare students for high school and beyond.
The vice principal at Saint Agnes Mr. Kathleen said in a statement:
“The students at Saint Agnes are highly motivated to continue learning more about Kenya, its government, society and culture. The computer and classroom teacher are going to collaborate on a PowerPoint project that will bring into play the students writing, research and speaking skills. The middle school teachers and the principal are very supportive of having the Pen pal program continue at St. Agnes. USC offers an enriched component (guests speakers who have first-hand knowledge of the subject, field trips that complement the curriculum) that we cannot possibly provide to our students. We want to see their progress continue with the support and collaboration of the USC Pen pal program.”
- AMF-USC Microcredit Program – Ghana
The African Millennium Foundation supports yang women at the Liberty Special Institute in Koforidue, Ghana by providing microloans that are used to start small businesses. This vocational school offers training in culinary arts, hotel hospitality, fashion, and design. Through these microloans, graduates of the program become self-supporting and are able to educate their children and take better care of their families while at the same time contributing to the development of the country as a whole.
- AMF Cal State LA
As two minds are stronger than one, so are two organizations more effective when joined together for a common purpose. In an effort to make a marked difference, both Cal State LA and the African Millennium Foundation have united to provide hope for the future of Mozambicans.
After having spent a summer observing firsthand the state of rural Maputo, Mozambique, and researching the plight and needs of the poor and HIV/AIDS infected people, Dr. Javeri came up with a vision and a plan to support student learning by involving them in global volunteerism.
Both graduate classes, EDIT 565 (E-Learning) and EDIT 594 (Human Performance Technology) were given the authentic tasks of designing interventions and units of study that would empower and educate the minds of both the caretakers, activists, and the women and children of Mozambique. Included were technology infused lessons in English, computer skills, HIV/AIDS and sex education, and how to start a microbusiness.
What began as a tiny seed of thought in the minds of Manisha Javeri and Malena Ruth, blossomed into a myriad of colorful possibility. Cal State graduate students took the baton and ran with the kind of passion needed for the next steps of the journey.
- TRAIN Mozambique: Sustainable Medical Training Program in Mozambique
This summer, AMF in partnership with Wolf Films, is sponsoring TRAIN Mozambique by funding a team of eight doctors to travel to Maputo and to Nampula, Mozambique to help and facilitate curriculum development, subspecialty medical training, and to support medical education through computer-based training for the medical schools.
TRAIN Mozambique is a collaborative effort of volunteer physicians in the Los Angeles academic community who share a passion for international public health and medical education. Our mission is to provide exceptionally resource poor communities in Mozambique with a focused infusion of medical and training expertise. We concurrently provide educational opportunities for U.S. medical students and physicians. The goals of the program are,
1) To train Mozambican clinical officers and medical students in primary care and subspecialty fields;
2) To provide an international clinical experience for U.S. physicians-in-training;
3) To inspire medical trainees to pursue careers in global health research and education, with a specific goal of encouraging and supporting the next generation of U.S. and Mozambican global health leaders;
4) To provide continuing medical education to Mozambican physicians and frontline health care workers; and
5) To build this program into a self-sustaining operation that continues to expand to other resource-poor countries around the world.
- Country Woman’s Association of Nigeria (COWAN) – Ondo State, Nigeria
AMF in partnership with the Jeanie Linders Fund, is working with the COWAN network in support of their Palm Oil production microcredit endeavor. By encouraging the use of “African Traditional Responsive Banking”, members of COWAN are learning business and marketing techniques to maximize their production, distribution and sales of palm oil to both local and national markets.
- Cow Girls & Bull Boys – Gatunyu, Kenya
By helping to supply cows and bulls to widows, AMF hopes to create greater economic opportunities as well as provide locally produced dairy products for families, neighbors and local villages.
- Girls Bathrooms – Gatunyu, Kenya
AMF is working with local communities to provide hygienic girls’ bathrooms in schools. Girls lose an average of one week of school per month during their menstruation periods due to the lack of sanitary facilities; even more tragically, a large percentage of girls drop out of school all together. By providing safe, clean bathrooms and supplies, girls can remain in school and stay competitive.
“If we are to succeed in our efforts to build a more healthy, peaceful and equitable world, the classrooms of the world have to be full of girls as well as boys.”
KOFI ANNAN, United Nations Secretary General
- REENCONTRO - Mozam ntro network volunteers, AMF is helping to alleviate the devastation of broken families due to AIDS. Children, who have lost a parent or two to the AIDS virus, receive assistance in the areas of trauma counseling, basic healthcare and vocational skills training.
- Mozambique: Solar Oven Microcredit Project
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Projects
