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Global Girlfriends: How One Mom Made It Her Business To Help Women In Poverty Worldwide (2011)

by Stacey Edgar(Favorite Author)

3.64 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0312621736 (ISBN13: 9780312621735)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

St. Martin's Press

review 1: This is the true life story of a mom taking her tax return and starting up a business from her garage to help impoverished women in third world countries. I loved her admiration and passion for women helping women, her belief in sparking a world-wide community of sisterhood (Global Girlfriends) who would value the people behind the products and reach out to take care of each other. Talking about extreme poverty she said: "...nearly 3 billion people [live] on less than $2 a day, and 26,500-30,000 children die each day, from preventable disease, or no access to clean water, or simple starvation. This situation is like a global human holocaust where we close our eyes while innocent people die of curable diseases like malaria and dysentery, and from lack of food.""With all the... more images of unnecessary suffering, we are inoculated into inaction because we feel nothing we could do personally could make a dent in the larger problem."There is this kind of paralyzing "What can I do about it?" feeling that I get when I consider global inequality. The story of her travels to women artisans in Africa, Haiti, Nepal, and India gave more of a human face to the problem, and I felt inspired by the fact that she, a middle class mother of three kids from Colorado, was able to do something to help them.The last chapter of the book had a nice brief "how to" portion with some practical ideas (start in your local community, be yourself and use your interests and resources) and references to various non-profits.Anyway, five stars for the story and inspiration. The execution of it was a bit repetitive and I struggled to maintain my interest in the second half, primarily because I have a hard time caring about style or fashion. Even when making fashionable handbags can mean bringing a woman in Kenya out of poverty, too many details about the shape of the bag or consumer interest got me skimming to find the next "people story" part of the narrative.
review 2: Picked the book up only b/c someone had shelved it as a display at our library, thus going against the "never judge a book by its cover". A bit slow at times--author tells of her travels to various countries while chosing which "merchants" to work with. Everything they sell must be made by women. Women make up 70% of those earning less than $1/day--1.3 billion people total. The book clearly makes you want to support her efforts, as well as others in the fair trade market. It also made me wonder what exactly is being done in THIS country to help OUR families--men, women & children, who are the extreme poor. less

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