U.S. Bank’s Women Leaders In Action (WLA) Making Life Better for African Children

When you think about your typical day, you think about decisions like should I stop for gas now or later? What should I pack the kids for lunch? Do I stop and pick up dinner or make something out of the fridge? Paper or plastic? Get coffee at Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts? That is, until you take a trip to Africa.
Last June, I was standing with six co-workers in the bowels of the Kibera slums in Nairobi, Kenya, surrounded by filth below my feet and around me as far as I could see. The smell of poverty you could never forget. It’s another world, another planet. How did I get here?!

How I got there was from an idea that started with Pam Joseph, vice chair of payments for U.S. Bank, and a handful of women in Atlanta less than two years ago. That idea is now called Women Leaders in Action (WLA). WLA was launched in 2011 as a women’s resource group to unite senior members of U.S. Bank’s Payment Services division. WLA’s mission is to connect high-performing women to professional networking, leadership development and to provide support to causes under the banner of WLA Kids. With a global, hands-on approach, WLA Kids has raised over $500,000 in the past 18 months for projects that fund children’s education in a place foreign to all of its members – Africa.

Oldonyonyokie Kids: WLA Kids is paying for girls to go to school (primary and secondary), in addition to furnishing their dorm. The school is three hours outside Nairobi.

For those of you who have not been to a Third World country, once you’ve been, you immediately appreciate those daily decisions we all make and realize how lucky and truly “rich” we are...especially when you see those with nothing.

“Nothing” in Africa means children who sleep on boxes or women infected with HIV raising 5 kids in an 8-by-10 self-constructed mud hut, often alone or on their death bed, doing whatever it takes to “not to be so desperate,” as a woman we met in Nairobi puts it. There are children raising themselves with a mother in jail for stealing food. One child barely ate from a free meal so that he could take the rest home for his family. We met another child with a mischievous smile named Felix, who lived in an orphanage for children with HIV (he passed away shortly after we met). Seeing all of this firsthand jolts you into a reality you never knew existed – not in my world. My world is rich in resources, abundant and full of opportunities.

But a trip to Africa to see those suffering yet surviving, living with no worldly goods is an awakening of sorts. You return home with your eyes wide open with the memories of the kids you see needing and wanting a better future, the spirit in the women you meet, the stories you hear firsthand. It doesn’t leave you, long after you are back in the comfort of your home. Africa pulls you in to help make a difference because once you’ve seen that kind of suffering, you HAVE to do something. And no matter how small you think your efforts are, you soon realize giving someone hope can be immeasurable.

Mathare Kids: Valley View students in Mathare, Nairobi, Kenya

Women in Africa do it all. They are the backbone of the family unit. They cook, haul water, clean, build their homes, raise their children (and many times other orphans), often without the support of anyone. Yet, they are often discriminated against and live under a constant threat of sexual violence. The statistics are staggering.

In Swaziland, 56 percent of women 25-29 are infected with HIV, and the life expectancy dropped from 61 to 32 in just 9 years (2000-2009).

HIV prevalence in Kenya is nearly two times higher among adult women compared to men.

Schools can lift children out of poverty and decrease their risk of infection. Education is not free in Africa – support is essential to ensure orphans attend school, which can provide them with some kind of hopeful future – something WLA Kids hopes to help address.

WLA Kids now has three active projects, all with a focus on education. Mathare Kids supports urban education in the Mathare Slums in Nairobi, Kenya. Oldonyonyokie Kids focuses on rural education for girls three hours outside of Nairobi in the Rift Valley. WLA Kids's newest project is Canaan Kids in Swaziland.

Cathi Stanton, a senior vice president with U.S. Bank and author of this article, on her trip to Africa

Eleven WLA members are getting ready for their next journey to Swaziland in May to visit Janine Maxwell. Speaking of a woman who does everything, Janine is the founder of Heart for Africa and Project Canaan. Last year, she and her husband Ian left Atlanta and moved to Swaziland to run their organization with a focus on hunger, orphans, poverty and education (HOPE). The launch of Project Canaan included building an orphanage , which now holds 24 (and counting) babies, who will soon become toddlers.

WLA Kids is helping to fund the building of a preschool for 40 future preschoolers. WLA members will be traveling to the preschool in May to unload a container being shipped next month full of educational tools, tables, carpets, chairs, desks, toys and outdoor play equipment. The preschool will be called Sisekelo, which means foundation. How fortunate these babies are to have been connected with Janine and to now have a chance at life with a foundation for education and a future that holds much promise?

On a personal note, I never thought my future included visiting some of the poorest places in Africa. It seems ironic that in these places of poverty you will meet some of the happiest people you will ever come across, simply grateful for the little things. I find myself thinking of them often, even when I’m packing lunches, getting gas, deciding on dinner, or getting coffee.

Business idea: video online

video online

Even yesterday, such a possibility has been fantastic, and the business idea seemed ridiculous. Today, video lessons not surprise anyone. People studying remotely across the globe. How many pros have this type of education! This opportunity can be used in any home where there is Internet, and ... a desire to learn something new, within the apartment.

Why would we not take this kind of money on armaments? Probably each of us knows how to do something, and do well. You can teach traditional courses - Language school profile subjects or a more serious subjects. You can teach the game on any instrument, together with the students to master certain kinds of needlework, or even build something.

Today leading video professionals in various major industries, the stars from around the world and simple craftsmen, as we are with you. Yesterday, the network stumbled upon the movie, which is very understandable and quickly taught fold napkins. Prior to making the same simple! In another video a wonderful girl, taught nakladyvaniya make-up secrets. Examples can lead indefinitely. The main thing to understand - what you can do, always someone you need. And for people willing to pay money.

Where to begin? To build their site on the subject that you have set forward. By the way, the day Sit in any search engine by sending requests to different types of learning. Look at the statistics - how many queries, and how many of these requests for proposals. Where there is a deficit, and it is directing its efforts.

Decided on the theme, you can move on to the next stage. In order to sell a product, you must have. Start to create video. Here is to you can come to the aid of familiar software, computer, or the same video and audiouroki to create their own video.

For any survey would need a special camera and computer program for the installation of video. The plot would have to write, or myself, or hire a scriptwriter for those purposes, but this would entail additional costs. Will you removed yourself, or ask someone else - it's up to you.

Once the product is created, it must be able to sell. This will require placing the announcement on its website and start viral marketing and advertising. The sooner you learn about the clients, the more you have to be. At the outset, should not exhibit a high fee for their lessons. As long as you have no brand, no name, until your product is not approved market rate request is for a purely nominal fee. Over time, when you can promote your project, your lessons will rise in price.

Here is an example of international experience. Company «Apple» offers music lessons «Artist Lessons». These lessons are well-known musicians - Sting, Nora Jones and other stars. Price for one lesson - $ 4.99. Each student, at its discretion, regulates the rate of occupation. Also invited to step-by-step instruction of musical literacy and the basics of music. Famous singers show how to gain their first chords, how to master a particular technique of playing an instrument. It is in these lessons, and even a feature: each student can rehearse, for example, along with Sting, to take his place, just «deletion» star from the core of the group. Do I have to say that such lessons, besides technology, provide a further charge of a huge self-confidence.

Company «Brightstorm» nothing more than an online training center for seniors. All classes are conducted online, the purpose of lessons - to prepare students to enter college. Each lesson lasts 10-20 minutes. The student chooses a subject and teacher. The annual rate for the same thing costs just $ 49. Temperature classes and the number of lessons per day, each pupil varies in its sole discretion. The quality of video has a very high level. Sale or run-off-center during the crisis

It is clear that the topic can be different classes, as well as feed material, and the usefulness of each video. One thing is certain - this new technology, which surely included in our daily lives. It is important to take its place in a new form of business for us.

Free content for your site, how to create a site with an interview.

About a month ago, I gave an interview to magazine news. The conversation turned out to be quite interesting, and interviews, in my opinion, too. Then I thought: "Well it's a great idea for business" - to interview the owners of various sites and publish them.

Since the publication of the latest business ideas associated with the Internet, I often came questions about how to get free content for your site. Here's to you and the number one! Create a project, which will publish the interview. Elaborate theme, a list of questions and send out invitations to owners of sites.

If your questions are well-structured, opponents seem interesting, then you get a portal with unique content. In addition, site owners, who you interviewed are likely to place links to these publications in their own.

Thus, your project at once solve all problems - unique content, promotion of a site, an interesting and frequently updated material.

Business Idea: Selling pictures online

Selling pictures online

On the Internet, all for sale! From the real things that you can touch / feel, and pieces of the Moon, from articles to photos of ideas and services.

Each of us has hundreds of digital photos, which are folded in the photo albums on your desktop. In the meantime, they can bring us a real profit. You can sell them through mikrostoki - market sales of photos. Initially, these markets for buying and selling only photographs, now in their schedules and there are already pictures, video and fleshroliki. If you know how to create and such a product, you will be easier to break in mikrostokah and quickly find its buyer.

Selling is based on rules «royalty free», that is, without the author's royalties, but a picture or video, you can sell an infinite number of times. Are all. Photographer producer may sell his child many times, the buyer - you want him to buy a plot in the form of photographs or video for a fairly low price. Buyers are online publications and print magazines, advertising agencies and printing firms. In short, all those who need high-quality photo illustrations for their publications. When contacting mikrostoki, they no longer need to pay for the work of staff photographer.

Catabatic photo - this photo with your order. Normally, each staff photographer gets a particular job, when you're doing the photo for yourself and for the inspiration, without reservation, and then exposes it for sale - it receives the status catabatic, nezakaznoy.

Ask the payment of the original photographers known for glossy magazines. Price for one plot could зашкаливать hundreds of dollars. By the well-known photographers from around the world are waiting. Publishers are willing to pay big money for their work.

Make a name for itself, as in any case, you can just applied a lot of work and developing their talents. Why not start with mikrostoka? First you need to register it. Place your work. They must pass control inspector photos.

When the photo portraits of people, you should take care of Model Release - special document signed by your model, that it has no claims, and agrees to the placement of its images in the photos (so the model loses all rights of authorship).

What are the advantages of placing work at mikrostokah? The buyer gets a lot of photos at once, since the prices of goods so low that he needs to recoup the cost of banking transactions. Photos are sold without your continued participation. They can accommodate anyone, even with no art education.

Technology of digital photographs allow anyone who wishes to become photographers. Prices for digital cameras are falling year by year and available to anyone. Rules for placing their works in mikrostokah less democratic, that can also take advantage of them all, without exception.

In the photos posted, millions of unique and exclusive photos. With very little money a buyer may become the owner of the hundreds of other photo-excellent quality. Each photographer will receive the money permanently, once placing his work.