This is to invite you to attend a presentation by Marcia Odell at Stanford University on Thursday, July 24 at 10:00AM at the Reuters Digital Visions Lounge on the second floor of Cordura Hall, 220 Panama Street. Parking is available at the Panama Street parking structure… bring lots of quarters for the meters (8 quarters for 2 hrs)

Marcia Odell  has won many awards for her successful work as founder of the Women’s Empowerment Program in Nepal, sponsored by PACT, including the “Change the World” Best Practice  Award from the Club of Budapest.  The World Bank and the Government of Japan, through the Global Development Network, cited her program as one of the ten most innovative development projects in the world in their 2000 development innovation competition.  This program is heavily based on the concepts of Appreciative Inquiry.  It pioneers several interesting patterns: of savings-led microfinance (women save their own money, and keep their capital in their own village, rather than assuming debt and interest payments to the "city"), self-organization  (her lecture in Nairobi 2 years ago triggered the formation of 64 women's groups in Kenya, which went on to create over one hundred more), self-propagation (women who learn to read go on to teach their friends), and autonomy-inducing help.

This program, now called the  Worth Initiative, was featured in January 2003 issue of Glamour Magazine:

“125,000 of [Nepal's] poorest women recently taught themselves to read and operate village banks."The men used to laugh at us for studying," participant Bipi Maya Tamang told a project field-worker. "Now they see so many changes. They encourage us." The program clearly boosted the women's confidence, but the benefits didn't stop there. "The women started businesses and nurseries," says Marcia Odell, who oversaw the recently completed project for Pact, an international development nonprofit. "They lobbied for roads and clinics, then tackled issues like alcoholism, domestic abuse and sex trafficking." Just three years later, 6,200 women's empowerment groups exist in Nepal."

Tom Munnecke will also be presenting a summary of the GivingSpace workshop on an Uplift Pattern Language http://www.givingspace.org/patterns/announcement.htm held earlier in the week which focused on applying the pattern language concepts of Christopher Alexander.  This workshop, lead by Richard Gabriel, will look at concepts and scalable technologies for discovering, building reputations, and propagating patterns of uplift.  This workshop is still open to registrants at register@givingspace.org

If you are interested in attending Marcia’s presentation, please RSVP with a message to Munnecke@csli.stanford.edu.  Feel free to forward this message to others who may be interested.  There is no charge for attending.

This presentation is supported by the Reuters Digital Visions Program at Stanford University, the Omidyar Foundation, and GivingSpace.

 Tom Munnecke

Visiting Scholar 2002-2003

Reuters Digital Visions Program

Stanford University

munnecke@csli.stanford.edu

(858) 756-4218