Village savings and loan schemes help the poor save in remote communities like this one in Malawi. Photo: Erik Mandell for MercyCorps

The world's poorest have long struggled to borrow. Now, an alternative microfinance model is also making it easier for poor people to save.

Microfinance institutions have provided lending services to millions of the world’s poor people for several decades. But loans must be paid back, and even traditional microlenders are hesitant to lend money to the poorest of the poor—including those living in some of the most remote and unpopulated communities. That’s where the model of village savings and loans associations (VSLAs) comes in, according to a recent Economist article.

The idea is simple: savings, rather than just borrowed money, is key to helping poor people become more stable and less vulnerable. Differing from the better-known Grameen Bank model of microfinance, which provides individual or group loans and operates on credit, a village savings and loan scheme allows a group of community members to pool their savings, lend within the group, and save the interest earned from the loans to disperse to members individually or use for community projects.

This model enables both borrowing capabilities and longer-term savings accumulation for both the group and its members.

CARE International, a humanitarian aid organization focused on fighting poverty, engineered the VSLA model in Niger in 1991. Today, CARE oversees village savings and loan associations in Ghana, Malawi and Uganda. Numerous other non-governmental organizations have promoted village savings groups that serve more than 4.6 million members in 54 countries.

While nonprofits promote the model, the groups themselves are internally managed. Unlike solely credit-based models, group members do not owe repayment to an external bank, but rather to their own pool. Group constitutions are established by members, outlining rules, interest rates, and how savings and interest will be shared. Sometimes transactions, debts and credits are written in basic ledgers, but some groups with no literate members rely on memorization, familiar to those with a culture of oral history, according to Hugh Allen, founder of VSL Associates.

Amid criticism of the effectiveness of traditional microfinance models, as we reported a few months ago, VSLA schemes offer a different path to poverty alleviation.

And for some of the world’s poorest, savings—not a loan— is the golden ticket needed for a better life.

Erik Mandell is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in public administration and global leadership at Portland State. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

57 million women give birth each year without the help of a trained professional. Photo: hugrakka(Flicker)

Bringing one life into the world shouldn't mean sacrificing another. While the developing world scrambles to secure funding for midwifery services, there's a cheap, short-term solution: birth kits.

The risk of death due to pregnancy or childbirth is 1 in 8,000 in developed countries, as opposed to 1 in 17 in developing countries, according to the organization Unite For Sight. Yearly, approximately 57 million women give birth in their home without the help of a trained professional, increasing the risk of complications.

Midwives are an essential player in lowering maternal deaths. "Midwives can save women's and newborns' lives if they are properly trained and equipped, and if a support network is available," writes the World Health Organization. Worldwide, the WHO estimates, there is a shortage of 350,000 midwives. But training 350,000 new midwives won't happen overnight. In the meantime, birth kits could fill the gap.

Birth kits provide the tools for a safer and sanitary delivery, including soap to wash hands, razors and ties for the umbilical cord, plastic sheets for a clean surface, and an instruction sheet.

The impact of birth kits can be life-saving but their success depends on acceptability within the community where it is introduced. At times, modifications might be needed such as redesigning the instruction sheet to use images instead of words, considering low literacy rates. PATH, an international organization which focuses on global health and well-being, has produced kits used in Bangladesh, Egypt and Nepal. Cutting the umbilical cord on a coin is considered good luck in Nepal. To adhere to traditional customs, PATH created a kit that includes a plastic rupee.

Another common problem: Cutting the umbilical cord with unsanitary, used razor blades. Disposable razor blades or an illustrated instruction sheet encouraging woman and midwives to sterilize reusable blades after every use could reduce this problem. The Janma clean delivery birthing kit by AYZH is making modifications to its current scalpel handle design to discourage reuse.

Though midwives are the ideal choice for safe births, families can't always afford their services. Government and non-profit programs that subsidize midwifery programs aren't economically sustainable in the long run. A model pursued by the Midwifery Association of Pakistan involves changing public perceptions of the midwife's role in health care, advocates for government-set standards for midwifery education, and lobbies for professional rights.

Until midwifery is economically viable and publicly understood, we need an affordable stop-gap solution to save lives. Maternal mortality will continue to rise if birth kits—and, eventually, midwifery services—aren’t accessible to the women who need them now.

Women farmers in Africa produce over 60 percent of all food crops. CIMMYT (flickr)

Women comprise 43 percent of the world’s farmers. In Africa, it’s 80 percent. Women plant, harvest, process and sell their crops, but men continue to dominate agricultural science and research. This may be about to change.

African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) is trying to close the R&D gender gap. Their program fast-tracks female science careers in agriculture, empowering them to contribute more effectively to hunger and poverty alleviation in their own communities - a model that could be replicated internationally.

Although African women produce 60 to 80 percent of food crops, they receive significantly less (5% as of 2008) of the agricultural training and tools available to men, says the United Nations. A 2010-2011 research report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization shows that women could produce 20-30 percent more if they had equal access. This creates a subsequent increase in household income, health, and community food supply. The East Africa Report emphasizes that research is also pivotal in fostering innovation. Without a seat at the table, women cannot influence practices. Who better to innovate than the farmers themselves?

Women in Ghana conduct business. Photo: IITA Image Library (flickr)

This article was republished in The Christian Science Monitor.

Ghanaian women are mothers, daughters and wives. Add entrepreneurs to the list. Female entrepreneurs are flourishing across Africa, but Ghanaian women are leading the pack.

Education, national stability, and microfinance have spurred their success.

Ghana’s government recognizes the important role women play in reaching the country’s development goals. “No nation can move on without emphasizing the education and emancipation of women,” said Vice President John Dramani Mahama.

One result of that attitude is an increase in women’s education, and the cornerstone of further education is literacy. The literacy rate among females between the ages of 15 to 24 is 78 percent, according to UNICEF, up from 16.6 percent in 1970. This is an impressive jump in the time span of one generation and demonstrates how many more Ghanaian women today can access the kind of skills needed for running a business, like accounting, marketing and management.

Ghana’s stability has also helped catapult its business environment forward. It was the first nation in sub-Saharan Africa to achieve independence in 1957. In the 1970s and 1980s, political instability took its toll on the country. But since then, Ghana has regained political stability and goodwill from the international community, providing an environment ripe for business growth and development. As a result, investor confidence has increased. Rising investment has influenced Ghana’s economic prosperity, and the country is currently the fastest-growing economy of 2011, growing 20.2 percent in the first half of the year, according to Economy Watch.

Ghana's natural resources also boost its per-capita GDP, which International Entrepreneurship reported is twice that of its poorer West Africa neighbors.

Finally, for decades Ghana has been reaping the benefits of microfinance, a tool that may be especially effective in empowering women. As described by the Economics Web Institute, Ghana provided subsidized credit in the 1950s, established an Agricultural Development Bank in 1965 for fish and farm loans, and required commercial banks to set aside 20 percent of their portfolios for agriculture and small-scale industries in the 1970s and early 1980s.

The result? Today, the female labor force participation rate in Ghana is estimated at 50.1 percent—and women account for about 50.2 percent of the entire population of Ghana. With improved education, the prosperity of the country, and a stable microfinance sector, the women of Ghana are making an impact in the entrepreneurial world that cannot be denied.

Women tending sweet potato crops in Tanzania. Photo: The Gates Foundation (Flickr)

Sometimes one class is all it takes. One Maasai woman, recently selected for a course on potato seed farming, is now shipping seed by the ton.

Christine Nashuru lives in the southwestern region of the Rift Valley Province in Kenya in a traditional Maasai community. Cultural barriers and poverty blocked her access to formal education. Like other women in her community, she tried her hand at farming, but the results were less than spectacular. Until recently.

The International Potato Center (CIP) selected Nashuru to take part in a course that taught more efficient potato-farming practices. Traditionally, potato seeds require about seven generations to maximize yields. CIP taught Nashuru and others how to maximize in just three generations. In 2010, she sold 10.3 tons of potato seeds, and this year she hopes to top 80 tons.

Reducing the amount of time it takes to maximize yields means lower production costs and more flexibility to experiment with different varieties and tactics. CIP’s campaign has increased the yields of 15,000 farmers in East Africa by 20 percent. These farmers’ incomes are increasing, and so are the food stocks of their communities.

This campaign is targeted towards those with little education. The less-educated are prevented from reaching their full potential to help themselves and their communities. CIP is looking to change that by showing that one way to fill stomachs is to fill minds.

Ben Osborn is a 2011 graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

The "Fight Back" application will allow woman to report attacks anonymously. Photo:MissMessie (flickr).

Reporting a rape can be as easy as sending a text message.

Women in New Delhi will soon be able to fight back against attackers with the use of a phone application that alerts friends, family and police, and sends a message to her social networks with a GPS location.

One in four Indian rapes takes place in New Delhi, according to The Christian Science Monitor, making it one of the unsafest cities for woman in India. Women are exposed to constant harassment and many incidents go unreported because of shame and lack of response by authorities.

"Safety for women has become such a huge issue here and we felt that citizens of Delhi, where possibly the problem exists the most, could use this type of technological intervention," said Hindol Sengupta, co-founder of Whypoll, which created the application and touts itself as "India's only open government platform."

The “Fight Back” application will be available for a small fee through the Whypoll website and is compatible with cell phones such as Nokia and Black Berry. SOS alerts will cost the same as an SMS.

The stigma and dishonor of rape leads women to not report the crime. Whypoll willrecord and reflect incidents on its website, but ensure users remain anonymous.

Recording what types of crimes occur and where will provide important information to help push for action in the places it is needed the most.

Reporting crimes against Indian women is on the rise. As more women attain political power, gender-related issues are brought to the forefront and action is taken. The “Fight Back” application will provide a new platform for women to be heard.

An image of an endocervical gland taken during a pap smear. Simple vinegar turns out to be a lower-cost alternative to tests like this one. Photo:Ed Uthman(flicker)

A common household item can serve a double purpose: it gives flavor in your kitchen, and it saves your life.

A low-cost innovation—vinegar— can help detect cervical cancer and save thousands of lives in developing nations.

Developed by the John Hopkins medical school in the 1990’s and endorsed by the World Health Organization, vinegar is brushed on a woman’s cervix. The vinegar causes precancerous spots to turn white, reports The New York Times.

The spots can be instantly frozen off with a metal probe cooled by a tank of carbon dioxide.

In the traditional Western test for cervical cancer, a pap smear, a scraping of the cervix is taken and sent to a lab for testing. High-quality labs are scarce in many poor countries, and waiting for results can take weeks. Woman who live in rural areas are hard to reach. The vinegar procedure, known as VIA/cryo, only requires a nurse and a single visit to detect and kill the cancer.

Each year, more than 250,000 women die from cervical cancer, 85 percent of them in poor or middle-income countries.

Solutions to problems don’t always have to be high-tech. A little creativity and ingenuity can go a long way.

The 73rd Amendment to the Indian Constitution mandates greater political representation for women. Photo: Sukanto Debnath (flickr)

Reported violence against Indian women is on the rise. That’s not as bad as it sounds.

A recent study by four economists suggests that this increase reflects growing willingness to report violence against women, rather than an increase in the incidence of crime. The reason, they suggest: more women are involved in Indian politics than ever before.

The study cites a 1993 law that requires at least one-third of all seats in local governments to be set aside for women. Since then, political representation for women has increased, and so has the recognition of gender violence. When women are in power, police are more likely to respond to claims of gender violence. Offenders are arrested, and women are safer.

This is about more than safe and civil societies. According to UN Women, “violence against women impoverishes individuals, families and communities, reducing the economic development of each nation.” Safer women, safer futures. A good place to start may be political empowerment.

Rags2Riches is helping Filipino women take back control of their livelihoods. Photo:fveronesi1 (flickr)

High-fashion designs are turning impoverished Filipino mothers into living-wage artisans.

The average daily wage for a nurse working in the Philippines is $7, but for women in Reese Fernandez-Ruiz’s Rags2Riches program, formerly impoverished mothers can make up to $12 a day, according to Fast Company. Rags2Riches solicits well-known Philippine designers and pairs them with local craftswomen. Working with the designers, the women produce their products with recycled materials in exchange for a premium wage. Fernandez-Ruiz, president and founding partner of Rags2Riches, was herself a poor working mother in one of the Philippines' worst dump sites (home to over 12,000 families) when she created the organization.

Aware that many women were selling foot rugs made from recycled fabric scraps (sourced from the local dump), and were often the victims of shady middlemen who provided and controlled the materials, Fernandez-Ruiz saw the opportunity for the women to take control. In an effort to gain momentum, she asked prominent Filipino designer Rajo Laurel to participate — to her surprise, he agreed. With such a prominent name attached to the project, more designers soon signed on.

Working with some of the Philippines' top designers has helped women boost their daily earnings from 20 cents to $12, said Fast Company. In addition, many are able to work from home, letting them care for their children while continuing to earn money. The organization also incorporates a "quality of life program," in which a portion of each worker's income is deposited into a bank account for future savings.

In its fourth year of operation, Rags2Riches has helped improve the lives and working conditions of over 450 women. It has improved the environmental conditions in the community with it's up-cycle, eco-ethical business model and has provided an invaluable opportunity to hundreds of women and their families.

To hear more about this inspiring business model, check out the video below:

The African Growth and Opportunity Act has generated many jobs in the clothing manufacturing sector, especially for women. Photo: Jenny Bussey Vaughan/Mercy Corps

Most Americans may have never heard of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, but their closets probably contain at least one article of clothing imported as part of it.

The act — AGOA, by its acronym — was passed by Congress in 2000. It’s a free-trade deal between the U.S. and a number of Sub-Saharan African nations that eliminates quotas and duties for certain goods. It allows African products to compete with those from other regions on a more level playing field on the U.S. market. 87 percent of these imports consist of petroleum and minerals, according to a report by the Council on Foreign Relations. That’s not all, though, as Florizelle Lizer, the assistant U.S. trade representative for Africa explained to the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Information Programs:

The main focus of our efforts and our capacity-building assistance related to AGOA has always been to promote new nontraditional and value-added exports from Africa like apparel, footwear, processed agricultural products and manufactured goods.

This is where you’ll find AGOA’s selling point for the average Joe or Joanna in one of its member states. It’s created tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs, and many of these new employees are women. Some of the largest gains are in clothing manufacturing. For a poor, landlocked country like Lesotho, clothing exports tripled and 50,000 new jobs appeared following its entrance into AGOA, according to a report by Lawrence Edwards and Robert Lawrence. It’s also helping to empower women by providing them access to a regular income, comments Zambia News Features.

There’s a catch, though: AGOA says the materials used to make products exported to the U.S. must be manufactured in the exporting country or, at the very least, in another AGOA state. But being able to manufacture fabrics on an industrial scale is a tall order for developing nations that don’t already have that kind of infrastructure. Luckily for them, another piece was added to AGOA a few years after it debuted. It’s called the Third Country Fabric Rule, and it allows African countries to import their fabric from other parts of the world, manufacture the finished product at home, and then export it to the U.S. under AGOA.

The Third Country Rule doesn’t quite sync up with AGOA, and must be renewed more frequently. AGOA itself isn’t up for revision until 2015, while the Third Country Rule is set to expire in 2012. In May, AllAfrica reported that the U.S. had said that "its market would no longer be accepting garments whose raw materials could have been sourced from outside the exporting country." Since then, a U.S. congressman submitted a bill to extend the Rule until 2015, though an article from Forbes argues that recent U.S. actions concerning AGOA constitute a kind of "benign neglect."

Not everyone is in favor of AGOA in its current state, though. Some call it a fig leaf for the oil industry or a cap on the growth of African manufacturing. U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is a supporter, but in a recent speech at the AGOA forum in Zambia she pointed out some of its shortcomings, according to Procurement News. She said African governments need to work on providing greater support to manufacturers — citing the example of an American business that chose to import from Vietnam instead of an AGOA because Vietnamese government subsidies meant that the factory there could churn out products more quickly. Clinton also criticized the fact that countries "export only a handful of the 6,500 products," eligible under AGOA, while "the most common export is still a barrel of oil." Others see the Third Country Rule as actually stunting the growth of local textile industries. It might be cheaper to import from Asia in the short run, but local businesses could suffer the long-term.

But in the minds of many, allowing the rule to lapse — or even threatening to let it do so — makes investors nervous and hurts countries’ long-term prospects. Here’s hoping congressional inaction concerning your clothing’s origin won’t cost an African woman the shirt off her back.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

For too many dads, hitting the village bar takes precedence over their child's education. Photo: andré thiel (flickr)

One source of poverty often overlooked is the manner in which the poor choose to spend their money. Many, particularly men, divert limited funds to buy beer, prostitutes, tobacco and other nonessential items, rather then invest in the education of their children.

The consequence of these poor financial decisions is that many children never receive the education they deserve, not due to lack of access, but because of unpaid tuition fees. Children are forced to drop out, repeat grades, or suffer expulsion, while their fathers hit the village bars for a few liters of beer.

These priorities are not limited to the developing world. The average American spends approximately 7 percent of their income on entertainment, alcohol, and tobacco, while spending only 1.9 percent on education, according to a 2008 survey conducted by the U.S Department of Labor. Though everyone, including the poor, deserve to engage in entertainment and the purchase of pleasure items, the lower a family’s income gets, the more devastating its effects on a families overall well-being become.

Investing more in education could be exactly what is needed to lift poor families and future generations out of poverty. Around the world, approximately 103.5 million primary school age children are not enrolled in school, with about 57 percent of these education deprived children being girls. The lack of an education, or an insufficient one, leads to fewer choices and opportunities later in life. Children who receive a well rounded education are provided with the skills to prevent disease, address issues of maternal health, and navigate the world efficiently with skills that will serve them their entire lives.

If families could redirect even a slight percentage of the money spent on tobacco or alcohol, and this applies to all families around the world, their situations could be transformed dramatically, says New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof. In addition, Kristof advocates that women take on greater responsibility for the household budget, as they have consistently been found to be more financially responsible than men and more apt to allocate funds towards family needs, rather then individual ones. Female monetary empowerment has long been advocated for, but day by day, the case grows stronger.

To hear Kristof’s thoughts on this somewhat controversial and overlooked subject, check out the video below.

Khamaeal Hussein in her beauty shop in Shatt Al Arab district, southern Iraq. Photo: Mercy Corps Iraq

This has been reposted from the Mercy Corps blog.

In a part of the country often forgotten by the central government, southern Iraq has had its share of challenges following years of conflict that began with the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Communities need government support for projects that they identify as high priority, such as rehabilitation of hospitals, health centers and schools, construction of bridges, and battling high rates of unemployment.

A lack of opportunities is one major factor for unemployment. But an entrepreneurial spirit still exists.

Khamaeal Hussein lives in a small neighborhood in Shatt Al Arab district, in Basra governorate. She is 29 years old and participated in a Mercy Corps-funded project last year: a hairdressing and makeup training for 20 women in her district. It was a small project, lasting a month, with professional lectures and supplies provided for the participants.

Like many women her age who leave school early to help their families, Khamaeal had not been able to complete her studies. A Catch-22, this meant she had not been able to find a good job to continue supporting her family.

She read an announcement about the Mercy Corps training, and joined to learn new techniques and develop her skills. With the supplies she received as part of the training, Khamaeal was able to open a shop in her home, using one room as a beauty salon. She started with her close friends and neighbors as clients, and gradually became well-known in her neighborhood. Mercy Corps staff recently met with Khamaeal, about 10 months after she completed her training, and saw the success she’s had with her beauty salon.

This seemingly small project — and a very inexpensive one at that — will have a lasting impact on Khamaeal, her family, their livelihood and her community's small business development. Perhaps one day she will take the skills she's learned and put into practice and pass them along to other young women like herself.

According to Riane Eisler, the work of raising childern is devalued the world over. Photo: Mishimoto (flickr)

Unlearn economics. Forget GDPs and growth rates. Ignore financial institutions (and their crises). Rethink well-being and worth. What do you care about? What in your life holds the greatest value?

This is a good starting place for a conversation with Riane Eisler, author of the highly successful book "The Real Wealth of Nations," amongst others. She believes it is time for a practical critique of modern economics.

Eisler’s work in the fields of economics, women’s studies and social science has attracted a lot of attention. Some list her work beside great thinkers like Smith, Marx and Hegel. The book "Great Peacemakers" named her one of 20 subjects along with Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Theresa. This recognition is largely a result of her work on developing the ideas of a system of "caring economics." We caught up with Eisler this week to discuss just what a caring economy would look like and how it might change the way the world works.

Global Envision: What's wrong with modern economics?

Economics is the study of value, and for decades it has been assumed that value is measured mostly by money. If I value organic vegetables, I will be willing to spend more money for them. It should follow that if the government values organic vegetables, it would support the farmers that grow them. Economists devise ways to assess these values and attach number and formulas to quantify them: net worth, salary, gross domestic product. Flip to any news channel or radio station and you will hear endless debate about these figures as they rise and fall.

Eisler ignores this chatter.

“We have been stuck on a conservation that does not get to the core of the challenges we face,” she says. If economics is to be a measure of what we value and care about, why has it ignored raising infants, supporting families and nursing the elderly or infirmed? The constructs of caring extends beyond human relations and applies to the natural environment. But under both capitalism and communism, land is seen only as a source of profit. “An old stand of trees is only given value when it is chopped down," Eisler says. "And yet we need them standing to breathe.”

Economic measures have become divorced from the real values they were originally intended to quantify, Eisler argues. For her, this is no coincidence. "Economic systems don’t evolve in a vacuum," she says. "They are cultural constructs.” According to Eisler, the current system evolved in an environment where nature was exploited and so-called "women’s work" was devalued. Consider this: a women who stays at home and cooks, cleans, gardens, feeds, washes, and rears her three children for 16 hours a day contributes absolutely nothing to the GDP, a measure of a country's standard of living. Instead, the GDP values only income. This includes the cleanup of environmental disasters, the sale of cancer causing cigarettes, war operations and weapon manufacture.

GE: If GDP is a bad measure of value, what statistics should replace it?

Eisler was ready for this question. In a recent report commissioned by Center for Partnership Studies, Eisler helped to synthesize 14 categories with 79 indicators that more accurately measure well-being, including human rights ratings, the number of premature deaths from pollution, and access to health care, as well as more traditional measures of joblessness rates and average annual earnings.

Eisler also hinted that measuring mechanisms should be secondary to the values behind them.

GE: In past economic transformations, the people with the least have been first to lose their livelihoods.

Eisler assured me this would not be the case. “After all, the majority of poor are women and children and a major reason for this is that care-giving is given no value,” she said. To prove her point, she pointed to societies who have already taken steps to place a greater value on caring. Many Nordic countries, who always seem to score high on human development indices, provide extended paternity leave for both parents, offer universal health care, and support government-funded child support. But can low income countries afford such programs? Eisler acknowledged the challenges they would face but also reminded me of CCTs in Latin America, a government program that financially rewards mothers for taking their children to health checkups and primary school.

GE: With this week's massive spending cuts by an austere U.S. Congress, could the transition to "caring economics" happen here?

Eisler agrees the signs don’t look good but still remains hopeful. The way she sees it, creating an economic system that values the unpaid work of caring is an investment, not just an expenditure. In other words, the money spent now will be returned in future savings and revenues. And she has the scientific research to back her up. In her book, "The Real Wealth of Nations," she cites substantial evidence that private corporations have been able to realize savings and increase profits by taking care of their workers.

GE: It sounds like there's a lot of work to be done. What's the role for those of us without advanced degrees in economic theory?

Eisler's answer was surprising: Everything. She believes that interdisciplinary support outside the field of economics must begin valuing the work of caring. Gender equality, civil rights, environmental responsibility, access to quality education, the right to health care, and supporting families are all areas that work towards the goal of overriding the top-down, masculine-valued economic system currently in place.

“Change doesn’t happen quickly,” Eisler reminded me. “It can, but there are many steps that need to be taken.” Eisler is hoping to create a ground swelling grassroots movement that can champion such a transformation. Her foundation, the Center for Partnership Studies is making progress and inviting others to do the same. For example, the foundation offers an online training program where people from all over the world are able take leadership roles in the economic transformation. The next session begins this fall.

“The response to the online program has been wonderful,” Eisler said. But she also mentioned that with the size of this paradigm shift, “We will need more people.”

Eisler will speak on "The Power of Partnership: Towards a Caring Economics and Society" at 2 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 5, at Marylhurst University, just south of Portland, Ore. The event is free and open to the public. Questions above were edited for clarity.

Girls who lack access to sanitary pads may miss up to 40 days of school a year. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps.

In the United States, missing close to two months of school every year might get you expelled. For millions of women and girls in the developing world, it's a routine.

They lack access to something many modern women in the developed world probably take for granted: sanitary pads. Even when pads are locally available, many girls simply can’t afford them: UPI reports that in South Africa, a pack of 10 might cost $2. In many areas, that is more than a day’s worth of wages, according to North Carolina State University. Girls who don’t have access to pads during their period miss school due to embarrassment, fear of being teased and cultural taboos. Some try to use newspaper, old rags, or mud instead, methods that pose health risks and barely even work.

Many girls fall behind in school or drop out entirely as a result of this simple problem. For a variety of reasons, it’s one that’s not often discussed openly. So how do you solve a problem that no one wants to talk about? Fortunately, many businesses and organizations are looking for solutions.

At the same time that FemCare, a part of Procter & Gamble, sells Always-brand sanitary pads in U.S. supermarkets, it seeks to provide the same products to African schoolgirls. But the problem is thornier than you might expect. Beyond a simple lack of supplies, schools also often lack the facilities that allow girls to use feminine products in the first place. They need private spaces to change pads during the day and running water to wash their hands. To address this, FemCare built bathrooms and constructed water pipelines to schools, says the New York Times. They also provide disposal containers and have taught teachers how to incinerate the waste. Of course, there’s something in it for P&G, too: they hope that girls in Africa will become lifelong users of their products.

The problem has also inspired a great deal of innovation as individuals attempt to design new products that can be manufactured more cheaply and sustainably than name brands. Swedish university students used water hyacinth, an invasive species that chokes off Kenyan water routes, to create the Jani pad. In a double whammy, It’s both biodegradable and made from a seemingly endless resource that no one likes.

Starting in 2008, Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE) tried another tack: it designed a manufacturing process that anyone could replicate. Their award-winning approach makes pads from readily available materials like banana-stalk fibers, which are then processed on inexpensive machines that local people can purchase. Hopefully, SHE’s innovations will better enable people in developing nations to start their own businesses to manufacture the pads. This also lets the finished product be tailored to the needs of women and girls from diverse cultures.

Other projects are born from the creativity of local entrepreneurs. Makapads, invented by a university professor in Uganda, are made from papyrus and waste paper and produced on locally manufactured machines, reports IRIN.

Often, trying to solve a problem in the developing world is like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube. Each group toggles the pieces a bit differently. Hopefully, in the end, someone makes them all line up.

New organization Solar Sister is empowering women in rural Africa to star their own solar lamp businesses. Photo: IvanClow (flickr)

A new organization seeks to light up the night in rural Africa by putting a twist on an all-American idea: the Avon lady.

Night in rural Africa is a night much darker than that to which the developed world is accustomed, as many communities lack electricity. In rural Uganda, the number is as high as 95 percent, as Katherine Lucey told Dowser.org. Without electric light, people must rely upon kerosene lamps, which are expensive and belch toxic fumes.

These create a bevy of problems, especially for women. Girls are often expected to help with chores when they return home from school and don’t have time to do homework until after dark. Either they sit inhaling fumes and burning up cash with the family’s kerosene lamp, or in many cases, they simply don’t study at all. Solar lamps solve this problem by extending the work day.

For years, Africans have had a big problem with solar power: it breaks. In an interview with Dowser.org, Solar Sister founder, Katherine Lucey, said that in her previous work with a nonprofit, the solar systems they installed in rural areas had a 50 percent rate of failure after just one year. Traditional solar power can be a hard sell for poor communities — it saves money in the long run, but it's pricey at first, and many solar panels often fall apart over time due to improper maintenance. The new lamps that Solar Sister uses are small, portable, and don’t require technological know-how to use — you simply place the lamp outside during the day, it absorbs the sun’s rays, and when night falls you turn it on.

Solar Sister uses a microconsignment model, meaning that its entrepreneurs don’t pay for their lamps until they actually sell them. If they can’t sell the lamps or decide they don’t want to, they can return them to the organization without loosing any money. It’s a low-risk endeavor that has so far empowered 107 women in Uganda, Ghana, and Sudan. Normally, these women wouldn’t have had enough money to create a business.

The lamps range from $15 to $50 at first, a large investment for most families. But, an average family spends about $2 a week on kerosene, so a family could save up to $85 a year just by buying a lamp, says TriplePundit. Solar Sister estimates that its entrepreneurs can actually double their households’ incomes while decreasing their household expenses by 30 percent. Some of the lamps can even act as cell-phone chargers. Not only can women with these lamps charge their own family’s phones; they often bring in extra money by charging neighbors’ phones. Otherwise, they’re left to travel to nearby cities whenever a phone goes dead.

The women who participate in Solar Sister can seem pretty ecstatic about their new businesses, as you can see in this clip below of Viola, one of the women selling solar lamps in eastern Uganda.

Solar Sister currently operates in Uganda, Rwanda, and South Sudan, and hopes to shine a light on other parts of Africa soon.