THE LAB

by Kristin Norris

Hello! Let’s begin this tall tale with a brief introduction, so that the voice of this article will no longer be ‘Arbitrary e-Voice’ but something with a bit more varied cadence and life. Here we go:

I’m Kristin Norris. I started at RVL a few glorious months ago to help out with some of the graphic and web design work (look for an awesome new site look in the New Year! …totally shameless plug…) For now, I actually think that’s about all the background you need to know for the purpose of this article.

Starting a new design project is both a daunting and invigorating process, particularly if it’s for a company in a field I’m relatively uninformed about. I like to step into the shoes of the researcher, learn what inspires the people who are involved in the company, both from the producer and the consumer end, to be involved. What about this company’s mission and business speaks to them?

Recently at RVL we started on a new project with a microfinance company, and being that it’s what I do, I was put in charge of the web design. For the sake of honesty, I’m just going to say it: I googled microfinance.

Not a big deal, I learned a lot about the process pretty quickly and the different levels of investment and types of loans, etc. I even read some really awesome clips about entrepreneurs in other countries that were able to turn their lives around with the opportunities microfinancing offered.

What really snagged me though was a book that wasn’t about microfinancing at all, oddly enough. I was reading “Three Cups of Tea,” which is the story of a climber who, after failing to summit K2 in Pakistan, gets lost on the way down, finds himself in a tiny village that’s not on any map, and discovers the extreme poverty and lack of education there that goes unnoticed by the rest of the developed world. He is inspired by the dedication of the children who, without a building to study in or a teacher to be there to guide them full time, sit out in the snow day after day and teach each other what they can. He makes a promise right there in the snow to the head of the village that he will be back to build a school for them.

In an effort to keep this blog article within readability limits, I’m only going to give you the brief play by play of what happens next. Greg Mortenson (the climber) returns to the US with no money, no home, and not a whole lot of a job, but manages eventually to raise enough money to fund the building of a school in Pakistan. One school turns into hundreds over the years and a promise turns into a lifelong mission.

This is all well and good and inspiring, but to tell the truth, it’s all been background up till now. Here comes the point:

Mortenson put in the extra effort to build opportunities specifically geared toward empowering women. On one of his yearly returns to the first remote village, the first girl to graduate from that first school walked straight into a business meeting with all the village elders and addresses Mortenson. She demands that he keep his promise to her to help her see her dreams to fulfillment. She hands him a written proposal for how much it would cost for her to move to the closest city and attend the next level of school to become a doctor. She refuses to wait for Mortenson to talk to her father. Never before this day would a girl of 17 in that culture have been able to say those things. Let’s be honest, I don’t know that I could walk into that room and say that.

Fast forward to the end of her secondary school and she tells Mortenson that her dream has grown to moving back to her village, opening up a clinic that will also empower the other women and girls to become more educated, become famous for offering these opportunities in her region and basically become a Super Lady.

Now, I don’t want to say that we necessarily take advantage of so many opportunities here in the US, but I think it’s fair to say that, for us, opportunities are always just around the corner. Sure there’s a risk that if we don’t snatch this one up then someone else will, but there’s also a distinct awareness that if we miss this one, there will be another.

They don’t have that luxury in many other parts of the world.

This wasn’t a book about microfinance, but it was a book about empowerment and the tenfold affect that extending an opportunity to one person can have on an entire community. That is the spirit of microfinance.

I don’t care to be a doctor, I don’t care to open a clinic or become famous for my good deeds, but I do want to be a Super Lady. I want to empower people with the opportunity to get themselves out of poverty, so they can turn around and reach out a hand to the person behind them.

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