No Time For Hate, Bigger Things Need Our Attention

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Katie Meyler

Yesterday, Jacob posted about some of the hard facts in Liberia. They come straight from the Liberian Government, along with the UN and USAID. It is unbelievable that people are alive in these conditions and the world allows it. Not to be dramatic, but we NEVER EVER have the right to feel sorry for ourselves. If I ever complain a day in my life, please email me, write on my wall, call me. Tell me to shut up and get back to work.

I’m sitting at a table in a vegan restaurant after eating a bagel and drinking coffee. I have to stop to appreciate the road I drove on to get here. When I get dressed in the a.m., I don’t think about how privileged I am to choose what color I want to wear. I take brushing my teeth for granted. I look in the mirror and I am sometimes grossed out by my acne. Thinking about it now, it’s a privilege to have a mirror. The Liberians we work with don’t have mirrors. They like to see photos of themselves not because they are vain, but because it is one of the few times they get to see what they look like, to share their image.

As you read in the previous post, one of our girls was raped last week. I want to scream at the top of my lungs. Every time I think about this I want to yell. No matter how much we do, we can only do so much. These girls are not protected the way that you and I are- by police, the law, and neighbors. It makes me want to vomit.

We are working toward an after-school building. It sounds corny, but this will make as much of a difference in their lives as an education. We want to teach them everything- math, science, reading, health education, and more- so they can protect themselves and escape the hell they have no choice but to live in.

It’s absolute insanity and intolerable that this kind of extreme poverty still exists with all of the technology, intelligence, and research we have. It must stop. It is a slow genocide.

Please do me a favor today and kiss the ground you walk on. Get over whatever stupid judgment you have about yourself and those around you. Love everyone you can, even if you don’t like them. There is no room for hate. It is time to be radical. It is time to reject pettiness. There is no time for bullshit. Bigger things need our attention.

Rape is horrific. Try to imagine what it takes for a little girl to get raped. We can’t understand what it is like for this girl, but we can understand the failures that led to her losing her childhood. Keep her in your head when the neurons in your brain take your thoughts anywhere but to gratitude.

Now, let’s get back to work.

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The Stories Behind the Statistics

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Jacob Patterson-Stein

I like data. I want to have numbers to back up the things I see and the assumptions I hear. If you have ever heard Katie speak, you have seen how real, emotional, and moving the stories of girls in Liberia are. Still, one story is not necessarily a trend.

Over the weekend, I spent a lot of time reading through reports issued by a few large NGOs, as well as the Liberian Government. These reports are dry. They provide numbers and statistics and coolly rehash Liberia’s tumultuous history. The stats help paint a big picture of what life is like in Liberia, but despite my yearning for data, I found that there is only so much you can fit into a spread sheet.  The stories we have heard and the things our girls have experienced on the ground help fill the charts and survey data with a little humanity.

The figures I found are striking, but the way they play out in everyday life is the reason More than Me exists.

An estimated 447,000, or 73%, of primary-aged children are out of school in post-conflict Liberia. – UNESCO

Liberia suffered 14 years of civil war. Even before the war it was struggling with inflation, a weak economy, fragility, and corruption. The country is not being rebuilt; it is basically being built for the first time. In all of the reports I read, the large number of unemployed youth, many of whom have never been to school, is cited as a recipe for a return to civil strife. Liberia is a young country. One study I read found that 50% of Liberia’s population is age 14 or younger, with 75% of the population under 35, and a median age of 18. In West Point, where More than Me works, there are children everywhere. None of them are in school. We are changing the lives of girls like Morisline, who is first in her class, but whose parents cannot afford the fees for school. Sadly though, children are spending their formative years selling peanuts or cooking with their aunties. Just a few years of schooling has shown to make a huge difference in the life of a girl. She will have children later, have better job opportunities, and be less likely to contract preventable diseases. Liberia has a long way to go, but civil crisis has dissolved and left an education crisis. If a handful of girls are able to break the cycle it will reverberate through the community and, hopefully, help renew the country.

According police statistics, rape, often of girls between the ages of 10-14 is the highest reported crime. – USAID

We received a letter from Macintosh, one of our staff on the ground. A girl in our program, a girl who is only 10, was raped two days ago. This is insane. The above statistic is troubling; the email from Macintosh is horrifying.  None of this is unique. There are a lot of reasons why rape is so common, too many to go through in a blog post. Think about this:  there was no parent or guardian looking out for her, her friends were not around or could not do anything about it, and the perpetrator had to feel like he could get away with it and that raping a child was O.K.

Education will not stop people from taking advantage of vulnerable children. Education will change things in the long term and it does provide safe place in the short term. It boosts confidence, increases awareness, and builds social networks through friendship and mutual understanding. Our girls benefit when they have a safe place to go once a day and people who are expecting them to be places.  We can’t stop every attack or make sure our girls are out of harm’s way 24 hours a day, but we are doing our best and when incidents do happen school provides a secure place to report, talk, and seek refuge.

Only 22% of public and community schools had seats. There is a 300:1 ratio of classrooms in good condition. – 2008 Republic of Liberia report

We send the girls in our program to private school because we can track their progress easier, communicate with the principal and teachers on a daily basis, and we know that they will have the supplies they need for learning. Still, this statistic- we are talking about seats here, not computers or chalkboards or anything else you might expect to find in a school- highlights the barriers to learning that have nothing to do with the girls we help. Many of our scholarship recipients show up to school without food in their stomachs (another stat I read said that most families below the poverty line cannot afford more than one meal a day), many do not have access to running water or a real toilet, and several do not have a regular place to sleep. We want all of our girls to do well in school, but it is no surprise when we receive reports from our field staff that a girl is having trouble in class. Our rec program in West Point, our school lunch program, and the regular visits our staff make to each child’s home are just a few ways we are trying to make sure our girls have the best chance of reaching their potential. Success might not mean straight A’s. Sometimes, it just means being able to sit, learn, and grow in a way that beats the odds.

These are just a few facts. The more we learn, the more we learn what we have to do. We are also learning how to better serve our girls in Liberia. It is one thing to read enrollment numbers. It is another to understand how this plays out when you are the first girl in your area to learn to read. Thanks to your help, we can share their stories and fill the numbers in with real details.

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If I Were a Ten Year Old Female Prostitute in a Country Shattered by War

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Jacob Patterson-Stein

Abigail showing off her report card

Wow. What a title.

If you spent much time on Twitter or “the blogs” this week, you likely came across mention of Gene Marks’ provocative Forbes column, “If I Was a Poor Black Kid.” Plenty of people have weighed in on Marks’ page-hit driving piece, in which he imagines that if he were poor and black he would study hard and use technology to get ahead, and, frankly, this blog is not the place to add to the criticism of Marks’ Münchausen thought experiment.

The eye-roll inducing, here-we-go-again title of the Forbes piece at least got people talking about poverty and education. Lots of people. Still, after reading the column, I thought, “what does Marks think kids in Liberia should do?” Ok, that was probably the fifth or sixth thought I had after reading it, but still. How does the way we think about poverty affect the way we think about development?

It does not seem constructive to compare opportunities in the U.S. to opportunities for girls in Liberia. The context, even for the poorest of the poor, in both places is so different. The problems girls in Liberia face, and the problems facing Liberia, are different. However, the main criticism against Marks (as I see it) is that he misses the bigger picture. Education is just one of many pieces that have to fall into place for children to reach their full potential.

The girls we work with in Liberia would not be in school without a scholarship from More than Me. But schooling is just one of the many things they need. If they don’t receive positive reinforcement, have some stability in their lives, and at least one decent meal each day, knowing how to read and write will only help them so much. For these reasons, More than Me organizes weekly sports activities on the beach in West Point; we make sure our field staff make regular visits to all 100 homes; and it is why we created a school lunch program.

Playing in West Point

Liberia is the world’s fourth poorest country. West Point, where the girls in our program live, is one of the poorest slums in Liberia. Some of the students are at the top of their class. All of them are learning. None of them would be in a classroom without your support. I would never write off any of the children in our program, but I also know that it is doubtful that we are going to produce 100 doctors or engineers. This doesn’t mean I’m not hopeful. All the cynicism in the world could not stand-up to the smiles, intelligence, and energy of the girls we have in school.

In light of huge, complicated issues, success can mean making things simpler. We hope that the girls in our program will be able to take hold of their lives, gain skills so that they will not be taken advantage of, and, yes, learn how to read and write. We hope they will master the skills they learn, open businesses, have children later in life, lead healthy lives, and do well for themselves and their community. You don’t have to put yourself in anyone else’s shoes to know that going from being on the street to being in the classroom is a good thing for a child. What More than Me has learned though, is that is just one part of the process.

 

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Notes from the Field: Meeting Mercy

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Katie Meyler

Mercy

Yesterday, was one of the best days of my life. I went with Macintosh to the bank to get money for our kid’s school lunches for the week and we decided to stop by one our student’s homes. Princess lives behind the bank with friends of relatives. We were walking back to the main road when, for the first time, I noticed a tall-ransacked building with bright laundry hanging and children laughing with tons of families living on every floor. I pointed it out to Macintosh, he took some pictures while I headed toward the building.

I met Mercy. She is seven years old and has cerebral palsy. I held her close. I asked her grandmother if I could go inside their home, and she brought me through a curtain in a pitch-black moist room that reeked of mold. I held a lit candle and could see the ceiling was caving. I fought to silence the voices and emotions that were at battle inside my head- I wanted to be fully present with the grandmother and her daughter. I wanted to cry, but for what? This was their life. Were they happy? They laughed. They smiled. They seemed happy. Were they mad at their government, at humanity for letting them suffer like this? Did the grandmother need to blame anyone? All of these questions were running through my head. They were just living their lives one day at a time together.

I had to keep on walking to meet more families. A guy about my age took Macintosh, Princess, and me up the broken stairs of what he told us was an old hospital that had been destroyed in the war. I was really scared the stairs would collapse as we walked. The people we met were happy to see me, and invited me into the rooms that they had made into homes. The building was full of bullet holes, and the families told me the biggest problem was that the roof leaked and the rooms would fill up with water. Monrovia is the second wettest capital in the world and it rains almost every day for at least half the year, mold was everywhere.

I love walking the streets looking at all the cool stuff that Americans throw away that end up for the sale in the market here. I like the chaos, the sun, the street food, I like the smiles of the beggars and even the aggressive business’ women. I bought a new winter hat for a dollar; Princess got a new outfit too.

The day went on as we weaved in and out of the narrow tins shacks in an area that is notoriously dangerous, but a place where I feel most at peace inside myself. Some of our children’s parents are the pimps and the gangsters and they watch out for me. Now that we have 100 students in a place where words spread like poison ivy people know the crazy white girl, her friends, and her camera are there because they love children.

The sun was going down and I saw people crowded around a candle weeping, someone’s new born baby died.

I try my hardest to feel what people feel. I wonder how life would be if I owned nothing but the shirt filled with holes on my back. If my mom or sister was sick and I was powerless to help them because we lived on less than a dollar a day, which we sweat in the hot sun laboring to fight for. Would I be able to love as loud as these people do? Would I have half the resilience, peace and joy?

In the face of big problems, the real joys in life seem simple. They are all around, sometimes in places you would never expect. Why do we make it so complicated?

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World AIDS Day and Education

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Jacob Patterson-Stein

World AIDS Day

Today is World AIDS Day, a day to raise global awareness about an epidemic that strikes millions of people worldwide. More than 1,000 babies are born with HIV every day. The UN reports that there has been some progress in combating HIV and AIDS, but in 2010 there were still 1.8 million AIDS-related deaths. According to the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS, 75 percent of young people in Africa living with HIV are female.

While the costs for treatment have fallen from about $1110 in 2004 to around $335 today, activists have noted that this is still too expensive for people and governments in the developing world.

There is one way to easily invest in prevention. Yep, you probably guessed it, education. Specifically, girls education. Educated girls are more likely to get tested and take measures to prevent HIV/AIDS. Additionally, education provides girls with literacy skills that can help them seek treatment and find resources for themselves and others. A recent UNICEF paper noted that, “Women constitute the majority of the world’s poorest. Their lack of access to life skills-based education, economic resources and opportunities deem them vulnerable to infection.”

Food security, safety, exploitation, and domestic instability are part of the everyday world for the children More than Me helps. Some of our girls have admitted to selling themselves because they needed money for food. Many of the children in our program have illiterate parents, or guardians that struggle to provide the barest of necessities. We don’t have all of the answers. The way our students shine in everything they do is amazing when you consider the problems they face. By focusing on education, we hope that we can give them the skills to succeed despite the odds.

World AIDS Day is a great opportunity to learn. Education doesn’t just mean sending girls to school. Share this infographic. Check out the World AIDS Day website. Volunteer with a local testing center. Ask how you can get involved. Knowledge is power. Global awareness campaigns are a good time to remember that despite all of our differences, we all share the same space.

World AIDS Day

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One Contest, Three Years, and a World of Difference

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Jacob Patterson-Stein

You did it. You wrote your friends. You posted links. You emailed family members. You chatted with strangers. You danced in the streets. You wrote songs. You told stories. You brought a distant place onto the computer screens of thousands (thousands!) of people. You helped girls get off the street. You put girls in school for a guaranteed three years. You won $25,000 for girls’ education in the CHASE community giving contest.

More Than Me – Abigail’s Story from What Took You So Long? on Vimeo.

Katie and More than Me gained some great press, such as this post from the ONE campaign:
a girl from New Jersey -– Katie Meyler -– met Elizabeth, and founded an organization called More Than Me. Katie moved to Liberia after 14 years of civil war destroyed much of Liberia’s economy, and killed approximately 250,000 people. Many of the orphaned children Katie met had few options, and none of them was a quality education. Since then, More Than Me has grown to support scholarships for more than 100 children in Liberia.

And there were also loads of hilarious, moving, and sincere photos, status updates, and tweets.

We cannot thank you enough. The $25,000 we won from CHASE will fund three more years of schooling for 25 girls.

If you just found out about More than Me in the last few weeks, please stay in touch. We are always looking for more people to get involved and help. For those who remember our first online contest and were up at 3AM messaging people, thanks for the amazing ride and buckle up for more. We still have a lot of work to do. For now, though, we are happy knowing that our girls can continue their education. In a place where most people cannot read or write, three years is a world of difference.

We did it.

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Change the World in 40 Seconds

Posted on November 17, 2011 by Jacob Patterson-Stein

More Than Me works in the 4th poorest country in the world: Liberia. It’s an amazing place full of beauty, vibrant colors, electric smiles, but the majority of people are living on a dollar a day, and just trying to survive. More than Me helps little girls get off the street and into school, many for the first time, and some that have turned to prostitution as a means to provide for themselves and their families.

More Than Me is in a HUGE contest, competing for $250k, which would help 100 girls get off the street and into school for seven years with food and health care. Vote and share on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and send out this link to your email lists. Your vote literally will change a life. Not for us, but for her.

We need YOU to vote to change a life. Click here:
Chase Community Giving

More Than Me from What Took You So Long? on Vimeo.

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to change a life. In fact, it only takes a few clicks.

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Katie’s Story, Our Story, and Why You Need to Vote

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Jacob Patterson-Stein

In the last week, More than Me has gone from number 11 out of 100s of groups in the CHASE Community Giving Facebook contest to number eight. It is amazing to see so many people inspired by the prospect of sharing the gift of education. It is incredible to see so many people come together for a common cause that will really change lives. With only a week left to vote, we are hoping to break into the top five, and from there to number one!

More than Me’s Founder, Katie, made this video:

It tells her story, but I think it also highlights a key point.

I have talked with people (and by talked I mean tweeted, messaged, gchatted with, and, yes, sometimes actually called or conversed face to face) about why they have or haven’t voted. For the people who have voted, the reasons are numerous, uplifting, and, sometimes, funny. When I asked people why they haven’t voted, most seem to have a hard time with the CHASE Facebook page.

“It just seems weird to approve the CHASE app.”
“I don’t want another thing clogging up my Facebook feed.”
“I don’t really care about CHASE, so why should I Like their page?”

These all seem like reasonable excuses. Personally, I am indifferent to CHASE. As far as I can tell, they haven’t stolen any of my info or signed me up for a high interest rate credit card. My Facebook News Feed is still filled with pictures and updates from friends and their cats/lunches/weekends.

In the video, Katie explains why More than Me is “More than Me:” a friend says that helping people, helping girls go to school, helping decrease HIV rates, early pregnancy, childhood fatalities, and increase opportunity is about more than just one person. The same goes for the CHASE contest. Maybe CHASE is not your favorite, maybe you don’t really like Facebook, or maybe you don’t want worry about another page tracking your clicking habits.

You can remove the CHASE page after the contest or select not to receive updates the involve the contest or bank. More importantly, this is a chance to share something worthwhile and significant. It is not often that we can put our Facebook “likes” and messages to constructive use. It is not often that we can call up old friends and tell them that they can change a girl’s life, and open opportunities for her that will have an immediate effect on her, her family, and her community.

If you have questions about voting, contact us. Post in the comments, write on our wall, send us a tweet.

Please vote. The CHASE first prize is just in sight. The ultimate aim has been visible all along.
Chase Community Giving
Click the button to vote!

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Change Your Profile Picture, Change A Life

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Jacob Patterson-Stein

If you have been on our Facebook page in the past week, you probably have noticed the onslaught of posts about the CHASE Community Giving contest. More than Me is competing against hundreds of other organizations for a share of three million dollars. We are spreading the word and gaining momentum.

To help bring attention to both our girls and the Community Giving contest, we are asking supporters to change their Facebook profile picture to this photo:

Make this your Facebook photo to help gain votes!


It is amazing to see new votes popping up, but we still have work to do. So, if you haven’t voted already now is the time.

Voting is easy, just click this button:
Chase Community Giving

Change your profile picture, post on friends’ walls, and send out some tweets. This kind of collective action is what has made More than Me the organization it is today. Keep up the good work. Change your profile picture, change a life.

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We Can Do This- Vote to Change Lives

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Jacob Patterson-Stein

More than Me needs you. We have managed to grow and expand over the last three years thanks to your donations and your votes in past contests, but this is a game changer.

We are competing against hundreds of other organizations for a share in three million dollars from CHASE bank.

Chase is giving:
1 organization $250,000k
4 organizations $100,000
25 organizations $25,000.

This will not only change our organization for the better, but will also have an immediate and direct effect in the lives of our girls in Liberia.

How you can help:
Go to Facebook anytime from November 8th – 21st.
To Vote all you have to do is click on this button:
Chase Community Giving

Next, just “Allow” the CHASE application (It is legit, don’t worry). After you accept the application, “Like” the CHASE community giving Facebook page

Now, all you have to do is click “VOTE.”

So spread the word and let’s make a difference! If you have any place of worship, youth group, community center, high school, university, or workplace to spread the word, please do it. Sometimes, doing the things we do everyday, like going on Facebook, can change the world.

Donate more than a click
From November 8th to the 21 post this as your Facebook status:
I just voted to help girls get off the street and into school. Big changes can come from just a few clicks. http://morethanme.org/blog/we-can-do-this-vote-to-change-lives/

Send out a tweet:
Fact: Millions of girls don’t go to school You can make a difference! Vote 4 @morethanmeorg in #chasegiving http://goo.gl/vEYJR

We can do this together. 100 girls off the street and into school for at least seven years, complete with school lunches, a rec program, and mentoring.

Let’s do this.

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