In a nutshell, the “Untouchables” are seen as less than human and are segregated from rest of the population. According to the website “They and the caste poor depend on dominant caste people for their livelihoods, struggling daily in slave-like conditions, poverty and hunger.” As you might expect women have a harder time than men and children often have to leave school to find work.

The Leadforward program educates children and gives them leadership training so that they can help their community break out of the cycle of discrimination and poverty. The program follows the theory that education is the key to empowerment of and progress toward a just society. Leadforward feels the education of women is particularly important, so more than half of their students are girls. “To educate a woman is to educate a family.”

Leadforward screens potential students and sponsors their education (starting in the six grade when they are old enough to leave home).About three-fourths of the Leadforward students stand in the top quarter of their classes, with many in the top ten and a surprising number first in their class. Leadforward intends to support their students through college and have graduated about fifty. They currently have 24 in college and expect to have as many as sixty college students two years from now. Obtaining that level of support will be a great challenge for the program.

If you want to know more about the organization here is the link to the website http://leadforwardinc.org/1701.html. If you would like to follow the adventures of an actual volunteer for the organization living and working in southern India here is a link to my niece’s blog http://leadforwardinc.blogspot.com/

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Well, I don’t think I give enough, so first I decided to make a page telling visitors which merchants they could buy products from who donated a portion of their earnings to charity. The trouble is, I didn’t find that many online merchants who had an offer, though there are plenty of charities or non-profit organizations that run online stores. Anyway, you can click here to visit my Online Charity Merchant Page.

I run several websites and blogs, and I do it pretty much to benefit…me. But I’m comfortable. The online world has been good to me. Since I can assign tracking codes so I know which websites purchases come from, I decided to contribute 25% of my pay to charity when a sale or transaction originates on WomanWork.Net. I may change the amount – and I will post and tell you – depending upon how it goes.

See, workingwoman.net is sort of a self-indulgent blog for me. It is not related to my main area of expertise. As such, it is the one operation I don’t really run like a business, and so it isn’t even paying for it’s own hosting …. yet. When it gets to the point where it pays for itself, then I will probably decide to have it direct a larger percentage to charity.

See that article that Time Magazine published about YOU (and ME) being the person of the year really struck a nerve! But that was the subject of another post! Go look for it.

If you have suggestions for worthwhile online merchants who donate to charity, please comment, and I’ll check them out. If I think they are ‘real’, I’ll add them to the page.