by Marianne Taflinger
- USA -

In Sweden, a doctor delivers Sari, and her family celebrates what will be the beginning of a long life, probably 83 years or more. She’ll attend at least 17 years of school and if she chooses to have children, they’ll be born when she wants them to be born, thanks to convenient and cheap contraceptives. If she has a baby, she’ll take off 15 weeks of work and still earn 80% of her salary. Sari is virtually guaranteed to make it to age 5 without any health complications and enroll in secondary school. Swedish society provides great health care and education that eases both mothers’ and girls’ lives.

By contrast, Adame will live a far more perilous life. Having been born in Niger, she has a high probability of dying before age 5. Like two thirds of all children born in Niger, no “skilled birth attendant” was present at her delivery. It’s likely that Adame will attend only 3 grades in school, and that she will die by age 45, living a life half as long than if she had been born in Sweden. Adame’s mother is practically guaranteed to lose at least one child and has a nine out of ten probability that she will lose 2 children in her lifetime. Due to the lack of contraception, Adame will likely have more siblings than her family can afford. And there’s a strong chance that Adame will suffer from malnutrition and lack a sufficient supply of water.

by Marianne Taflinger
Intern, The WIP
USA

• A woman and her children on the banks of Lake Atitlán in the highlands of Guatemala. Photograph courtesy of Bruno Girin •

So how do you change your own life and the lives in your community? Enter TechnoServe, a nonprofit dedicated to creating business solutions to rural poverty. TechnoServe‘s answer is to give hundreds of aspiring entrepreneurs a hand up. It helps them develop businesses that will lift their entire community out of poverty. But how do you find, encourage and develop such entrepreneurial talents? In 2005, TechnoServe sponsored Idea Tu Empresa, a national business competition supported by the Guatemalan government and USAID, the official development arm of the United States.

by Marianne Taflinger
USA

When Iqbal Quadir’s computer crashed one day, he flashed back to his time in Bangladesh when he went out walking to find a pharmacist, only to find the pharmacist out walking to find medicine. In that flash, he realized that “connectivity is productivity,”—if you cannot connect, you cannot be productive, no matter where you are, or what your circumstances might be.

Quadir and his partners built this business in Bangladesh where the per capita GDP is $415, or the equivalent of $1,197 dollars a year in purchasing power. 83% of the population lives on less than $2 a day, and electricity is virtually nonexistent outside of the capital city. In 2005, the Bangladesh government was tied for last place with Chad in central Africa on international corruption. You could say it’s “top of the list” on perception of corruption when viewed by the foreign business community.

by Marianne Taflinger
Intern, The WIP
- USA -

• Photograph by Chad Johnson •

As a child, I was a blond, blue-eyed little girl in a small Southern Indiana town where my father was the itinerant principal of both the elementary school and the middle school. As the principal's child, I was far more visible than I’d ever wanted to be, with over 100 kids informing when “Mr. Taflinger is in the building,” or “Your dad is here,” all day long. On my first day of school, it was my photo that appeared in the newspaper, accepting a textbook from my mother, and it was more likely my father's status of principal, rather than my status as a blond that caused me to be the one chosen over any of the other children in my class.