Author Unknown
Good times are even better when they're shared.
A good, long talk can cure anything.
Listening is just as important as talking.
Everyone needs someone with whom to share their secrets.
Laughter makes the world a happier place.
Sometimes you just need a shoulder to cry on.
Great minds think alike.
You are NEVER to old for slumber parties!
Girls just want to have fun!
It's important to make time to do "girl things".
An understanding friend is better than a therapist, and cheaper too!
Gems may be precious, but friendship is priceless!
"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words." -Author Unknown
I am so grateful for all of my friends and all the different roles they play in helping me through this thing called life. I always get these cheesy chain-emails about friends and sometimes I just delete them, but sometimes they hit the nail on the head, because friends do make life sweeter, the hard times more bearable and fill in the voids that we all experience at some point or another. So THANK YOU to all of my friends - for your support, your honesty, your compliments, your advice, your laughter, your listening ear, your patience, your service, your acceptance and your love.
The idea of "friends" is a universal concept. Women all over the world have and need these relationships. In certain settings it has become, literally, life-saving. There is a method of poverty alleviation, called microcredit, that has taken hold in developing countries that allows the very, very poor to borrow money through a system based on solidarity lending. Most of the recipients of microcredit are women living on less than a dollar a day, and because they lack collateral, steady employment or any sort of credit history, they generally cannot get a loan from a traditional bank. Microcredit is one of the few things that has revolutionized they way we help the poor and changed millions of lives. Money is given to and managed by "village banks" or "solidarity groups" and they are responsible to each other for repayment. All the women in the group become the "collateral" for each individual who has recieved a loan - if she can't repay it or can't make her payment that month, it is covered by the group.
It is obviously much more complicated than I can describe here, but it has revolutionized they way we are fighting poverty around the world. The founder of Grameen bank and the genius behind this concept, Muhammad Yunus, recently won a Nobel Peace Prize for his decades of work. Now there are hundreds of organizations that are involved in microcredit, microfinance, microlending, microentrepreneurship, etc - and they are doing AMAZING things. They are changing lives and breaking the cycle of generations of poverty and hopelessness.
Pause the music a minute and see for yourself how this can empower people.
Look at the pride in their eyes and the happiness in each of their faces!
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