Nathaly

Nathaly Figueroa 01/29/09  Internship Reflection Due to the snow day on Wednesday and some stomach bug we were not able to set up transportation to get to the Project Health y Children Thursday morning. Luckily, last week before leaving we got a CD that had a copy of the huge powerpoint and some of the articles that we had gone through and marked. So today we went to school and continued to do the same work. We finished going through the articles and categorizing important facts, then on the powerpoint we made new slides and put in the information form the articles. We still have the list of organizations that we have to go through and find their information so we continued to work on that. One thing that I learned today was that the huge powerpoint was centered around five subjects; vitamin a, iron, iodine, zinc, and folic acid; and this shocked me because there was so much information on the high mortality when there was a deficiency in ay of these five things. It shocked me the amount of information we have on the subject and yet what little is being done, aside from my time at Project Healthy Children, I never hear anything about malnutrition being a huge problem. I think that when we finish both of these projects we will have helped a lot.

Nathaly Figueroa 02/13/09

Internship reflection This week when we went to Project Healthy Children we each had our own computers again so we could get more work done. This time we decided that we would all work on geting the information of different organizations together. We continued our work but we are still not done. The atmosphere in the office is very nice because if we need any help Alicia is there and we are trusted to do our work. I think that the profiles for the organizations will be very helpful because we are gathering alot of information.

Nathaly Figueroa Letter to the president about microloans Dear Barack Obama, In the world today we must think of ourselves as global citizens and realize that the problems of people thousands of miles away still affect us. This is why we can not ignore the problems in Africa. With women having no power in society and having to take care of their children it is impossible for us to be bystanders and not give a helping hand. That’s what microloaning does, as I’m sure you already know microloans are small loans that are made to women entrepreneurs who then use that money to grow their business thus making them more able to sustain a higher quality of life, and then pay back the loan. This is a great way to empower women since they are the ones who are responsible for paying back the loan they must also take charge of their business. Some people see microlending as charity but I see it as a helping hand because the people are responsible for paying back and a great majority of the time they do. The small loan is great but it does have its down sides. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur, especially if the people around are not economically stable then they will have nothing to buy their goods with. This where the real problem is, in not just addressing the needs of the individual but in fixing the system as a whole. True, the United States isn’t in charge of fixing other countries’ issues but it is its job to make sure that no one, no matter in what country has enough to live with. Mr. Moyer is right when he says that it doesn’t help to either give huge amounts of money to the government and let them fix it, or to give many small loans to individuals. The solution is to give medium sized loans so that a sustainable company can exist and provide work for as many people as possible. We need to make it so that microloans become more popular among people because they have been proven very successful. But they would be even more successful if lenders came together and gave medium sized proportions so that the new jobs could be made. With the United States being one of the richest countries in the world more, it would only make sense to advertise this new form of giving because if people see that they can have a connection with the people they help it would be a great success. You would be helping everyone realize their duty as global citizens. Sincerely,

Nathaly Figueroa
Nathaly Figueroa 02/19/09

Internship reflection This was our last week at Project Healthy Children and sadly there were only two of us because Simona wass very sick, but now she is feeling better. Steph and I teamed up and worked on finishing the article information that we made into slides. We got alot of information down and continued to learn about malnutrition and specific vitamin deficiencies. We finished our work and Alicia was very grateful. I think that Project Healthy Children does a great job and I hope that the work we did will help them find information more easily so that they will be able to get more work done. This internship was very interesting and fun.