About a year ago, I was having dinner with a colleague, where we were discussing our respective desires to put our dollars toward the best use possible. I mentioned that it was almost overwhelming, given the devastating number of causes in need, when my associated said to me, “Education for girls.”

It was then that my colleague began to list the myriad positive outcomes that result of greater education for girls. Women are more likely to share their knowledge and education, for example, and reinvest it back into their families and communities. The impacts I heard about over dinner that night, in fact, were almost exactly the same ones listed on the website for Le Dessein: A fashion label dedicated to access to education among girls in developing countries.

That ethos is due in large part to the story of Eric Coly, Le Dessein’s founder and CEO, and the inspiration he draws from the women of his lineage. His grandmother – in position unconventional for women from any country in the 1930s, let alone a suburb of Dakar – was a full-fledged working woman, as a pioneer of midwifery in the African city of Rufisque. That participation in the workforce set the tone for Coly’s mother, who grew up with what he calls, according to Le Dessin’s website, the “almost taboo notion that women had an irrevocable right to be educated.”

Coly’s mother, of course, has pursed that path and continued the sentiment of that right to education: With both her pharmacy studies and France, as well as the emphasis on education with which Coly and his siblings were raised, bringing his inspiration behind Le Dessein full circle: The hybrid of his passion for both the creative and philanthropic.

Today, Le Dessein donates 25 percent of all profits to tuition at the More Than Me Academy: An institution that looks to shift the common path of girls in Liberia from “exploitation and poverty” to, instead, “education and opportunity.” Moreover, the line’s clothing is embellished with art composed by the girls of the More Than Me Academy, such as the drawing found on this white turtleneck.

The clothing, too, is unconventional in its ability to break the pattern of stereotypical “do-gooder” fashion brands, in which lackluster pieces are just outshone by an admirable mission. Le Dessein, with is Fall/Winter line, uses bold material like leather and other dark fabrics to accomplish a visual edge, without cheapening the overall look. This maxi dress, for example, serves as a material Goldilocks of sexiness: With a dropped line that exposes the back, and not much else, it leaves just enough to the beholder’s imagination. What’s more: Le Dessein doesn’t seem to conform to physical stereotypes with the models in its lookbook, either. These are clothes that truly serve women, intellectually and aesthetically.

Simply put, it seems that Le Dessein produces clothing that one can wear proudly, between its story and its uniquely functional, yet nearly boundary-pushing pieces. Consider us educated.

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Image: Le Dessein Fall/Winter Lookbook

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Women don’t use their growing economic power to invest in socially responsible companies and causes to effect change.

As 50 percent of the workforce and decisionmakers for more than 85 percent of household spending, women are wielding more and more economic power every day. A 2009 survey indicated that women were the driving force behind most household charitable donations. However, Jackie Zehner, former Goldman Sachs partner, says that women don’t always put their economic power to drive social change by investing their money where it will make a difference.

According to Zehner, we target organizations that we feel will make a difference and we donate money or volunteer, but we don’t put the power of our money to work for others and ourselves.

As I considered my own staid investments and personally-motivated giving patterns, I realized that she was right. While I gave money to organizations that impacted my life or those of my loved ones, or causes I feel strongly about, my investments remained relatively anonymous and impersonal.

Now, you can make many more personal choices when investing. You can not only make a solid return, but invest in a cause or movement you feel passionate about. Recently there has been a rise in targeted investments for people who want to invest in green or socially beneficial companies or organizations.

I decided to try it out on a small scale. Kiva, an organization well-known for making microloans to small business owners in developing countries, many of them women, is now offering a category of green loans. In fact, after the recent media attention, Kiva’s green loans are so popular that they are funded extremely quickly.

I went to Kiva.org and reviewed the selection of green loans. Each requestor has a photo and a summary about them, their family, and their business. Humanizing my investment helped me be excited about the outcome of my gamble. Rather than having my 401k account purchase a small number of shares in Dell and several other companies along with thousands of other people, I can see real change with a small amount of money. Seeing individual stories reminded me that women business owners, no matter where they are located or what their product or service is, face similar challenges.

I liked Sergia’s profile. She owns her own home and lives with her partner, Daniel, and their two small children. She has worked diligently on her land for more than eight years to grow healthy crops to support her family and pay for her children’s education. Sergia walks an hour each way to sell her crops in a nearby city and makes a good profit. She is always looking for ways to improve her harvest and wants to buy more land and increase her output in the future. She has taken out eight previous loans and repaid each one on time. She is requesting this loan to buy animal manure to fertilize her crops and generate healthier produce.

Once I chose Sergia, I decided to invest twenty-five dollars. I reviewed Kiva’s field partner information and the transparent loan repayment information. Sergia has eight months to repay the loan. Once I am reimbursed, I can reloan the money to someone else, donate it to Kiva, or withdraw it via PayPal.

Along with my loan amount, Kiva adds an optional donation for operating costs to my cart (clever), which I decided to give. I checked out with just my loan to Sergia this time, but you could make several loans to different individuals if you choose.

Kiva notified me just hours after I made my loan that Sergia received all of the funding she requested. For the price of a hardcover book, I helped Sergia move that much closer to her goal of growing healthier and more abundant crops that will fetch her a better price at market. With her additional earnings, her family will be more secure and she can look toward purchasing more land and expanding in the future.

Each year, my donations also go toward helping people, but they only go as far as my checkbook or the amount of time I have to volunteer. At Kiva, once my initial loan is repaid, I could re-loan it to another small business owner, and another one after that in a cycle that could benefit many. Now, in my donations and investments, I can direct my funds where I want to make an impact. I can invest in other women-owned businesses, agricultural loans, housing, clean water, or other green initiatives.

Sometimes change comes about one small, helping hand at a time.

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Imagine a world without women. No, it’s not the tagline for some gloomy successor to Atwood’s feminist dystopia in The Handmaid’s Tale – it’s about us. We live in a world where women are dying, frequently, at ages above and beyond expected natural mortality rates. Women live longer and often healthier lives than men but only in Western societies. Elsewhere, that’s simply not the case. Throughout Asia and North Africa, women are in need of our help.

Indian economist Amartya Sen, writing in The New York Review of Books in 1990, called these women – all 100 million of them – the ‘missing women’.

Almost two decades later, the women are still dying. In fact, in  2005  the United Nations put the number of “˜missing women’ at 200 million or higher. And more recently, two researchers looking at population statistics, confirmed that the ratio of women to men in developing countries remains way below the norm.

More importantly, the researchers found that the “˜women’ were not dying, as previously assumed, in the first four years of life. Instead, the majority of the “˜missing women’ were much, much older.

One could argue that it’s simply a result of biological, social, environmental, behavioural, and economic factors. But, more likely, they died and are still dying because they live in a world where they are totally undervalued. A world where they often have unequal access (as compared to men) to medical care, food,  or social services. A world where, to many, it’s acceptable to neglect, abuse, and attack women – emotionally, physically, and sexually.  A world where gang rape of children is rampant.

In this day and age, it’s hard to comprehend that this form of gender discrimination still happens. But, sadly, it does.

Images: babasteve

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