Did you know that a key indicator of whether or not our children will be educated, grow up healthy and hopefully poverty-free is directly related to what a mother’s socio-economic status is?

Think about that as it relates to you, your peers, and your community and how improving technology can make an impact on us all. In developing countries, women don’t have easy access to technology; in fact, they are far behind men in using technologies we take for granted like the Internet, mobile phones and even the radio. It’s estimated that just 22% of women in Asia, 25% of women in Africa, 38% of women in Latin America and only 6% of women in the Middle East use the Internet. This lack of access negatively impacts a woman’s ability to access information about how to better themselves – and their family.

Many countries are short-sighted and don’t view a woman’s ability to work in areas other than “at home” as being essential to the overall economic growth of their community, region, or country. However, there are many studies that have found when giving a woman more control over her household/farm, she can increase the farm yields by 20% and by eliminating occupational/wage discrimination against women the GDP increases by 9% resulting in a lower poverty level and healthier families.

Did you know that the category “technological capabilities” is one of the five categories that Goldman Sachs uses in their Growth Environment Score (GES) to measure the economic growth for 181 countries? In simple terms: the higher the adoption rate of technology by a country, the faster that country could reduce its poverty level.

Recently, I saw a tweet by @StovesforRwanda referencing how any sized donation could help go towards a stove for a Rwandan woman. In my mind, I wondered how much it would cost and how they would fuel it (thinking of my nice new gas stove) and was by this high school senior, Spencer Brodsky, who was promoting  a program to help supply “fuel-efficient stoves” that could be purchased for as little as $30 each. (FYI: Spencer has raised $7,000 which purchased 233 stoves!) Spencer has also raised funds for stoves for Darfur and has been fundraising for tents for families in Haiti. (I am proud to have Spencer tweet and follow me on Twitter, he is truly a wonderful soul who gives his time to help people in need and he’s 17! I did pledge to vote for him when he runs for President…).

Getting back to educating us on why technology is not only about the bytes but can be in green areas like these fuel-efficient stoves. Fuel-efficient stoves use significantly less wood, cook food more quickly and the time saved from collecting wood and cooking gives more time back to the family so they can do more to improve their health and education. You can find out more about this project here and more about Spencer.

Other “technology” projects I read about include solar dryers to process fruits and vegetables which in turn increase the efficiency of processing dried fruits for export. Another “non-byte” technology is the treadle water pump which enables women to irrigate small plots of land from different water sources to increase their harvests and their incomes.  Of course, companies like Cisco are also well-known for their global training programs to help women improve their technical and career skills. The list goes on and on…

Did you know we can help women around the globe through programs like these and more? I was amazed to read about these ideas and more at Changemakers.com, and encourage you to spend some time and read through the different project ideas that are submitted, they are simple and doable to complex and inspiring. It’s possible to help our sisters improve their confidence and socio-economic status today; and in turn they can help their children grow up healthier and with hope of a better for tomorrow.

Stephanie Piche is a sales and marketing professional with over thirty product launches from software and mobile apps to social networking communities like MomTV and her latest endeavor, Mingle Media TV, where she and others hosts start daily live streaming video conversations from parenting to special causes. Follow her on Twitter at @thedigitalmoms.

Discuss Mommy Movement at the forum or click here to learn more about a stoves project in the Changemakers maternal health competition.

Grandma.  Oh  gracious, how I love her. 

They say your mother loves you unconditionally, but sometimes I think that’s even truer of grandmas.   My grandmother’s nickname for me is “precious child”.  She has always made me feel supremely cherished.  I’ve needed a single person in the world that made me feel more special than special.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve leaned on that feeling in my darkest times.  I have great respect for grandma.  I listen to what she says and am on my best behavior around her.  (I don’t make my bed for anyone but her.)   What’s more, I see how my mother feels about my children, pulling them to her heart and loving them with such urgency.  She impacts them so positively.  

The way grandmothers interact with their families can have so much influence on how people feel and act.  This is why I appreciated the entry “Grandmas as Champions for Healthy Mothers.”  Edwina Pereria writes that building grandmothers’ “capacity to remove myths blocking healthy motherhood has great potential.”  And how!

I do a lot of speaking to healthcare workers in my state of Georgia about my passion, the proper identification and treatment of women with postpartum depression.   One thing I’ve been curious about is increased stigma about PPD among African-Americans.  I know these women suffer as much as everyone else, and I know that if they are poor, they’re at even higher risk.  Yet PPD is not discussed.  They don’t reach out for help.  Once, when speaking to a group of African-American home visitors and social workers in Americus, GA, I asked them why .  They stated that their culture is matriarchal.  Mothers are expected to be strong, invincible leaders of the family.  They shouldn’t display or admit weakness.  They said they knew their own grandmothers would react very negatively if they said they had PPD.  They’d say, “You don’t need help. Get tough, pull up your bootstraps.  Do what I did.”  Imagine how things might change if we worked with these grandmothers to educate them on the reality of PPD and convinced them to support their granddaughters in getting help, thereby avoiding creating or continuing a generational cycle of mental illness.

I think educating grandmothers on prenatal care, safe birth and baby care practices, eliminating cultural myths, and then working with them to influence the behavior of pregnant and new mothers is an excellent idea.

My grandma Mary is now in her late 80s. I feel fortunate to have had her influence on so much of my life.   I love you grandma.

Katherine Stone writes Postpartum Progress, the most widely-read blog in the United States on postpartum depression and other mental illnesses related to childbirth.

Discuss Mommy Movement at the forum or read more about the entry "Grandmas as Champions for Healthy Mothers" in the maternal health competition.

We live in a world where technology has advanced in just three short generations to provide vaccines, medicine, medical personnel and help in days, hours, or even minutes to those in serious need.  The once cumbersome, limited and slow computers have been reduced to a Vscan; a handheld ultrasound device that has the capacity to view a prenatal child in even the most remote regions of the world.  We also have the ability to instantly send those images to the world’s best medical centers.

One of the most serious issues facing women in maternal health today is the barriers to services.  The most high-tech medical centers, state-of-the-art equipment and superior a staff are of no good to women who cannot access them.  For all the effort put in to educational outreach it must be acknowledged that educational programs aren’t going to help if women cannot access those services when needed.  Many women have no access to prenatal and maternal health care because they simply do not have adequate insurance coverage.

Today’s world is a place where infant mortality has been reduced significantly for some, yet not at all for others. In the United States the disparity in maternal care between races is significant, with Black rates of preterm birth, low birth weight, and fetal, perinatal, and maternal mortality higher than White or Hispanic populations.  Infants in this population suffer higher neonatal deaths, more low birth weights, and more cases of mental retardation or cerebral palsy. Mothers in this population start prenatal care later than white women, and most significantly, they receive the lowest quality of care overall.  

The ongoing cost to the taxpayers for failing to provide accessible and equitable maternal care is difficult to assess, as the continued medical and social costs accumulated in a lifetime from a single child born with disabilities is immense.  The argument against a public option becomes as puzzling as the “I don’t need maternity care” argument proposed by Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, especially when we consider the impact, not in just dollars, but in actual lives and quality of life.

Decision makers in Washington are at a turning point where changes will significantly impact maternal health care in the US.  What impact they have will determine whether our tax dollars pay for healthy babies who will one day become tax payers themselves, or whether our already-burdened health care system will take on more children negatively impacted by poor maternal health.

Carrie Medina is a single adoptive mother who has lived in the USA and the Caribbean.  She writes on diverse issues including loss, parenting, and cultural social issues at www.carriemedina.com.

Discuss Mommy Movement at the forum or read more solutions to improving maternal health at Healthy Mothers, Strong World, a competition for the world-changing ideas.

My 7 year old and I have walked the same route to school every day for the past year and half – through his entire Kindergarten year and now First Grade. On the way, we pass a large, rather sterile-looking nursing home whose bedroom windows overlook our side of the street as we walk. Most of the windows are dark, with curtains drawn tight and no lights on. But there is one exception – a bright, open window that has caught our eye from the start. On the second floor in the right-hand corner, an elderly Russian-looking woman sits alone, looking out on the city streets as she drinks her morning tea. She is always smartly dressed, with her gray hair tucked away from her face in a tidy bun. Ever since we started our walking ritual, my son has looked up at that window, smiled at the “stranger-lady” and given her a cheery wave. He’s done it almost every day, even though the stranger never noticed him at first. Eventually, she did, and would smile back. As the months passed, she then started waving back and even raised her cup to toast the tiny animated boy on the street below. This week, for the first time, she waved and then blew my son a kiss. He pretended to catch it and then emphatically blew one back. Now, whenever we pass, we stop for several minutes while my son waves, blows kisses and catches the ones she sends back. It’s one of the sweetest things I have ever seen.

The effect of this small connection with a stranger is lost on my boy, who sees it as a playful game but not much else. He doesn’t get why it is meaningful or how he has brightened this lonely woman’s mornings. My boy’s little act of kindness is making a difference in this woman’s life and it is also making a difference in mine. I reflect on the last time I did an act of kindness for someone else and realize that I don't do it early as often as I should and that I need to do better. Which is why I was particularly drawn to the idea of “The Socks Project” – a plan by three high school students to recycle mismatched socks and transform them into a pair of socks for the needy. Like a friendly wave to a stranger, this idea is inspiring in its simplicity and its instant impact - making a difference one warm foot at a time. A small yet mighty act of kindness that costs nothing and yet will brightens lives and give support to those who need it most in our community - not unlike a cheery wave to a stranger by a seven year old on his way to school.

What was the last small act of kindness you gave or received?

Justine Juson is the proud mother of two children and an appellate lawyer specializing in dependency law. She blogs regularly at www.moveovermommy.com.

Discuss Mommy Movement at the forum or click here to learn more about The Socks Project and the maternal health competition.

I love travelling. I especially love travelling with my kids. There are, of course, a great many challenges associated with travelling with young children, but I think that it’s worth it: there is nothing in this world that is so amazing that it couldn’t be made more amazing by the interpretive lens of a child. So whatever travelling I do, I try to involve my kids, and I hope that as the years go by we end up doing a lot of it.

But as much as I want my children to appreciate the wonder of travel, I also want more than this: I want them to appreciate them what a tremendous privilege it is to travel, and I want them to be humble in the presence of other cultures. I want them to regard travel as a way to learn, and a way to contribute some good to the world. So when I saw that one of the nominated projects in the Changemakers competition proposed leveraging the goodwill of travelers to advance the cause of maternal and infant health – by encouraging travelers to raise funds for, assemble and deliver/donate birth kits to needy communities in or near areas that they will be traveling in - I was immediately intrigued. It’s easy, effective – and it actively promotes the idea that travel can accomplish some good, and not just yield a great collection of postcards.  

It did, however, raise a concern for me, one that applies more broadly to the idea of volunteer-tourism and socially responsible travel, especially if we understand such travel as something that can be done with kids (of any age): is the good that is accomplished by such travel undermined, in any measure, by teaching kids (or, in the absence of kids, teaching ourselves) that we – Western travelers – can or should play a kind of savior role in the world, that it is our place and our duty to dispense goodwill and assistance to all those poor, unfortunate communities that are so distant from our own? Does that not impart a kind of superiority complex, in the manner of a kind of latter-day noblesse oblige? The lesson that we can and should help when and where we can is, of course, a good one – a necessary one, even – but isn’t there something of a complicated problem in teaching our kids – or ourselves – that cultures and communities other than our own are lacking and that we – on our holidays! – can fill that lack?

I don’t know – I know that I’m not the first to raise these questions about volunteer-tourism, and I’m not even sure that they’re fair questions. But they are questions, and if I’m asking them, mightn’t my children also ask them? Children do, after all, possess keen – and sometimes inconvenient – radar for these kinds of complicated and uncomfortable nuances. It’s one reason why they make such excellent travel companions. But it’s also why we need to think carefully about the kinds of adventures we pursue on our travels. End of the day, I think that the idea of tackling maternal mortality through volunteer-tourism is a good one, and one that has the added benefit of raising awareness of a global problem that is often overlooked. And perhaps anxieties about privilege and the impact of privilege as these pertain to travel need to be exposed to exactly these sorts of questions – in which case, this kind of project probably provides more opportunity for so-called ‘teachable moments’ than appears at first glance.

Catherine Connors blogs at Her Bad Mother and Their Bad Mother and The Bad Moms Club and everywhere in between.

Discuss Mommy Movement at the forum or click here to learn more about this idea for socially responsible travel.