After logging long hours studying, the best way for me to ease any tension or stress I feel about an upcoming exam is to lace up my sneakers and hit the pavement running. There is nothing like running through Lincoln Park here in Chicago, especially on a brisk fall morning before class. When I don’t make my morning runs, law classes can be difficult to sit through. But on the days I enter the classroom still feeling the effects of my “runner’s high,” the day breezes by. I first fell in love with running back in middle school when my aunt Emily was diagnosed with breast cancer. It came as a shock to the entire family but while we were feeling bad for her and thinking about how we could help, she was lacing up her sneakers and heading out the door. She would run for miles to free her mind and keep her body active. When she was undergoing treatment, there were days when she couldn’t run more than a block but would walk as far as she could. Some days she couldn’t get out of bed to run but she would urge me to “go get the run in for the both of us.” Aunt Emily won her battle with cancer and since then we have run dozens of marathons, 5ks, and mini marathons to raise money for cancer treatment and awareness of the disease.

I love running and I love it even more when I’m able to raise money and awareness for a worthy cause. Last year my aunt invited me to visit her back in Indiana and join her in running the Jill Behrman 5k Run. I was ready to go as soon as I got the word but after hearing about the cause, I was fully in. Jill Behrman was a student at Indiana University and an employee of Campus Recreational Sports. In 2000, she set out alone for a bike ride and she didn’t return. Three years later, it was discovered that she had been murdered.

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Non-profits are always finding new ways to help improve the living conditions of individuals around the world. Take for instance non-profits focused on international microfinance. According to a World Bank report in 2008 almost half of the world’s population live on less than $3.00 a day. The poorest 40 percent generate 5 percent of the global income whereas the wealthiest 20 percent generate almost 75 percent of the global income (Human Development Report 2007). Microfinance caters to those who were formerly considered as “un fit to bank” because of their lack of security. It also creates opportunities for people to establish or expand businesses, increase incomes, and change their lives forever. Take for instance the African country Ghana where many rural communities exist and where there is a lack of business and microfinance skills to manage their money. Microfinance tools aid to empower individuals to save, borrow, and learn.

Lumana is a non-profit organization that focuses on providing this financial assistance to the local communities in Ghana. This non-profit has chosen this country due to fact that only 1 percent of the microfinance industry extended to Africa and even less in the rural areas they work in.    In the beginning the non-profit ran into some challenges largely in part due to finding loan officers.  Another obstacle was the search for trained and skilled workers who would be committed to partnerships, willing to balance with the org and each other. However, once they found Ghanaian staff, they proceeded to train them to eventually educate the locals in curriculum consisting of savings planning, basic accounting, business planning and more.

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photo courtesy by Tako Robakidze

Blogging has come a long way since the Internet came into existence. One aspect of the progression of blogging is the changes in blogging styles. Blogging sites now can be completely tailored and customized to the publishers liking. One of these common forms of blogging that have been increasingly grown in popularity over the years is “photo blogging”. Photo blogging, a form of publishing with photo sharing has become a powerful and useful tool for publishers and photographers to get their message across. Instead of reaching out to readers with written text publishers gain viewers and supporters through images. Unlike websites such a Flickr a domain dedicated to image and video hosting, the nature of photo blogging is designed more so for content management where photo blog publishers have the administrative capabilities to organize and create their content as they see fit.

One prime example of photoblogging can found on the L.A.F. Project’s website. The Laughter and Forgetting (LAF) Project is a non-profit organization that implements this style. Established in 2009 this organization posts vivid photographs documenting life in the former Soviet state of Georgia. LAF utilize photos as a medium to reveal awareness to the global community of this country’s transition /shift towards a new political system. In the words of the Co-Director Janna Levi, professional Georgian and international photographers “share these experiences to show similarities between eastern European countries that have a known history of struggle and political tension”. The images taken illustrate viewpoints from a foreign perspective, as well as internal perspective of the post-communist era. This project was created with the intension to empower photographers and connect with other photographers to form and collaborate exhibitions in Europe and other destinations. In addition, their aim for this photoblog is to educate viewers and supporters on the current political and social conflicts in Georgia and eventually document life in other eastern European countries that are going through a comparable process. Even as a relatively new organization, LAF demonstrates how the power of photo blogging can revolutionize the way people share and connect with each other on causes they are passionate about through vivid images such as the ones posted by the LAF photographers. As the old cliché goes a picture is worth a thousand words.