|
One Village
In September of 2005, Toydrum donated its graphic and web design skills to
the One Village Festival & Pub Crawl event at Tulsa's downtown Blue Dome
District. The festival included joyful multicultural dance, children's
activities, poetry readings, an outdoor market and the sounds of African
drumming, as well as a nighttime pub crawl featuring local bands.
Proceeds from the One Village festival went to FINCA, a U.S. non-profit
institution that since 1984 has served nearly one million families through
20,000 village banks in twenty-three countries on four continents.
Organizers in Tulsa raised over $5,000 to establish a new micro-credit
lending institution in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In countries such as the D.R. of Congo, where the average income is less
than one dollar a day, a little goes a long way. Because the average payback
of these loans in the DR Congo is around 96%, support for a village bank
there is a gift which keeps giving.
Nancy Moran, who also helped organize the All-Tulsa Tsunami Hope and Healing
Benefit Concert at the Cain's Ballroom in 2005, saw the hearts of Tulsans
open for people in southeast Asia after the natural disaster there. Moran
believes that they are still open.
"The enthusiasm for this project is growing because its goal makes sense to
people," says Moran, "you can give a hungry person a loaf of bread to eat or
you can give them the means to bake enough for themselves and to sell to
others. That's what village banks do."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
