Jenny’s Pennies

So, after reading the story about activist Dmitri Vitaliev (see below), I decided to browse The Age’s website - I’m always looking for foreign newspapers to add to my ever expanding bookmark collection.
And there I found this story called One man’s trash, about collecting goods for humanitarian causes. Now, I should say that there sometimes are problems with the whole “let’s give our old stuff to charity”-idea. A friend who worked at a second hand shop run by a charity told me they got so much unusable crap and were used as a mere garbage dumpster by some people. Why do some people think that the poor deserve getting old crap? And sometimes it is patronizing as well, as in “why do the poor complain so much? If they would get their children clothes at charities instead of at the mall they would have more money!” (but of course, their precious children would never have to do the same).

But aside from this, the idea of giving your old stuff away to someone who might need it, is a great idea. We live in a “use it and loose it”-society where so many things which are perfectly usable are thrown away.

So, the story in The Age tells us about Liz Baker who has started the project Uplift Fiji. The idea is simple: to send used bras to disadvantaged women in Fiji. In two years, more than 10 000 bras has been sent from Baker’s home in Melbourne, Australia. From the article:

The project, Uplift Fiji, is run through Rotary International World Community Service and started two years ago on Baker’s family holiday to Fiji. Her father-in-law, Rotarian Ron Smith, was involved in Rotary’s overseas Donations in Kind program at the time. Baker asked if there was anything she could take to Fiji from Australia and bras, she says, was the overriding answer. “I took 50 bras over when I went on holiday and I sent another 90 not long afterwards. Then it snowballed,” says Baker.

In Fiji the average wage ranges from $1.50 to $4.50 an hour and the average cost of a new bra is about $40. “When you are down around the poverty line you are spending a massive proportion of your income on food. If you had to drop 10 or 20 hours’ wages on a bra, what would be the chances?” she says.

It is easy to forget that something as simple as a bra can mean an improvement in the quality of life for a woman in Fiji. In the hot, humid climate of the Pacific island country, going bra-less can lead to fungal infections, excoriation and abscesses.

And besides letting disadvantaged women of Fiji be more comfortable and avoiding certain medical conditions, the project has also led to a small shift in the way women is viewed:

Baker says the bra is now striking a blow for feminism. “Word of the bra project has spread among traditional villages and men are coming from isolated areas asking for bras for their women.”

Big cheers for this kind of simple and direct activism!

Update: Liz Baker who runs Uplift Fiji told me in comments that The Age has published the wrong address to her website. The address is http://lizbaker.customer.netspace.net.au/ (no www!) and a direct link is here