Day: December 4, 2010

The NY Times’ Top Ten Books: A Tipping Point?

annejjacobson3 Comments

A few days ago we noticed that the shortlist for the Guardian award for a first book was 80% female.  Now there’s the NY Times list of the 10 Best Books of 2010; it’s  60% female.  Is the tipping point being reached? 

As Malcolm Gladwell points out, the notion of a tipping point comes from epidemiology, and it originally was used for the transition from a relatively few scattered infections to an epidemic.  Applied here it might mean that all those years of criticising lists of “the best” books for their failure to represent women’s work have actually gotten those with some control over the public culture to recognize that women too can write outstanding books. 

This list will appear in the Dec. 12 print edition of the {NY Times} Book Review.

Shining Hope for Communities

David Slutsky7 Comments

Shining Hope for Communities

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http://shininghopeforcommunities.org/

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“We combat intergenerational cycles of poverty and gender inequality by linking tuition-free schools for girls to essential social services in Kenya’s Kibera slum through a holistic, community-driven approach. By concretely linking essential health and economic services to a school for girls, we demonstrate that benefiting women benefits the whole community, cultivating a community ethos that makes women respected members of society.”

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http://shininghopeforcommunities.org/projects/

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“Shining Hope for Communities believes in integrated and community-driven initiatives to combat extreme poverty. Our two-part approach places women at the center of community development. Our core program is the Kibera School for Girls, the first and only free school for girls in Kibera. Adjacent to the Kibera School for Girls is the Shining Hope Community Center, which houses initiatives that serve the entire community. Together, our projects address the most severe local deficits in education, health, sanitation, food security, literacy, and economic development.”

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