With all of the troubling news coming at us from every direction today, it's not always easy to see there are some real bright spots. Recently while on twitter, I came across a re-tweet that brought to my attention the name of Maria Springer (@MariaSpringer).
Maria is a wonderful young woman doing her utmost in tying to do some good in this world. She is co-founder and Executive Director of an organization called LivelyHoods. Having grown up in a poor and violent Los Angeles neighborhood herself, she has a passion for social justice and international development. Fresh from college, she was going to sign up for the Peace Corps, but her life took an unexpected turn and dreams of working on a local level to change lives collided… and multiplied… eventually giving rise to LivelyHoods.
LivelyHoods creates jobs to enable unemployed and marginalized youth to work their way out of poverty. The innovative idea is to utilize these youth's survival skills, resourcefulness, and connection to their communities and employ them as sales agents. Building a sales force (iSmart) that helps companies get products into the hands of customers in hard-to-reach urban slums - an untapped and emerging market with exciting potential.
It's this kind of dedication and effort by Maria, along with co-founder, Tania Laden that should be universally recognized and applauded. We have such a monumental need for re-direction at this time... this is an exemplary place to begin... working with the hundreds of thousands of street-youth in Kenya, Africa.
There are over 100 million street kids worldwide, and the number is rising. We can and must break the cycle.
