The Banyan

The Banyan

my visit to The Banyan

Ideas are percolating to start my own line of yoga clothes...renewable resources regarding the cloth, fair trade, empowering women, giving back...one day I know this will happen...just as The Banyan started as a seed and grew into a beautiful tree....

I vow that a percentage of my sales will go to The Banyan...please watch this video and listen with your heart...these are the faces of your sisters and mothers and daughters and grandmothers...they are us.

People ask me why I would want to help people outside the United States when there are so many needy people here. That is very true, there are thousands (probably millions) of people who need help in the United States. Many Native Americans live in what are considered third-world conditions which is why I donate to Native American causes. But the difference is that there are hundreds if not thousands of social service agencies in the United States, many of which receive federal funds. That concept is unheard of in places like India or Africa or any other place in the world where people literally earn $1 a day or who are still sold into a type of slavery -- please visit the website Global March Against Child Labor. You can also check out 50 Million Missing: An International Campaign or my post about the campaign.

Poor Americans have opportunities that many people in the rest of the world do not have -- scholarships or grants to go to college, small business loans to start their own businesses, among other things. It may be paltry but there is also public aid and food stamps, two things that I did not hesitate to take. I ate plenty of government cheese back in the day.

Despite the fact that the United States does not have any form of national health care, I would rather live in poverty in America than anywhere else in the world.

That's why.