Ruth Ann Logue, Katie Glupker, and Robin Phillips
By Carin Michaels
“What takes us past the tipping point when the forces pushing us up overpower the forces pulling us down and we’re lifted from the earth and begin to fly? How can we summon a moment of lift for human beings—and especially for women? Because when you lift up women, you lift up humanity.”
~The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates
iZōsh is an emotive and powerful Ethiopian word with no English equivalent. It is said to a woman specifically, and it connotes compassionately coming alongside her. The closest translation means: “I’m there for you; you can do this, and I won’t let you fail.” iZōsh is also the name of an Ann Arbor micro-lending organization that funds third-world women who live in extreme poverty.
The micro lending movement garnered international recognition when Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi social entrepreneur and economist who founded the Grameen Bank to pioneer micro loans to impoverished women, won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work. iZōsh was inspired to mirror Yunus’ lending model in late 2011 as a “call to arms” after six friends through happenstance began reading Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Cheryl WuDunn, a husband and wife Pulitzer Prize journalist team.
Half the Sky argues that the oppression of women worldwide is an epidemic, and it demands our attention, because if we help women, we help raise up a community. “Women [typically] reinvest 80% of their income in the wellbeing and education of their families. With the same amount of land, women can increase crop yields by 20%, reducing world hunger for 150 million people. Women business owners set an example for the next generation of students and leaders.” These facts are cited by one of their micro lending partners at kiva.org. Kiva is a shining example of microcredit. This non-profit allows individuals to lend money via the internet to provide financial opportunities to low income entrepreneurs, students, or rural farmers in over 80 countries.
iZōsh has the more specific mission to financially help a woman, who lives in extreme poverty, start or continue her business. Women who attend an iZōsh event are ensured some experiential cache to feel inspired by their participation, because an iZōsh event is like a theatrical production.
Since its inception in early 2012, iZōsh has funded 622 women approximately $221,000. At one biannual meeting, an out-of-town guest was so enamored with the iZōsh event she asked where the national headquarters was so she could contact them and learn how to start her own chapter. The co-founder, Robin Phillips, of Chelsea, Michigan, explained that Ann Arbor is the epicenter.
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As I became an advocate for iZōsh, I developed an elevator pitch: iZōsh is a micro lending organization that meets twice a year to fund women, who live in extreme poverty, and the decision of whom to fund is democratically-based upon all in attendance, similar to a Village Saving and Loan model developed by CARE in Africa. Basically, all women present at the meeting have a vote, and majority rules. There is also an educational component at an iZōsh meeting, particularly a guest speaker who is an expert in some area of extreme poverty, to keep members informed about the challenges that women face around the globe. This is followed by roundtable discussions—spiritual camaraderie that lends to sisterhood.
In the process of learning about iZōsh, Melinda Gates released her new book, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World. After reading it, she became one of my heroes. In an attempt to spare you the data analytics that supports micro lending, I will just quote her, “The correlation is as nearly perfect as any you will find in the world of data. If you search for poverty, you will find women who don’t have power. If you explore prosperity, you will find women who do have power and use it.”
Money is power, and Gates uses both to direct her philanthropy. “Our call is to lift women up—and when we come together in this cause, we are the lift,” she said. When interviewing my local iZōsh heroes, each woman unknowingly used the same terms “lifting women up” or “uplifting.” I found this striking, and even though I had a compendium of standard interview questions, their individual stories took over and became more compelling. Ruth Ann Logue, a cofounder of iZōsh, discovered the word on her own journey of compassion. Robin Phillips, another cofounder, has had the fortitude to champion iZōsh into an international nonprofit. Katie Gulpker is the current chair of iZōsh Ann Arbor, a 30-something high school English teacher. I spoke to each of them about iZōsh, and they provided a deeper understanding of its underpinnings, but like true heroes, they alluded to the courage, sacrifice, and selflessness that drove their stories.
“A man goes out on the beach and sees that it is covered with starfish that have washed up in the tide. A little boy is walking along, picking them up and throwing them back into the water. “What are you doing, son?” the man asks. ‘You see how many starfish there are? You’ll never make a difference.’ The boy paused thoughtfully, and picked up another starfish and threw it into the ocean. ‘It sure made a difference to that one,’ he said.”
~Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
Ruth Ann Logue
Ruth Ann Logue, a Registered Nurse, who supported her husband through law school, and then went on to raise a family of six, lives in a farmhouse on the outskirts of Ann Arbor, where rolling hills and native flora surround their restored Dutch Colonial barn. Her lyrical dialect hints of her Alabama roots, but she was a tumbleweed in her youth, finally making Ann Arbor her home for the last 27 years.
Logue helped cofound iZōsh. As she discussed iZōsh, she reminisced about cherished events in her family’s history. “It was during the same time that I adopted my son.” Logue and her husband, Kyle, decided to foster a child while he received medical treatment in southeastern Michigan for a life-threatening illness that could not be treated in Ethiopia. Logue did not know that a small commitment on her part to foster a child, or a nonprofit, would produce an abundance of joy.
In response to reading Half the Sky, just before Thanksgiving 2011, Logue and five other friends decided to meet at one of their homes, bringing five dollars each, with a total of $30, to discuss and learn how micro lending works. A minimum micro loan with Kiva is $25.
Logue has a dynamic story to tell during this period of time because her personal and professional ambitions are inseparable. The foster parent opportunity fell in her lap through her friend’s son’s swim coach who had heard of an opportunity to foster from a previous swimmer, who was in medical school at the time. The student’s dad was a local pediatrician and there were open interviews to find a host family for this Ethiopian boy during his five week medical treatment. As the story unwinds, Logue pays tribute to many people who helped her son, and these moments of gratitude mark her character. She said, “It takes a village to, raise a child,” and added, “Oh, the Ethiopian community. Fekele [her adopted son] wasn’t here but ten minutes and they were knocking on my door to help him.”
As Logue wanders back in memories to how she came up with the name iZōsh, she speaks fondly of Abdi Zeynu, her foster child’s interpreter, a graduate student in Electrical Engineering at the University of Michigan. Zeynu volunteered to translate for Fekele, because he could not speak English. Logue and Zeynu would sit together in the waiting room while her soon-to-be son received treatment. Logue decided to quiz Zeynu for some potential names for this nonprofit, which, at the time, was being referred to as “Group Formed in Response to Half the Sky.” Around the fourth iteration of questioning, Logue asked, ‘How do you say, my sister’s purse’?” Zeynu paused in frustration, and he asked Logue what she was trying to do. She replied that she was forming a micro lending group that simulates a saving and loan banking model practiced by women in African villages. Then she explained that the nonprofit would not recirculate their funds internally like a bank, but they would lend to women in need of a lift, particularly in third-world countries. Abdi’s smile reached his eyes. Logue, initially, rejected his recommendation, iZōsh, but when he argued it’s no different from iPhone or iPad, she agreed.
iZōsh has partnered with a few micro finance institutions (MFIs), particularly, Kiva, Opportunity International, and recently, Healing Hands of Joy, to offer micro loans to impoverished women. These organizations screen the loan candidates to ensure they have good credit and integrity. The loan recipients provide a biography with a rationale as to why they need a loan. Due diligence is performed by the aforementioned organizations. iZōsh has had almost 100% payback, and then the loan repayments get rolled over into new loans predetermined and managed by the micro lending partner institution. Currently, iZōsh lends approximately $15,000 each meeting with 125 members in attendance. This nonprofit has gained such momentum that it has formed iZōsh International to launch other chapters outside of Ann Arbor.
Logue recalls this nonprofit startup being stressful because during this period her foster child’s medical treatment was extended, and his birth parents needed to be informed that their son would not be on the pre-booked return flight home. But his parents did not have access to today’s modes of modern communication.
The Logues, with the help of Steven Weinberg, a medical student who was going to Africa, recorded multiple videos on an iPad to inform Feleke’s birth parents about his delayed treatment and life in the United States, which included him learning to ride a bicycle. When in Africa, Weinberg recorded Feleke’s birth parents’ reaction to the video communications. Logue said there was a long pause during their transcription, and they looked at the translator, who then explained what the birth parents were asking: would the Logue family please adopt their son? They were a poor farming family with nine other children, and they went bankrupt to get their son treatment in Africa, which was unsuccessful. They sold their only bison that tilled their fields. If another setback occurred, they could not save their son.
At that point, Logue had developed a strong maternal and loving bond for her courageous foster child, so she and her husband huddled down for deep introspection. They began their research for adoption, and after the treatment, her husband Kyle, their eldest 16-year-old son Thomas, and their foster child Feleke, trekked back to the hills in Ethiopia to talk to his birth parents. After an 18-hour flight to Addis Ababa, then a Jeep ride to the foothills, followed by a horse trek up those hills—all of which took eight hours after touchdown at the airport—it was readily apparent to everyone involved that Feleke, who was 11 years old and cured of his life threatening illness, could make the split from his birth parents to a better life in Ann Arbor. He was thriving, and his parents witnessed a miracle by seeing him not only survive, but flourish. However, when someone robbed Kyle’s money belt, which contained both passports and visas for all in Addis Ababa, they were only able to put Thomas, a U.S. citizen, on a flight back, but Feleke was in limbo without the signed adoption paperwork and U.S. entrance visa. Logue told her husband not to come home without him.
In the heat of the moment, it was Logue’s moment of lift, when she would not allow the forces opposing her adoption to outweigh her power as a mom. Feleke’s father had to make the arduous eight-hour trip to Addis Ababa to refile, certify, and expedite paperwork that Logue sent to her husband, which would normally take months. She used this example to articulate her empathy with women, who would do anything to uplift their families when stricken by poverty.
Melinda Gates and Logue are two women cut from the same cloth. Many words used by Logue are coined in The Moment of Lift. Yet, Logue has yet to read Gates’ book. The similarities attest to Logue’s charm. “My heart breaks,” she said, when she remembers her son’s birth parents asking Logue to adopt their son. Gates has a chapter in her book called, “Let Your Heart Break: The Lift of Coming Together.” Gates also describes when she was asked by an impoverished mother to adopt her daughter to ensure she had a prosperous future. The pulse between the two is one of Jungian sisterhood.
Gates’ philanthropic platform is to empower women. She writes, “Understanding this link between women’s empowerment and the wealth and health of societies is crucial for humanity. As much as any insight we’ve gained in our work over the past twenty years, this was our huge missed idea. My huge missed idea. If you want to lift up humanity, empower women. It’s the most comprehensive, pervasive, high-leverage investment you can make in human beings.” Logue attests to discovering this insight herself after finishing Half the Sky. She said, “Reading that quote about putting resources in the hands of women really opened my eyes.”
She is referring to the quote that “…several studies suggest that when women gain control over spending, less family money is devoted to instant gratification and more for education and starting small businesses. Because men now typically control the purse strings, it appears that the poorest families in the world typically spend approximately ten times as much (20 percent of their income on average) on a combination of alcohol, prostitutes, candy, sugary drinks, and lavish feasts, as they do on educating their children.” Logue qualifies these findings, because this obviously does not apply to all men, especially her husband, who is tremendously supportive of her motherhood.
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Logue cites an example of his support when they were deliberating if it was fair to everyone involved to adopt Feleke. Her husband used an analogy, albeit not perfect, but the best he could summon at the time, to help her understand the birth parents’ plight. He asked her to imagine that they were stuck on a deserted island with one of their children, and there was no food or water. Suddenly, a lifeboat comes by with room for only one person, and the captain ensured, paraphrasing her husband that “our child would receive a good life; not just a good life, but better than good. What would you do?” Logue’s voice begins to shake as she continues to recall her dilemma, “My heart breaks if he goes home, and it also breaks for his birth mother if he stays.” Logue adds that Kyle’s voice continues to ring in her head, as he said, “They’re putting him on a lifeboat, Ruth Ann.”
Fast forward to 2021. Logue is currently the co-chair for the Educational Committee that selects keynote speakers and books to read to help inform members about issues concerning the oppression and exploitation of women around the globe. Common educational topics deal with female genital mutilation, obstetric fistulas, rape, prostitution, and child brides, and it is for this reason that iZōsh is a women’s only group. Some women in attendance, particularly those who have personal experience with any of these traumas, may not feel comfortable having these discussions in a mixed gender group. iZōsh wants to be a safe place, and at every event, they have a trained counselor available if needed to provide emotional support.
An iZōsh event is abuzz with excitement, camaraderie, featured entertainment, and women speaking into microphones announcing the results from each round of voting. It’s similar to being at a race track, except Logue, a demure Erin Brockovich type, is flush with emotion when introducing the educational themes of the evening with her co-chair, Melodie Marske. Logue streams off citations and facts about the progress notes of women from the Congo, who were victims of sexual violence (used as a weapon of war). Logue then sits back at her table and mumbles about her Ethiopian son and his birth family. She is still fighting to uplift her son’s family in Africa, no matter how many unknown degrees of separation exist between the Congo and Ethiopia.
She admits that poverty exists in Ann Arbor, too, and she wanted to help close to home as well, but when she saw a mother’s plea for assistance on a Facebook post, she didn’t know how to perform due diligence. Her friend told her “to follow your gut.” On the Facebook [now defunct] page called BuyNothing, Logue requoted the post from a single mother of four. “It said, ‘Need anything’ or ‘everything.’ I can’t recall exactly, but I got a knot in my chest.” After a few exchanges with this mom, she went through her own closet, took some towels, sheets, pillows, blankets, and anything else she could find. Then she went out and bought three bags of groceries. Her hunch was correct: this pregnant mother of four was sleeping on the floor so her kids could sleep on air mattresses. Logue asked her friends to help further with her latest mission to furnish this woman’s apartment. Then the apartment manager at this single mom’s complex came to Logue and asked if she could help a few other women. A simple ask was the start of “House N2 Home.” Logue still maintains a relationship with the first mom she helped. She came over to Logue’s house with her kids for lunch, a few days prior.
Logue apologizes for adhering to some privacy about her adopted son, but she thinks he is ready to create a new story for himself aside from being that child adopted from Africa. She truly respects his life journey even if it is not like her own.
“Let my heart be broken at the things that break the heart of God.”
~Bob Pierce, American Baptist minister and relief worker
Robin Phillips is retired, but she is all business when it comes to her volunteer work with iZōsh. She references definitions and bylaws to educate local women about how their financial sacrifice, no matter how small, makes a huge difference to women who live in extreme poverty. She explained, “The industry’s definition of living in extreme poverty equates to $1.90 a day, and it’s not just a lack of income and resources, but a lack of health care, infrastructure, sanitation, and electricity.”
Robin Phillips
She has decades of experience using her skills and insight needed to help the oppressed. “I empathize with the underdog. It’s in my DNA,” Phillips said. Raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Phillips currently lives in Chelsea, and was working as a social worker while her husband finished his PhD. He went on to manage and own Eisenhower Center for Traumatic Brain Injury, an employee-owned facility with locations in Ann Arbor, Manchester, and Houghton, Michigan and another site in Jacksonville, Florida.
Phillips has an illustrious career of her own, too. She laughed, when dating herself, saying, “I worked as a social worker in President Johnson’s War on Poverty back in the day.” Then she sat on a state legislative committee while working for United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) of Florida, which was the first state to implement the federal law called “Education for All Handicapped Children Act.” This ruling required any schools that received federal funding to give equal access to education for children with physical and mental disabilities. She cited it: Public Law 941.42.
This committee was comprised of eight lawyers and a few social workers to advocate for the law’s efficacy. During this period of time, she realized that the folks who had power when creating policy were the lawyers. “I kept working with people, and that was great, but I wanted to have an impact on the system.” So she went on to get her law degree from Southern University of Illinois.
Jump to 2011. When a friend approached Phillips after she read Half the Sky, to query whether she had any interest in creating a book discussion on the subject, she laughed. She had read the book. It was a difficult and necessary read, but she didn’t see how discussing the book would help women combat oppression. However, she wasn’t ready to ignore her friends, six in total including herself, “because the risk of oppression and exploitation that girls live under just because they were born into extreme poverty is phenomenal,” she said. “And we have no clear understanding as North American women because we don’t experience it.” She reminded herself that as an advocate, she must educate those who cannot conceptualize the underpinnings of oppression, and she saw the book as a rallying cry to action.
It didn’t take long to see that Phillips is a skilled policy maker. She is careful with her words, but quick. This comes from working the system on both sides. The Eisenhower Center developed a program that paid for their clients to sponsor a child who lived in extreme poverty, inspired by her own personal initiatives, but Eisenhower clients would be responsible for communicating with these children through a speech therapist who transcribed their letters. “It was a win-win situation,” Phillips said, but the Eisenhower Center eventually got a call “asking who we were with all these sponsorships,” and she laughed again.
At that point, Phillips moved beyond sponsoring children to performing due diligence for aid organizations to ensure their funding at international locations was met with operational integrity. Then she worked on Development Programs, particularly in Rwanda after the genocide, to verify community sponsorship by an aid organization had efficacy. Phillips particularly relished her experience working with a group of women from a Village Saving and Loan Association, the type that were started by CARE. “On one trip to Africa, I met these amazing women. They blew my socks off. They were smart, but uneducated. They couldn’t go to school, but they were rock star entrepreneurs.” Phillips had stacked up enough experience to lead a group of six friends through a discussion about extreme poverty and women’s oppression.
iZōsh founders began to meet weekly and decided to loan to a woman on Kiva.org, but they used democratic voting to determine which candidate to fund. “It was so thrilling to push the ‘fund’ button, and more fun to do it together.” She continued to describe their first lending experience by saying, “I know Ruth Ann, and it felt like she knew Elizabeth from Guatemala, because she’s telling us all about her from her research, so I’m thinking she’s a friend of a friend. I was connected to that woman. Yes, I wanted to give that woman a loan.” This was in the early stages when each member brought just $5 to the table.
Then a light bulb went off in Phillips’ head at a conference where she participated in a small group exercise that mimicked the experience of a Village Saving and Loan model, where women pool their resources and educate each other on business and personal matters. When they have enough savings in the bank, the women decide who to fund in the group based upon a democratic vote. Phillips realized her conference experience could be used to create a funding model at iZōsh. But instead of keeping the money internally, to create a bank, iZōsh would lend their money to these loan candidates, who must pay back the loans with interest, but to their partnering MFIs (micro-finance institutions).
Phillips pitched this idea to her friends, and they agreed to try it. They pooled their money (the individual amounts to this day are only known by the treasurer) and also, they wanted the required educational component as with the Village Saving and Loan model. All decisions about who to fund were democratic, and they decided to donate the loan amount after it was paid back to the MFI to regenerate microlending. Thus far, iZōsh chapters have lent approximately $221K to 622 women, but it is exponentially unknown how many women this money has helped since it is reinvested. For example, Kiva and Opportunity International have made $2.5 billion in loans with an average 98% repayment rate.
“Micro loans are not a silver bullet,” Phillip said. “They cannot cure poverty.” For example, Melinda Gates’ philanthropic platform focuses on maternal and newborn health, family planning, education, unpaid work, child marriage, and equality for women in agriculture and in the work place. “There are many pieces to the puzzle,” Phillips said. “iZōsh decided to focus on women in business. Putting cash where it counts.”
Phillips said her moment of lift occurred when she “saw our way of living was taking away the dignity of people with disabilities and decided I had to do something about it. Again, it’s in my DNA.” She witnessed some of her clients lose their ability to thrive when basic opportunities like jobs, education, and transportation, weren’t accessible, and she made it her life’s mission to change that. Our lifestyles create barriers, and Gates, the humanitarian, parallels it to bullying when stating, "Adults try to create outsiders, too. In fact, we get better at it. And most of us fall into one of the same three groups: the people who try to create outsiders, the people who are made to feel like outsiders, and the people who stand by and don't stop it... Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our biggest challenge as human beings."
Phillips has garnered a pantheon of experiences to support advocacy. She reflects on her travels to South America, Mexico, Honduras, Ethiopia, Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Morocco, and Rwanda, to name a few, where a donation of $2 per day, or even less, can make a difference in a woman’s life. She recalls a loan recipient telling her that because of the money she received, she was able to leave her house with pride and earn an income. Phillips seems addicted to perpetuating this moment of lift for as many women as she can.
She refocused herself by citing a quote from Half the Sky. “In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.” She knows the challenge is onerous and said, “iZōsh is a movement.”
Melinda Gates just committed $1 billion over the next ten years to shift gender equality in the U.S. because, she said, “I want to see more women in the position to make decisions, control resources, and shape policies and perspectives.” Phillips is doing just that as the matriarch of iZōsh, having been its first co-chairperson and currently the chair of iZōsh International. She established a board, and in the summer of 2019 they had an intern. She is creating a guidebook for new chapters and helped shepherd chapters in Birmingham, Michigan, and another in Cumberland, Maine, right outside of Portland.
Even though iZōsh’s mandate is to combat oppression, and that can be a heavy topic, there is great joy putting money into another woman’s hands. Meetings rejoice with cowbells ringing, seashell rattles rustling, constant announcements informing members of loans awarded. The administrative volunteers even get real-time email confirmations from their MFI in these third-world countries stating their gratitude for the support. iZōsh sisterhood is ceremonial, and it’s empowering to be part of the lift in another woman’s life. iZōsh makes the experience real. “iZōsh rings true to its intended translation of the compassionate support of a girl or woman,” Phillips said. “We can help these women maintain their dignity. Because once they have financial power, they have a voice.”
iZōsh core chapter values are: Compassionate, Educational, Committed, Participatory, Invitational, and Intergenerational.
Katie Glupker
Katie Glupker is the one of the youngest board members at iZōsh. As the current chair, she is a stalwart of this global sisterhood initiative, and she can articulate its merit intuitively. Glupker was skeptical at first. Her mother invited her many times to iZōsh meetings, but she shied away since she thought it sounded like a Ladies Missionary Circle. She told her mother, “I don’t think it’s my thing.”
Glupker envisioned privileged women sitting around, chatting, drinking wine, and “doing” charity. iZōsh wasn’t on her bucket list. She had traveled the world and even lived in Shanghai for three years while teaching English. Currently, she is busy teaching English and mentoring students at Washtenaw Technical Middle College. She doesn’t remember what changed her mind to attend in 2013, but she recalls being enthralled with the sisterhood energy that filled the room. As a teacher, Glupker can easily articulate iZōsh’s values because she “believes they’re in the power of story.” Helping one woman won’t change the world, but it will change her story. She said, “One person’s story matters.”
iZōsh turned Glupker’s idea of charity work upside down. “I made an incorrect assumption,” she said. “I like how unexpected or subversive it is by tapping into this power of global sisterhood. There is something uplifting and powerful about a group of women helping other women financially succeed. It’s something not to mess with.” She went on to say, “iZōsh is unflinching in the way that it addresses hard topics to move women ahead.”
Glupker recognizes being a female living in America is the “luck of the draw,” and she said, “I don’t believe I get this life that I have just to make myself happy.” She articulates compassion, and further argues that, here in Ann Arbor, she doesn’t have to leave her house to get running water, and she wasn’t forced to get married at 15, but this privilege comes at a cost to her, whereby she uses her free time to help the poor, and educates herself about how to effectively be of assistance.
iZōsh recognizes that some educational topics they cover can be depressing, so they couple them with other uplifting experiential activities, such that, when members attend, they walk away with the same feeling of empowerment similar to what iZōsh is trying to give to loan recipients in third-world countries. Each time a loan is awarded, various types of jubilations are expressed—from cheers, to ringing cowbells and rattles, hugs, and even joyful tears.
Glupker reminisces about her first meeting when she sat at a roundtable with eight other members who introduced themselves when answering a participatory icebreaker question: “When was there a time that a woman took a chance on you?” Prior to that moment, she was given two stones to place in communal baskets to vote for two of three loan candidates. Glupker liked iZōsh’s egalitarian presentation: roundtable discussions, social components with a community experience, and learning about the universal advancement of women.
Glupker also liked that her financial commitment could be based upon any amount she thought she could afford as a recent graduate from University of Michigan with a Master in Education. Before graduate school, Glupker was living and teaching in China while traveling the globe. Before that, she grew up in Victoria, BC Canada. She shared a fun fact that the best place to grow up as a girl is Canada (sourced from a U.N. report called The World’s Women, 2015). She learned this preparing for iZōsh’s opening remarks for a meeting on International Day of the Girl Child. Their Keynote Speaker was Lilliam Covington, VP of Global Development from Opportunity International (OI). OI is one of iZōsh’s MFI partners.
Covington spoke on empowering women and girls through programs that emphasize agriculture, technology, and micro finance. Carly Fiorina, previous CEO of Hewlett Packard, spoke on her “One Woman Initiative” stating, “Together, we hope to engage women in the United States to serve as passionate advocates to address the needs and expand the choices of women in developing countries.”
Repeatedly approached by Robin Phillips, chair at the time, to take on a leadership role in iZōsh, Glupker was initially hesitant. “The board is supportive of its youth. They encouraged me to exercise my own strengths. Then it became a natural fit,” she said. “I like leading, teaching, and reading.” This recruitment trajectory falls in line with iZōsh’s unflinching tone of the sisterhood. Also, Glupker felt a civic responsibility to help Phillips, who wanted to step down as chair to “spend her time trying to franchise iZōsh internationally. Basically, to start new chapters.” Of course, this doesn’t negate the fact that Phillips intentionally took a chance on Glupker.
When Glupker spoke about the “nuts and bolts” of iZōsh, she referred to her colleagues as “ladies,” not to support her faulty hypothesis that iZōsh was a missionary society, but quite the opposite. “It’s so much work to put these events on, and it’s all volunteer run. Things aren’t haphazard, and it’s so thrilling. It’s a production,” she said, as she prepared for the upcoming meeting. They even have a dress rehearsal the night before. “But writing those remarks about why we believe in these women—each time I do this, I believe in our purpose that much more. It’s uplifting.”
A week before each meeting, members have the opportunity to recommend loan candidates by screening applicants on Kiva.org and OpportunityInternational.org. Every loan candidate recommended comes up for a vote. “Some members are more prone to choose single moms, pre-existing business owners, farmers, or women from India. It’s all over the gamut. iZōsh members range from high schoolers (who must attend with another adult), college students, working women, stay-at-home moms, and retirees. It’s intergenerational, up to an octogenarian—89 years old to be exact.
Glupker seems to have a knack for leadership as she shared a recent big vision question about iZōsh’s core values: “Can first-time guests vote?” She answered in the affirmative. She said, “Guests must participate in voting because iZōsh is a participatory event for all women in attendance.” A financial commitment can be as low as $5, but working the numbers shows that on average each woman donates $125. The last attendance drew 125 women who raised over $15,000.
Glupker’s moment of lift is a story. It came about when she was preparing her introductory speech for Dr. Alain Mukewege, a keynote speaker and research associate at University of Michigan’s School of Nursing, where he conducts research to advance fistula treatment, particularly at his father’s Panzi Hospital in the Congo. His father, Dr. Denis Mukewege, is recognized as a co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and an international humanitarian for his work there. In preparation, Glupker watched two documentaries about Mukwege’s father called City of Joy and The Man Who Mends Women. She said, “They were difficult to watch. And what does that say about me [after watching] if I chose to do nothing? I chose empowerment.”
Her argument went a bit further as she explained that an obstetric fistula is completely treatable in the United States. “After a woman gives birth, the surgery is performed before she leaves the hospital, but opportunities like that don’t exist in parts of Africa, because of home births, lack of access to a medical facility, stigma and shame, even grief if the woman loses her baby.”
Empowerment is the endgame to any iZōsh story. When Glupker discovered an organization called Healing Hands of Joy in Ethiopia as a potential micro lending partner, she realized iZōsh could help. Healing Hands of Joy was started by Allison Shigo and Brett O’Donnell, two Emmy award-winning documentarians. Their 2009 movie called A Walk to Beautiful follows five women who were scorned by their village and family for suffering from obstetric fistulas. Healing Hands helps women recover from fistulas and trains them to go on to become Safe Motherhood Ambassadors, who educate other women about the importance of going to a medical facility for their birth. The fistula survivors receive counseling, support, and education, leading to income generating skills. “These Ambassadors, who lead the charge, are given the opportunity to receive micro loans from iZōsh. They are inspiring. They are teachers. I’m a teacher. I don’t want to be that person who would ignore this. I can make a difference.”
iZōsh is now international, but the local founding chapter can be found online at izosh.org/annarbor/. If you are interested in receiving a guest invitation, email contact.annarbor@izosh.org. To learn more about becoming a member of iZōsh, please visit: /izosh.org/annarbor/become-a-part-of-izosh/.
