SKI Charities

Category: SKICharities

  • Catching Up With the SKIC Women of Chile

    SKIC’s work in Chile has grown in exciting ways this year. Our newest site, just four months old, has added to the work of two other thriving sites that now span many miles across the country. As of August, there were 33 active women participating in our Chilean sites of Lebu (founded in 2013), Los…

  • At SKIC, Community is Everything

    SKIC has been a community-minded organization since day one. But now, more than ever, the organization is seeing the importance of maintaining and stimulating communities in both of its operating sites – Lebu, Chile and Mutare, Zimbabwe. LEBU, CHILE | Lebu is a rather isolated city, with a static population. It relies heavily upon people-to-people connections…

  • SKIC in London!

    SKIC fans travel around the globe – this time, to London!  

  • Portrait: Meet Melanie, SKImfi Chile Project Manager

    SKIC’s project manager for SKImfi-Chile, Melanie O., discusses her work with SKI Charities and the path that led her to a passion for woman and child development. In your own words, what is your role in SKI charities? My first encounter with SKI Charities was a trip to Lebu I did to get to know the…

  • Women Responding to Disaster

    Women Responding to Disaster

    This year, disasters such as the ebola outbreak, the earthquake in Nepal, and the humanitarian crisis in Syria have torn apart communities across our globe. Throughout each of these tragedies, we have heard over and over again how disaster relief efforts must be better suited to impact the unique needs of women, who are too…

  • A Conversation with Shyam: 2014 | The Year in Review

    As we begin an exciting new year, SKIC founder Shyam K. Iyer takes a moment to reflect upon 2014. The organization saw a lot of growth this past year – with two programs operating fully in both Chile and Zimbabwe, SKIC’s operating sites. This past year we introduced a new program SKILLS, the SKI Local…

  • “It’s About Trade, Not Aid”

    How Micro-Finance Help to Stimulate Communities at Large “Any time I’ve been given something – just given something – I’ve never treated it very dearly or very importantly,” SKIC founder, Shyam, says. “But when I have worked for something and reaped the reward, I feel satisfied, accomplished, and inspired.” A similar pattern follows with SKIC…

  • Finance, the Link to Employment & Empowerment

    WHEN Shyam decided to create SKI Charities, “finance was going through a really tough reputational period – it’s still going through a tough time.” And yet he stood by the belief that finance can also be really empowering to people. Shyam reasoned that, because people gain confident through employment, finance could be used as a way…

  • Empowering Transformational Female Leaders

    In a previous post, “Why Focus on Women?,” we discuss the importance of SKI Charities’ focus on empowering female entrepreneurs and providing education for young women. In the traditional communities of developing countries like Zimbabwe and Chile, where SKIC works, already-marginalized women are often made powerless by circumstances of conflict and unrest, with men historically and culturally standing as the heads of…

  • A Conversation with Shyam: Introducing SKILLS, The Latest Branch of SKIC

    A little over a year ago, SKIC founder Shyam K. Iyer spoke to me about his long-term goal to add a third component to his organization: “We have the education [scholarships] and the business [micro-finance loans]. I’d like to do a third, expressing the local culture. Business, education, and culture…The original objective of SKIC is to…