Why are we talking during “Grey’s Anatomy”!? I just woke up, sorry. I’m actually abroad traveling with friends in Asia.
What country are you in? I’d rather not talk about it. I don’t want people looking at me.
What do you mean? It all has to do with expectation. Like, if people expect to see you, you get recognized all the time. And if they don’t, then you won’t.
This isn’t going to be published today. But I’ll be here for a while.
Are the reports true that you’re starring in your own live blog, like “The Truman Show”? No, no, no. Someone started that rumor. I don’t even have my own MySpace page.
You’re friends with the Queen of Jordan? I wanted to support something that helps the imbalance in this world. Her Majesty Queen Rania introduced me to FINCA.
Did the two of you bond over being queens? No! I’m a pretend queen. She’s an incredible, impressive woman.
Didn’t you do a FINCA documentary? I sort of appear in it every once in a while, which is partly embarrassing.
Why? I’m using the attention that I’m lucky to have to bring people to something that I’m interested in.
When the new “Star Wars” premiered, you were studying for your AP exams in high school. How many did you take? Bio, English, Calc BC. What else? Oh, European and American history. I don’t know anything about any of those things.
How did you do? Really well. It was shocking.
How did you get involved with FINCA? Something in Israel happened to someone very close to me. It’s sort of private. But I wanted to do something about political instability. I was so interested in working with [Jordan’s] Queen Rania. She’s the woman I admire most from my region. She told me all about how she seized economic imbalance [through FINCA]. And what she has termed the hope gap.
What’s that? It’s not so much a financial gap that’s important. There are some people that wake up in the morning feeling they can improve their situations. Others cannot. So I started traveling with FINCA to start learning about it. I went to Guatemala and Uganda and Ecuador. I was really moved—I saw people’s lives and how they changed.
Can you explain how the micro financing works? The basic concept was pioneered by Muhammad Yunus. We give small loans to poor individuals in development nations. The money goes primarily to women, 80 percent of the time.
How come? They’ve found things about women that make them better investors. They pay back at much higher rates. They invest their money back in their children. They’ll spend it on education and then food. Men are more likely to spend it on alcohol, they’ve found. Not all of the time, of course. And also, women are intrinsically better investors. Which is really interesting. They by nature diversify. Maybe they just sort of know to do that because of their experience. Women will put $10 in pig feed, $10 in education. They take care of each other. They support each other in that way. They get loans usually starting at $50. After several years, you go up to $1,000
What happens to the money that we contribute over time? When you donate, the money goes to a borrower. But they pay it back to the bank with interest. The bank can then grow because the money gets recycled. The greatest thing is that it’s sustainable. It’s there forever. It keeps getting paid back.
What did you learn from your trips to Africa? The number one way to limit the population growth is the education of women and the social elevation of women. If a woman has her own economic sustenance, her own way to support herself, she doesn’t have to rely on anyone. She gains power over her sexual reproduction. You see in places in the world where women are better off. They choose to have fewer children. It’s almost the opposite of what you expect. But they know how to use birth control and what happens when you have sex.
My friends in college weren’t activists like our parents’ generation. Do you think there’s a stigma to activism now? Yes. I find it for so many things—even vegetarianism. In New York, it’s like uncool. There are certain restaurants where you can’t even find a vegetarian dish. It’s cool to be like “f— it I don’t care.” It’s uncool to care. It’s got some hippy, earthy crunchy West Coast connotation. I remember this guy I dated in college, his parents used to have this saying: “If you’re not liberal when you’re young, you have no heart. If you’re not conservative when you’re old, you have no mind.” This thing if you care about something, you’re soft in a way—that’s crazy.
What’s the solution? I’ve always felt like it would be good to have a national service after high school. Being from Israel, I feel like it engages people so much in their nation. Not in a patriotic way. I’m not into nationalism. But doing something for a year or two. You could preach. Or clean up parks and gardens. Or do other service. The age 18 is so young to go to college and know what you want to do. I think this would inspire people to give more of [themselves].
Rosie Dumps Her Room With ‘The View’ Rosie O’Donnell won’t finish her last weeks on “The View”—big, fat surprise. Could you really see her sharing the makeup room with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck after their shouting match last week? Even before ABC announced Rosie’s departure on Friday, she was blogging stuff like “I have said all I needed” and “surrender rosie.” There were other ominous (or hopeful, if that’s the kind of person you are) signs, such as the mustaches someone—reportedly one of Rosie’s writers—drew on several photos of Elisabeth at ABC’s studios. (The network says it’s “investigating.”) Most ominous of all: Donald Trump initially took Rosie’s side in this big mess. When Trump starts supporting O’Donnell, you know something is seriously wrong.
