Candelaria Rodriguez may not just be the oldest living Cuban, she may be the oldest living person in the world. Today, she turned 127. Check out the info below, via Euronews…

Cuba has been celebrating the birthday of a woman said to be the oldest not just on the island but possibly in the world.

Candelaria Rodriguez, or ‘Candulia’ as she is affectionately known by her family, has just turned 127.

When she was born in 1885, Cuba was still a Spanish colony and slavery had yet to be abolished on the island. The birth of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro was still 42 years away.

Local schoolchildren joined the family party – in the appropriately named Granma province – which included Candulia’s 82-year-old youngest son and six great-great-grandchildren.

Read the full story and see a video of Mrs. Rodriguez here.

Asho has hooked up with the Bronx Museum to present a FREE screening of the critically-acclaimed documentary The Black Power Mixtape 1967 – 1973. Check out the info on the event below…

RSVP to the event on Facebook by clicking here:

More info after the jump…

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Great story from GOOD, highlighting Fonkoze (Kreyol for “the Shoulder to Shoulder Foundation,”) which is helping Haitians rebuild their finances through banking services. Check out the details below…..

…When a 7.0 earthquake rattled already-struggling Haiti two years ago, banking services crumbled to a halt. “ATMs don’t get refilled in disasters,” says Carine Roenen, Fonkoze’s director. “Access to cash is an overlooked aspect of relief.”

Commercial banks were closed for weeks, but Haitians in the U.S. and elsewhere desperately wanted to send money back to family members. Fonkoze had always offered remittances; giving clients access to that money through at least one re-opened Port-au-Prince branch was the first goal.

Even that was a challenge. “We were pretty badly hit,” Roenen says. “We lost our three buildings in the metropolitan area. Five of our staff members died.” Plus, the bank vault was so damaged you could walk into it through a hole in the wall. Hundreds of Fonkoze staff members were living outside in the streets, but a week later, the bank re-opened.

Remittances poured in, so many that the group had to fly in $2 million in cash to pay them. While the country’s central bank was still closed, gas stations had re-opened. With nowhere to put money, Fonkoze stepped up and took deposits, doling the cash out as remittances—all the while keeping the hole in the vault hush-hush. “It earned us a lot of new clients,” Roenen says. Filling that need for cash in a crisis helped her group grow 20 percent since the quake, despite crumbled branches and displaced employees….

Read the full story here: A Haitian Bank Thrives After the Quake by Helping the Poor – Business – GOOD.