Anita Creamer: Auburn-based nonprofit encourages self-sufficiency in Africa

from The Sacramento Bee

By Anita Creamer - acreamer@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Starvation. Poverty. Disease. AIDS orphans.

When Americans see the deep problems of the developing world – and Africa in particular – they want to reach out and help.

But the point of Village Care International, Jennifer Clancy is saying, is self-sufficiency: Encouraging empowerment from within instead of continued reliance on outsiders.

"With poverty comes hopelessness," says Clancy, 41, executive director of the Auburn-based nonprofit. "When you see that in Africa, the degree of hopelessness is overwhelming.

"There are things you can do with the resources you have. You don't have to depend on outside aid from America. You don't have to wait for your government to come, because your government isn't coming.

"Many of our villages are four hours outside urban areas. They don't have government support programs. There's a need for community interdependence."

It's a beautiful spring morning at the Woodland home Clancy shares with her husband and daughter, a world removed from the 15 remote, impoverished Nigerian villages she visited earlier this year on behalf of Village Care International.

Founded in 2005, the organization is dedicated to helping African villagers help themselves.

Its first programs are taking hold in Nigeria, which has a history of relative independence from aid projects led by outsiders – the U.S. Agency for International Development, for example, and missionaries, as well as the more recent phenomenon of "volun-tourism" travelers who spend vacation time in the developing world constructing houses or sanitation projects.

"We talked to people in village leadership," says Clancy. "They told us so many stories over the past 30 years about wonderful projects being funded and implemented by missionaries who came in and started a hospital or a school.

"And nobody living there thought, 'You know, we should assume responsibility for this ourselves and use our community resources to fund it.'

"Every program dies sooner or later. The money runs out, and the program disappears. But there's been a belief that someone will come back again if the villagers wait long enough."

AIDS changed everything: African orphans are languishing by the millions, and villagers can't afford to wait for outsiders to return.

The AIDS crisis in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is especially severe. About 3 million people there are infected with the AIDS virus, and almost 1 million children have been orphaned by the disease.

Local leaders understand the need to take care of their own – to provide education, nutrition, health care, sanitation and economic security to their orphans and, by extension, to the whole village.

Village Care International's Nigerian liaison, Phillips Elisha, has encouraged participating communities to pool their resources and start small businesses, make products to sell in street markets and find ways to support their children.

"In most of the villages I visited," says Clancy, "300 people greeted us. You don't see 300 people come to community events in California. It was incredible. The communities have taken ownership."

Teams are also recruiting villages in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania for the program. Clancy plans two more trips to Africa this year, taking volunteers and donors with her.

Her background is in social work, community development and mental health advocacy, and she ran two other nonprofits before joining Village Care International last year.