Canadian health professionals head to Guatemala

Many health conditions are easily treated in the developed world. However in poor nations, most health problems never receive treatment and the people live with it the best they can. A pair of health professionals are about to head to Guatemala to treat people with cleft palates, hernias and the like.

From the Nanaimo News Bulletin, writer Rachel Stern tells us about the doctors who will make the trip, Heather Smith and Terri Storey.

In Canada, hospitals are viewed as a place to get better. In Guatemala, many people view them as a place to die.

There are few hospitals in the country. Those that do exist were built with foreign aid in the 1980s and are understaffed, funded and equipped.

The health care that exists is for emergencies and is only accessibile by a lucky few.

The majority of the country’s population lives in poverty and most Guatemalans could go their entire life and never visit a doctor. They often live with disfiguring, painful or life-threatening health conditions that could be easily fixed in Canada’s medical system.

Those conditions pulled on the hearts of two Nanaimo women who felt compelled to act.

Heather Smith and Terri Storey, sterile supply technicians at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, volunteered for Project H.A.N.D.S., an organization that creates medical trips to perform free medical procedures in the country.

Doctors, nurses, sterilizing technicians and translators volunteer their time to help, but each must pay their own way.

The Canadian medical staff work with Guatemalan doctors to provide free surgeries to poor residents. This year the team is going to repair cleft palates and offer genealogical surgeries to correct things like a hernia.
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For more information about Project H.A.N.D.S., please go to www.projecthands.org.

Next time I'm in Toronto...

Now I know what club I'm going to next time I'm in Toronto. The El Mocambo Tavern operates as a fund raiser for the area's homeless. The proceeds from the drinks, food and cover at the bar goes to food and shelter for the city's homeless.

From the Toronto Star, writers Craig and Marc Kielburger describe a typical night at the El Mocambo.

In the basement of the El Mocambo Tavern, Abbas Jahangiri leads a team of volunteers in prayer.

A floor up, his staff is busy. Bartenders stock the fridge with fresh beer and clear away cases of empties from the previous night. An indie band unloads gear under the neon palm tree marking the historic entrance of the music hall where the Rolling Stones and Elvis Costello once played.

Down the stairs past rows of canned goods, volunteers bow their heads among deli meats and chopped tomatoes that will soon become sandwiches for the homeless. Jahangiri asks God to bless the food, the poorest of the poor and those suffering in “Darfur, Darfur, Darfur.”

In just a few hours, a typical night will begin at this less-than-typical bar. By making sandwiches, pouring drinks and playing music, everyone who enters the El Mocambo’s doors works towards the same cause: charity.

“We have about 100 volunteers who come here at different times, after they finish work. It’s such a righteous act,” explains Jahangiri. “This place has such a unique culture. It’s a landmark for culture. I wanted to use the name and the music to push for charity.”

This is no “church basement” volunteer group. Instead, the Toronto music hall works for the volunteers. At the end of the night, when bands pack up and tabs are settled, all of the venue’s profits go straight to work as Jahangiri locks his club and takes the sandwiches to the city’s homeless.

The volunteers are part of Jahangiri’s service organization, Serving Charity. They, along with the venue’s bartenders and bands, are integral to funding the group’s activities. That includes sandwiches for the homeless in Canada, as well as projects in Vietnam, India and the Dominican Republic.

“Everything Serving Charity does is picked up by the El Mocambo,” says Jahangiri. “In that way, we use the aspects of music and fame and finance and turn it into something for charity.”

The shows are like small-scale versions of U2’s 360° tour. Both band and barman delicately mix social message with music to create positive social change. Socially-conscious lyrics can usually be heard from the street and the space is often donated to charities for fundraisers. Patrons also get a discount on the cover charge for donating canned goods.

The many struggles of opening an orphanage in Malawi

Instead of settling down to a comfortable retirement, Charamine Paliwoda sold everything and built an orphanage in Malawi. In her efforts to build the orphanage, she encountered many struggles with bureaucratic red tape, and challenges raising money for the children.

From this Edmonton Journal story that we found at Canada.com, reporter Karen Kleiss details some of the difficulty. But the challenges are many more than our small snippet contains, so he encourage you to read the full inspirational story.

After her husband Benny died in 1999, leaving her alone for the first time in her life, she was lost in a house filled with the remains of their 35 years together.

During those decades, dozens of children had lived in their Edmonton home — five of their own, and more than 60 foster kids. She once found Benny watching a World Vision special, and he said if he could have one wish, it would be for every child in the world to have a home, people to love them, food and an education.

After his death, she bought a cabin outside the city, adopted an old dog and took up working in her daughter's convenience store. The neighbourhood kids started calling her grandma.

Then in the summer of 2003, she met a woman at a friend's house and shared a few conversations with her about the possibility of starting an orphanage in Africa.

"We didn't get into any real great lengths about it," she says. "When I decided to go, I thought, that's exactly what Ben wished for. You can't give every child everything, but certainly you can improve the lives of some, and I think he would like that.
...

Every day was a struggle to navigate mind-boggling bureaucracy.

When the school opened in a rented room in March 2005, nearly 600 children wanted to register. They had room for 60.

After the school opened, Paliwoda returned to Canada with empty pockets. She'd run up her credit cards, called in debts, tapped her savings to the tune of $80,000, taken money from her retirement fund.

Over the next two years Benny's Hope consumed Paliwoda's days, and both she and Britner travelled back and forth between Edmonton and Njewa to keep the school going.

In Canada, Paliwoda sold her house and put much of the proceeds into Benny's Hope. Paliwoda's older sister, Marilyn Summersgill, became chairwoman of the board, and a small group of volunteers coalesced around her to raise money.

On July 27, 2007, they started building. Chief Njewa gave them land, and village men and women came to clear the brush. Volunteers made bricks. Paliwoda hauled cement bags with the car, two at a time. They had no electricity and few tools; the cement was mixed by hand in holes dug in the ground. From the pile of bricks emerged a three-room schoolhouse with bright white windows and space for a garden in front.

In September 2007, twenty-four women and one man came from Ontario to put the roof on the school, build desks and put up the finishing touches.

The grand opening was held on March 7, 2008.

A moving story of a Canadian athlete visiting a malnourished child in Uganda

Canadian Olympic rower Jane Rumball is involved in the charity Right To Play. Part of her duties as ambassador takes her to under developed countries to visit with the kids that the charity helps. "Right To Play" uses sports as a tool for development in the children.

Jane Runball related her recent visit to Uganda to columnist Bruce Hallihan of The Daily Gleaner.

"The scene was one I will never forget: crowds of joyful, boisterous African children laughing and clapping, giggling at the awkward muzungu Olympic athlete who couldn't match their rhythm to save her life!

"It all happened under the unbelievably blue Ugandan sky, with rich red earth and lush greenery surrounding. It was surreal. For a moment, we probably all forgot where we were: Nakivale refugee camp, home to almost 50,000 displaced persons who had to flee their countries in order to survive. Immense poverty, rampant diseases, and unspoken stories of conflict.

"Nothing here seemed to faze the children, though ... for a brief moment in time, everyone at the school in Nakivale forgot about conflict, hunger, poverty, and sickness. Instead, we laughed, danced, got rich African soil all over our faces and bodies."
...

Rumball wrote more, but this part stuck with me the most:

"At a particularly difficult stop along the way in Nakivale, I found a little friend who I will never forget. She was a beautiful but severely malnourished girl who held tightly onto my hand throughout all the games.

"She had severely infected bumps on the side of her head, but still tried to dress up with earrings that looked like they were fashioned out of paper clips. Once she realized that she could hold my hand, she started slowing to rub her face on my arm.

"For a brief moment I wanted to pull away for fear of somehow getting that infection transmitted to my own skin ... but then I realized that most people probably do draw back and make her feel bad.

"I wanted to be different and let her just stay put beside me for the rest of the session," Rumball said. "It ended up being a very special moment for both of us, I think. She started to get into the games and laughed and danced like the other children around her. "Right To Play's tagline is 'when children play, the world wins'. Most of us would probably agree with that intuitively, but it came to life for me in the Ugandan refugee camp called Nakivale."

Attack victims still head back to Kenya

An impressive story in the Edmonton Sun tells of a couple of missionaries who are heading back to Kenya. It's the fact that they are heading back after being beaten and left for dead which is impressive.

John and Eloise Bergen are expanding efforts to help widows and orphans in Kenya. The story by the Sun's Dave Dormer describes the attack, and what the missionaries are doing with their return trip.

Four months after arriving to help build orphanages near the town of Kitale, in March 2008, the couple was attacked by a group of nine men -including two guards assigned to protect them.

John was beaten with machetes and left in a bush - suffering several broken bones and dozens of serious cuts - while Eloise was attacked inside their home.

After several surgeries and months spent recuperating with family in Canada and the U.S., the couple began fundraising once again in August and returned to Kitale in January, not only to testify against the men who attacked them, but to continue helping people they say desperately need it.

"We've been able to move on purchasing two properties of land for the purpose of orphanages, schools, wells and gardens," said John.

"One of the parcels is a five-acre piece close to the seven-acre farm (where) we already have a number of boys off the streets."

And on that parcel, workers recently completed digging irrigational channels, which John said will be instrumental in lifting people living in the area out of poverty and despair.

A respectful way to raise money

An Ethiopian who lives in Canada is trying to raise money to send a donated ambulance back to his home country. Today's Toronto Star has a story about Samuel Getachew, who doesn't like to exploit the poor people of his country to raise funds. Instead, he has been using cultural events to raise the money.

Getachew explains the need for the ambulance to Toronto Star reporter John Goddard.

"Using an ambulance is a luxury in Ethiopia," he says. "Most people ride to the hospital in taxis or wait for a bus. In villages, to transport very sick people, they even use a donkey."

The City of Ottawa typically sells five used ambulances a year for $5,000 each. The city once gave an ambulance to Ghana.

"I have known (Getachew) for quite a while from some of the other work he has done around the city," says Ottawa city Councillor Diane Deans.

"When he wants to do something, he puts a lot of energy behind the project, and I felt it was one the city could and should support."

Last summer, Getachew visited Ethiopia and met Abebech Gobena, a woman he intends to nominate for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1984, Gobena adopted two children left orphans by the famine and now runs orphanage schools serving more than 5,000 children. Videos of her work are on YouTube.

"I'm going to send the ambulance to her headquarters in Addis Ababa and she will decide what village to send it to," Getachew says. "She has made a commitment that it won't be used only for the middle class."

Friends of Ethiopia must still raise $6,000 toward shipping costs. Getachew says anybody interested can call him at 647-210-5538.

Fund raising for Madagascar schools

A fund raiser was profiled in the website BC Local News from British Columbia. Luke King is a part of the group Rose Madagascar, who raises money for schools and food for the children of the country.

Sage Birchwater of the Williams Lake Tribune explains Mr. King's involvement in the charity.

At the Tatla Lake Christmas Craft Fair last month, Luke King, 26, had a table selling children’s books, calendars and woven bags made from recycled plastic.

The items, he explained, were all part of a project to raise funds for a small village in Madagascar.

When King, who grew up on a ranch in the West Branch Valley south of Tatla Lake, graduated from the UBC geological engineering program two-and-a-half years ago, he and four university friends went to Madagascar.

Three of whom are now doctoral students, one is a law student, and King is an engineer.

“I went there in the summer of 2006 for a couple of months,” King says.

He says two members of his party were there for eight months.

“We hung out in Tsarahonenana, a community where there was no school,” King continues. “And we were introduced to a gentleman who had a development plan for the community.”

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A month ago King and his friends formally joined with Rose Charities to give their project a stronger organizational base.

“Rose Charities works all over the world,” King says.

He says Rose Charities Madagascar is a Canadian group dedicated to helping children and communities in need in Madagascar.

“Rose Charities works with a variety of Malagasy-run projects that reach out to abandoned, orphaned and underprivileged children that would otherwise be living in poverty,” King says.

We will put a link to Rose Charities up in the "Get Involved Links" later today.

After volunteering in Guatemala, a Langley resident is in Kabala to help women receive microcredit Small loans, big opportunities

from the Langley Times

Bigger is better. At least, that’s the mentality of those in the developed world. But in developing countries, small starts are helping poor entrepreneurs to expand their enterprises.

Most people in Canada have never heard of microcredit loans, but there are an estimated 150 million microcredit borrowers worldwide in many different developing countries. At its core, microcredit is simply the lending of small amounts of money to the poor at reasonable interest rates. As trivial as the concept may seem, it is anything but.

My current assignment here in Kabala, a small town in northern Sierra Leone, is to work alongside local staff to develop a microcredit program as part of CAUSE Canada’s business development training.

The training is for women who currently have a small economic activity that contributes to household income.

The initial loan is small, around $50CDN, but for these entrepreneurs, a small amount of money can go a long way: with the loan, women are able to purchase additional quantities of vegetables, cloth, rice or whatever they may sell.

The morning of Thursday, Aug. 14, was the first disbursement day of the program. I awoke before the sun at 6 a.m. as we needed to get to the communities where we were disbursing before the women go to the farms, as August is the busiest month for farming around Kabala.

It is also the rainiest, and if I was looking for a good omen when I awoke, I was not going to get it — the rain was just as heavy as it was when I went to sleep the night before.

After meeting with the CAUSE Loan Officer, we ventured out the first community, Sarakoh. As we arrived, we saw several women gathered under a shelter along with other community members. The rain did not dampen the smiles on their faces or the excitement in their eyes. For all of these women, it was the first time they would ever receive a loan.

The money was greeted with cheers and singing, a sight not seen back in financial institutions in Canada. The cash disbursed here was more than bills and coins; it was a chance to invest, an opportunity to grow, an invitation for change.

In many developing countries, banks have excluded the poor from accessing financial services. Through large minimum loan sizes, requiring illiterate applicants to fill in forms, and requiring loans to be guaranteed with collateral, the poor are unable to get a step-up — or out — of their current circumstance. Furthermore, many regions have no access to financial institutions at all.

In Africa less than 10 per cent of the population has an account at a financial institution. In both of these cases, lump sums of money have traditionally been provided in informal ways, one of which is through community moneylenders who charge high interest rates for loans.

Microcredit eliminates these barriers to accessing capital and charges interest rates that do not exploit the borrower’s circumstances. Because material collateral is not possible in most microlending situations, collateral is created through the formation of solidarity groups.

These groups consist of usually four to six women who mutually agree to guarantee the loans of the others. Believe it or not, an exceptionally high amount of the loans are paid back. Most microcredit loan programs have repayment rates of 95-98 per cent.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Ontario Group rallies for Rwanda

from the Simcoe Reformer

By Barbara Simpson

Young Rwandan adults are mastering carpentry, tailoring and farming -- the very skills needed to build lives for themselves -- thanks to the Port Ryerse community.

A six-member committee in the community fundraised $58,000 to help build a vocational school in the remote village of Vunga in 2007. Now they're back to fundraising again to help upgrade the school with new equipment, in addition to offsetting the cost of tuition for 30 needy students and salaries for 11 staff members.

The 3R Road Rally for Rwanda featuring vintage vehicles and wine tasting was held in Port Ryerse on Sunday afternoon. Drivers took off with their hot rods around the community to search for clues in an Amazing Race style adventure. Their travels led them to the answers -- as well as playing cards for a later poker game -- spread out along the route. When drivers returned, they were treated to hors d'oeuvres and local wine from Florence Estates Winery. There was also a small silent auction of donated prizes valued at $2,200.

But the purpose behind the lavish event wasn't lost between the fancy cars and the bubbly. A slideshow of photographs from the yet-to-be-named committee's Rwandan travels played in the small Port Ryerse church.

"That's one of my favourite pictures," said committee member JoAnne Easton, pointing to a snapshot of young children huddled together.

It was Easton's 2006 trip to Rwanda with the Sharing of Ministries Aboard organization that spurred the interest in helping build a vocational school. The mass genocide has left 100,000 men in jail since 1995, leaving their families in a "double whammy" situation -- having to look after both themselves and their imprisoned relatives, explained Easton's husband Bob.

"It's the family's responsibility to look after extended family in jail," said Bob, chair of the committee.

That's why vocational schools are desperately needed in struggling Rwanda, to educate the abandoned women and children who desperately need jobs to fill their families' bellies.

There are now 87 students enrolled in the school with a whopping 60 per cent of them women. Farming teachers even take the time to visit their students' home farms where they offer them advice.

"What hit me is that they increased their yield 10 per cent," Easton said.

The next step is ensuring that the school can flourish with better equipment, say, advanced tools for the carpentry and tailoring classes, while also simply maintaining its operational budget. The cost of new equipment is running about $50,000 with an additional $40,000 required for simply keeping the school up and running, said Rev. Tony Bouwmeester, a committee member.

They were hoping to raise about $5,000 at Sunday's road rally towards their expenses.

But what still strikes Easton to this day is the spirit of the Rwandan people. She had the chance to visit several churches run by dedicated leaders during her first visit. She was amazed at how the locals rose to their feet to sing and dance during their church services. This despite living in poverty with their loved ones either jailed or dead.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Local high school students an inspiration to all

from The Bugle Observer

Jeanne Langille is publisher of The Bugle-Observer.

If you have ever had a jaded moment in which you found yourself lamenting about the future of mankind, I've got just the cure for you.

Talk to some of the more than two dozen students involved in a new community group called Students Taking Action Today (STAT).

Headed by the tremendously engaging teacher Trish Foster, these young people are all students at Carleton North High School. After class, you could say, without exaggeration, that they are working to change the world.

The new group had its roots in Mrs. Foster's world issues class. Then it spilled out of the classroom, out of regular school hours and into an extracurricular activity. Essentially, the students decided they wanted to dedicate some of their free time to raise awareness about global issues throughout the school and the entire community.

Mrs. Foster explains their motives best:

"The students felt that they were learning about important issues, and they wanted to make sure other students in the school had the same opportunity. It was Grade 12 student Autumn Smith who really pushed that we should have an extracurricular activity devoted to awareness regarding global issues."

So these young people are going in where many people would be inclined to throw up their hands in despair. No issue, whether it's providing clean water for poverty-stricken countries, working to provide medical clinics in under-developed countries or focusing attention on the spread of malaria, is too daunting for them to tackle.

They gather facts through research and through bringing in guest speakers with expertise on global issues. Then they get down to work. They organize fundraisers to make a donation to World Vision to provide medical clinics, immunization shots and clean water for countries in need.

They want to make sure everyone cares, not just them, so they spend some time engaging their fellow students and hanging posters about global issues around their school.

They ignited a lot of their colleagues into enthusiastically participating in Earth Hour, World Malaria Day, Earth Day and Habitat for Humanity.

Autumn inspires me when she explains her plan of action.

"We should focus on making a difference in the world one small step at a time – STAT gives students the opportunity to do that."

When I see the work of Autumn and her colleagues in Carleton County, I am so inspired about the future of our world. They set an example to the frustrated, the tired, the apathetic.

By the way, if you need to get your car washed, let them do it in support on their projects on May 31. The location will be announced in an upcoming edition of the Bugle-Observer once the students have selected it.

The world can be a better place and it takes a group of high school students to remind us how we can change it, one step at a time. What a wonderful example they set as role models for youth in our community!

Engineers Without Borders

from Western News

By Becky Blue

Profile of an intern in Malawi
Students often arrive at school with the notion that a good post-secondary education will broaden their horizons and open their minds to new ideas and opportunities.

Still, much of the growth and learning at university happens within the sheltered confines of the lecture hall and the boundaries of the campus. Less common is the opportunity for students to take their learning off-site, where they could stretch their limits even further, and gain a whole new perspective on the world.

Some students at The University of Western Ontario take it upon themselves to include these kinds of experiences in their formal education, through internships, co-ops and other ventures.

Western Engineering is home to one student group, known as Engineers Without Borders (Western chapter), that takes as part of their mandate to routinely send students overseas to volunteer time and skills in select parts of Africa, including Burkina Faso, Ghana, Zambia and Malawi.

Marika Marty, a 23-year-old, fourth-year Mechanical Engineering student, is one such person.

Last year, as a volunteer with Engineers Without Borders (and also vice-president of the Western Chapter), she spent four months between May and August in Malawi working on various environmentally-oriented projects.

And while the focus of Marty’s trip was to help the residents of Malawi improve their quality of life in practical ways, she came away with something more intangible – a whole new outlook on what it means to live in North America, and as part of the global village.

“I think one of the most powerful things I came to fully understand is that it’s pure chance that I was born into a Western country instead of Ghana, or Malawi,” says Marty. “And there’s no reason the people in these countries should have to struggle so much to survive, especially since we know first hand that life without this struggle is possible.”

“We need to understand that we now live in a world driven by global economic forces. We are all connected to each other, more directly than we even realize, at the same time the extreme polarization between the quality of life in one society versus another highlights the injustices that exist in this system. We need to start asking ourselves, are we OK with living in a world where an unlimited supply of Coke’s Fanta products can reach so many isolated villages, but medical supplies don’t?”

The students who are involved with Engineers Without Borders (EWB) make it their business to be aware of this global dynamic, and then they try to effect change in two ways.

Along with working to promote public awareness of the broader issues within the community, they also regularly send people like Marty into some of the most underdeveloped areas of the world to try and create change in simple but powerful ways.

The organization’s motto is “Simple Technology. Dramatic results”, which is a direct reference to what they try to accomplish when overseas.

Marty spent time on a reforestation initiative, where she helped the residents of Malawi understand the value of their natural resources, and how to manage and protect them for the future.

She taught local women the science behind the burning of wood, so that they could improve the efficiency of the burning, and in turn buy less wood, do less physical labour and enjoy greater health benefits as a result. And all the while she was gaining a much clearer picture of how poverty is largely a result of circumstance, and that small solutions can make all the difference.

“I left with an understanding that people may be poor, but they’re working their butts off. The root causes of poverty are complicated, and there is no quick fix solution to break the cycle,” she says.

“There are, however, simple skills, and technologies that when appropriately incorporated into a community’s economic, cultural, and social context can have a dramatic impact on helping people get up on those first few rungs of the ladder. For instance a simple manual pump near a water source can allow a farmer to harvest an entire second crop in the dry season, effectively doubling their yearly produce and increasing food security for their family as well as their yearly income.”

Helping these experiences to sink in was the fact that Marty was completely immersed in her environment. While on the internship she stayed with a host family who lived in a home with no running water, electricity or modern conveniences of any kind.

She ate the traditional food of the region, including the staple nsima, beans, and canola leaves with tomatoes and red onions. Marty recalls having a difficult time with how to respond when the locals would ask her what the staple food is in Canada. In the months that she has been back at home, even these small things have altered the way she looks at her own life here in this country.

Going overseas with EWB is at least a 16 month commitment. Having already trained for and completed her own internship, Marty is currently involved in training and preparing the next group of students who will travel to Africa this summer. Initially the volunteers travel as a group.

But once they arrive at their destination, they are dispersed individually across the region, with each person working with different local organizations and on different projects.

Marty will soon graduate with her engineering degree, and she has already decided that this is the kind of work she wants to do in the future and will go where she is most needed.

“I’m pretty committed at this point,” she says. “Wherever I can be the most effective is where I will go.”

No matter where she ends up, Marty will continue to educate and inform those around her as to how their individual choices can indeed change the world.

Local woman recounts experiences encountering HIV/AIDS in Zambia

from the Caledon Citizen

By Becca Smith

As an intern working in Lusaka through a partnership with the Victoria International Development Education Association and Women for Change, I see the impact of HIV/AIDS every day in Zambia.

While people living with HIV/AIDS make up only an estimated 0.3 per cent of the Canadian population, in Zambia approximately 20 per cent of the country is infected, and every individual is affected by the virus. Zambia only makes up 0.17 per cent of the global population, yet it bears three per cent of the world's HIV/AIDS burden. According to World Bank statistics from November 2007, for every HIV-positive individual in southern Africa that receives anti-retroviral treatment, six others are newly infected. AIDS has insinuated itself into every aspect of Zambian society; one cannot discuss poverty reduction, agriculture, education, housing, labour issues, etc. without considering the effects of HIV/AIDS.

On Dec. 1, I had the opportunity to participate in World AIDS Day activities in Lusaka.

I had spent the previous week working with local high school students and representatives of the Irish non-governmental organization 80:20 to create images and paint a mural about HIV/AIDS, to be put on display in an art gallery on World AIDS Day. The creativity, energy, and talent of the teenagers was inspiring.

On World AIDS Day, I spent the morning marching in a parade through downtown Lusaka with other staff from Women for Change, as well as several thousand other representatives of various organizations, companies, and governmental bodies. It was a very moving experience to see so many people walking in solidarity and making a public statement against a disease that is so often hidden and treated as a taboo subject within society.

In Zambia, there are many euphemisms for having AIDS; often, people will just say that someone is "sick," and it is understood that this means they are HIV positive. It is also common to attribute a death to diabetes, respiratory problems, or depression - anything rather than admitting a loved one had AIDS. The shame of revealing a person's HIV status contributes to the spread of misinformation and makes it even more challenging to talk publicly about the disease, even though it is ravaging the country. Arecent report from the U.S. Census Bureau noted that the average life expectancy in Zambia in 2006 was 38 years when taking HIV/AIDS into account, but was 55 years when HIV/AIDS was excluded.

Recently at a Women for Change staff meeting, we had a discussion about how the frequent need for employees to take leave days in order to attend funerals is negatively impacting productivity at work. I cannot imagine a conversation like this taking place in Canada, during which staff debate whether or not it is acceptable to leave work to attend a funeral or burial for the death of someone outside of your immediate family. To put your loved ones in a hierarchy may seem insensitive, but the tragic reality is that there are simply too many deaths and an endless number of funerals to attend in Zambia.

Gender inequalities strongly influence the pattern of infection and contribute to the spread of HIV. Data from the National HIV/AIDS Council of Zambia shows that the HIV prevalence rate for females age 14 to 19 is six times the rate for males of the same age group. Policies that promote marriage as an HIV preventative ignore the startling fact that married women in sub-Saharan Africa are increasingly vulnerable to HIV infection. The organization Human Rights Watch has found that in Zambia, HIV infection rates among young married women are 10 per cent higher than those among unmarried women of the same age. Gender inequalities at the household level mean that many married women do not have the ability to negotiate safer sex or to demand fidelity from their husbands. There are a number of reasons for this: early marriages of girls to much older men, widespread violence against women, sexual abuse of girls, economic dependence on men. Traditional practices can also contribute to the abuse of women's rights and subsequent higher rates of HIV infection among women. One such custom is the paying of lobola, or bride price, often seen as the equivalent of buying a wife, which makes it extremely difficult for a woman to leave an abusive or dangerous relationship.

The stigmatization of people who are HIV positive continues in Zambia, much as it does in Canada. While studying at Queen's University, I volunteered for two years with the local HIV/AIDS Regional Services (HARS) in Kingston. Clients of HARS have access to services and medical treatment that most people in southern Africa will never have the ability to enjoy. Still, these Canadians were often subject to discrimination and were marginalized within society, compounded by other factors such as poverty and substance abuse. In both countries, revealing your HIV positive status involves risking social exclusion and discrimination in many forms.

It is easy to become numbed by the abundance of negative statistics and stories of suffering, but there are also positive signs that give hope for the future. President Levy Mwanawasa and Zambian civil society members have worked actively to make responses to the HIV/AIDS crisis more comprehensive, and to mainstream HIV/AIDS into all aspects of national development plans. There are major efforts being made to scale up access to anti-retroviral treatments in Zambia, to expand usage of voluntary testing and counseling services, to educate people about prevention, and to support vulnerable groups such as orphans. Recently, Elizabeth Mutaka, the executive director of the Zambia National AIDS Network (ZNAN) was appointed as the new United Nations HIV/AIDS special envoy for Africa, a position previously held by Canadian Stephen Lewis.

My experiences with people living with HIV/AIDS in different countries reinforce just how privileged we are as Canadians. I have been involved in community education work on HIV/AIDS in Zambia, Nicaragua, and Guyana, where the need is much greater yet resources are scarce in the face of growing demand. The World AIDS Campaign slogan, Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise has special meaning to me now, when I think of the teenagers I worked with and how they and other Zambian youth deserve a better future.

Becca Smith is a caledon native working through a partnership with the Victoria International Development Education Association and Women for Change.

Woman helps orphans; Notre-Dame alumnus works to ease effects of poverty in Tanzania

from The Sudbury Star

Posted By Rachel Punch

A 10-year-old Tanzanian named Michael has inspired Sudburian Ashley Pawlowicz to raise funds to bring education to children in the African country.

Pawlowicz, 24, met Michael while she was volunteering at an orphanage in Mwanza, Tanzania last year. The boy scored 295 out of 300 on a test determining if he could get into private school. In private school, he would have classes with about 30 students as opposed to the 150 in the public school he was attending.

Despite his high marks, he did not have the $360 needed to pay the annual tuition. Pawlowicz and other volunteers pooled their money so Michael could go to school.

"We all pitched in. It was such a waste for him to be at the other school," Pawlowicz said.

Now, the College Notre-Dame graduate is raising money on her own to help sponsor other children to attend school.

The $360 entitles a child to uniforms, stationary, breakfast and lunch, as well as a spot in a classroom with a maximum of 30 students.

Pawlowicz was in Tanzania from April to December and plans to return in late February. So far, she has enough support to send 10 children to school.

While she was in Tanzania with Volunteer Africa and Kids Aid Tanzania, she helped teach nursery-school-aged children from two orphanages.

With such big classes, children need the help of volunteer teachers or else their grades slip.

"We were there to help try to get them ahead of the class, because if you don't have high enough grades you can't continue to secondary school," she said.

One of the orphanages had 48 children when she arrived. Now, they have 87.

"They are constantly packing kids in, sleeping four in a bed," she said.

Many of the children lost their parents to AIDS.

"In the town that I was living in, one out of three people had AIDS," she said.

When she goes back, Pawlowicz hopes to find a job and continue volunteering at the orphanages indefinitely.

In Tanzania, Pawlowicz lives in a cement house with mice, cockroaches and the occasional visit from a scorpion. She eats mostly rice, beans and vegetables, which is prepared on a kerosene stove.

The poverty is evident as you walk down the street, she said.

"Children run up to you asking you for money wearing torn clothing. They are five years old living on he street," she said.

Pawlowicz said she does it to see the smile on the children's faces. "It gives them hope that somebody else is thinking about them. It lets them know they are not alone," she said.

Her trip to Tanzania wasn't Pawlowicz's first time volunteering in another country.

She made two trips to Haiti while she was in high school to volunteer at Mother Theresa's Nutrition Centre and an AIDS hospital. "I wanted to help kids that were less fortunate," she said.

Her first trip to Haiti was a bit shocking.

"It was a culture shock. It was unbelievable the poverty they lived in, but they were still such happy people," Pawlowicz said.

Pawlowicz knew she wanted to go somewhere else after earning her psychology degree at Laurentian University.

"When I finished university I needed to try something new. I needed to go back and help some more," she said. "I always said I wanted to go to Africa.

"I had no idea why."

The organization she travelled to Africa with has since pulled out of the orphanages, so Pawlowicz is going back on her own.

She has several friends in Tanzania and wants to keep helping the children.

To learn more about Pawlowicz or to donate, e-mail her at ashleypawlowicz@hotmail.com.