Attacking Malaria by Saving Lives With $2 Bednets

Malaria kills over a million people a year, yes one million! Last month, I walked out of my hotel and saw my local friend Steven lying under a palm tree, wracked in sweat and shaking violently. I didn’t have to ask him what the problem was; it was obvious he was in the midst of a malaria attack. Watching someone in the throes of an attack is a gruesome experience. Fortunately for Steven, I was able to help, but millions of others are not so lucky. After the one-celled malaria plasmodia have entered the body through the probiscus of a female mosquito, they travel to the victim’s liver, where they burrow themselves into liver cells. Over the course of a week, these parasites eat and multiply until they burst out of the cells and enter the bloodstream. Soon, the victim is gripped by anxiety, as though the body knows its immune system has been attacked. A sever fever and violent shivering are the body’s attempts to increase body temperature, in an attempt to kill off the parasites with heat. A sudden onset of chills quickly morphs into an intense sensation of bitter cold, even more traumatic for Africans that have never felt a cold winter’s chill before. They shake so hard and are so cold they often beg to be covered or smothered. Those without anyone to care for them or wrap them in blankets or coats simply collapse onto the ground, where they lie in a half-conscious state of convulsion. Hours later, when these painful, rhythmic waves of cold and pain have passed, the victim enters a debilitating period of exhaustion and weakness. After the attack has ended, the person is wracked by sweat, fever, pain and nausea – sometimes for days on end. Children not strong enough to withstand this battle (especially those without access to water or medical care) often perish at this point. Malnourished people are especially vulnerable to the ravages of malaria, as the disease slowly wears them down to nothing.

Preventing Unwanted Pregnancy and Environmental Degradation in Senegal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK9dU_scooQ
“It’s so hard to feed all of these hungry bellies,” I am told by Adama, a Senegalese mother of seven. We hear about the problems posed by overpopulation, but often cannot comprehend how this issue effects people on an individual level. Coming face-to-face with a malnourished family of nine is heart-wrenching. Due to the absence of reproductive health clinics, a lack of low-cost contraceptives and high infant-mortality rates, parents here are giving birth to very large families (here in Senegal the average is about six). Large family sizes place unnecessary burden on the parents to provide food and the environment to provide firewood and water.

By 2050, world population is projected to reach nine billion, a 38% jump from today's 6.5 billion; most of this global explosion will be heavily concentrated in Latin America, Africa and South Asia. The threat is especially serious here in Africa, where the population is expected to surge from 900 million to almost two billion.

In the developing nations that have effectively promoted contraception, the key to success has been the empowerment of women. Mothers need to be educated to make informed decisions, as research proves that even a few years of education has a great impact on controlling fertility rates. In fact, hundreds of millions of couples around the world want – but do not have access to – family planning practices; it is estimated that one third of the population growth in the world is the result of incidental or unwanted pregnancies. Over the past few months in West Africa, I have witnessed these realities first-hand, so I mobilized my resources, found an incredible local partner organization and created a plan to tackle both issues simultaneously.

The first step was enlisting the help of Tostan (http://www.tostan.org), an amazingly-effective NGO (non-governmental organization) here in Senegal. What drew me to them, besides the accolades they have earned from the international community, is the success they have had in creating community-based development councils. As many know, too much of international development is conducted in a top-down manner, with planners in Western capitals deciding what people in the developing world need to improve their lives. This approach is fraught with peril, as cultural realities and local customs are often overlooked or ignored altogether, resulting in failed projects and a growing mistrust from the locals of the very organizations that were created to help them. Fortunately, Molly Melching, founder of Tostan (and native Chicagoan), recognized this fact and decided to base her development approach around the training and mobilization of Senegalese women to become pro-active agents of change in their communities. Each village adopted into Tostan’s network undergo a 30-month Community Empowerment Program (CEP) wherein local women undergo a rigorous training session to improve their reading skills and are then instilled with strategies for leadership, decision-making, income-generation, communication, budgeting, social mobilization, etc. Upon completion, each village’s Community Management Committee (CMC) meets to assess their community’s needs and then seeks an effective means to affect the positive change. After the creation of these CMC’s, local communities have mobilized to build latrines (drastically reducing the occurrence of infectious disease), dug wells (to improve water access and quality) and built local health clinics (to provide health care in regions that previously had no such access). Tostan has also facilitated the creation of a 1,500 village-wide Tostan’s Empowered Communities Network (ECN) which allows these small communities to work together, pass along lessons of success and share their knowledge and fresh ideas with each other. Utilizing this network to launch a project ensures that the innovative ideas will be effectively spread on a regional basis.

As many know, addressing population control is a touchy subject, as there are many religious overtones involved. Unfortunately, these taboos have prevented the dissemination of contraceptives as well as ideas that would seriously help control the population explosion many countries are saddled with.

In addition, millions of women are seriously injured or die during childbirth, a statistic particularly troubling here in sub-Saharan Africa, where one in sixteen mothers will die giving birth in their lifetime.

Fortunately, there is an innovative new approach that is proving to yield results: CycleBeads, which is a pregnancy prevention methods using the Standard Days Method. Basically, these beads, in the shape of a necklace, provide a tool for women to keep track of their menstrual cycle and avoid unprotected sex during their fertile 6-day period of the month. The United Nations Family Planning Association describes it as “a portable, durable, and renewable calendar, the ring contains 32 coloured beads that represent each day in a woman’s monthly reproductive cycle. For a woman with a regular menstrual cycle that falls between 26 and 32 days in length, CycleBeads can identify when she is most likely to conceive. During that time, she and her partner either abstain from sex or use another form of protection.” More effective than a diaphragm and nearly as effective as condoms, this tool was developed by the Institute of Reproductive Health at Georgetown University and has been distributed worldwide to address over-population.

What really excites me about the use of these beads (except for the fact that they glow-in-the-dark for those dark intimate moments) is the fact that there is no religious objection to their use here. Senegal is 95% Muslim, but everyone here, including the imams, have given their support. This is especially important, as birth control pills and contraceptive injections have (erroneously or not) been blamed for health complications among local women, but there is no mistrust towards the beads, as the women understand this is simply a way for them to become familiar with the natural cycle of their bodies. To see a video featuring Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers in Haiti demonstrating how these beads work: http://www.4real.com/tv/details.asp?pageid=12

After speaking with the regional directors of Tostan, 100 Friends has donated $500 for the purchase and distribution of 500 of these CycleBeads to be distributed to fifty women in ten separate villages. From there, the techniques will be passed along to even more communities through Tostan’s Empowered Communities Network (ECN).
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Another issue that demands action is global warming and deforestation. One of the most simple and effective means of dealing with these twin issues is improving the wood stoves that people in West Africa use to cook with. Open fires cause many burns and health problems: over 1.6 million people die every year from respiratory diseases caused by smoke from wood stoves. On an environmental scale, wood fires are very inefficient in terms of energy and the soot from these fires contributes greatly to global warming, as the black noxious particles in the smoke increase the atmospheric temperature. Coupled with overpopulation, the collection of firewood is stripping the local environment of its trees and resources, which leads to desertification and infertile soil which in turn makes these families’ situations even more precarious.
Fortunately, there is a very simple and cost-effective way to address these problems: the installation of more efficient woodstoves. Instead of cooking over an open fire, round one foot-tall shelters (shaped perfectly for the pots the families cook with) are easily built from local materials. By surrounding the flame to reduce heat loss and the effect of wind, these stoves become much more effective.

Working through Tostan, 100 Friends is providing $500 to fund a training session for ten villages. Two community leaders from each village will be given a 2-day training session to provide the instruction and materials needed to install these improved stoves in their communities. Each of these twenty leaders will then train ten other community leaders within Tostan’s Empowered Communities Network (ECN) to build and maintain the stoves.

So in less than a year, this $500 investment will have resulted in the construction of 200 of these improved woodstoves. Every family utilizing these new stoves will use 66% less firewood, from 6 to 2 logs a day. They will also save about 2 hours in meal preparation due to the greater heat efficiency generated by the improved stoves. To put that into context, if each family uses 4 less logs per day, multiplied by 200 stoves, and 365 days, that equals 292,000 logs of wood saved per year! This will ease the deforestation threatening these villages´ survival. As for the time saved with these more heat-efficient stoves, 200 families x 2 hours per day x 365 work days is an extra 146,000 extra hours of time that can be devoted to farming or other income-generating activities, and that´s not even counting the time saved from foraging for firewood , an activity that is especially time-consuming in this part of the world.

It is amazing to see just how easy it is to stretch $1,000 into such a far-reaching initiative to tackle the issues of overpopulation, deforestation and global warming all at once. Your contributions are making the difference in these peoples’ lives, so keep the donations coming!

Helping the Eager Youth of Sierra Leone Achieve Peace

Quest for Peace: Helping the Eager Youth of Sierra Leone Achieve a Brighter Future


“War and fighting will not solve our problems. We need to band together and make a change at the bottom!”

After meeting so many positive-thinking young people here in Sierra Leone, it has become obvious to me that if real change is to take place here, it must be targeted to the younger generation of this war-torn country.

Though the Sierra Leone’s civil war has been over for six years now, the culture of violence still manifests itself in many ways, especially amongst adolescents. Since many of the teens involved were once child soldiers, their traumatic experiences and violent instincts often manifest themselves without real provocation. Even high school sporting competitions these days are devolving into violent clashes, leaving many seriously wounded or even killed. The problem is there are not enough moderating voices to urge their cohorts not to settle such petty disagreements with rocks, broken bottles and knives. What are needed are ambassadors of peace that are familiar with the Gandhi’s ahimsa philosophy of non-violence.

Just as importantly, young citizens need to voice their opinions and become more involved in the political process, as one of the country’s most serious problems is the culture of political patronage: parliamentarians do anything to get elected, including making pay-offs and big promises, but once elected they cut themselves off from their constituents and direct their “governing efforts” towards delivering jobs, money and favors to their buddies. What is needed is a program that teaches promising students about the political process and encourages them to make their voices heard.

Seeking well-run local organizations that address these needs, I spoke with a Sierra Leonean economist working for the World Bank in Senegal and also met with Sierra Leone’s Minister of Development. Both referred me to CCYA (Council for the Coordination of Youth Activities) who train Peace Ambassadors that then go back to their schools, families and communities to carry forward the positive lessons they learn. This program has proven so effective that one of the young woman that went through this program spoke to the United Nations Security Council about their success.

I met with a few of these ambassadors, all of them high school students from rival high schools, sitting together and seeking ways to convince their colleagues to focus on real solutions to real problems affecting their lives, instead of fighting over one’s school affiliations. The older generation inflicted such widespread suffering upon the population here in the civil war that it is especially discouraging to see the young generation falling into the same senseless cycle of violence. That is why programs such as CCYA are so important. As these kids told me themselves, the country is wracked by so many profound problems, it is the young generation that need to band together to work towards a brighter future. Knowing the effective manner in which CCYA administer their financial resources and after meeting with the directors numerous times, I contributed $500 on behalf of 100 Friends in order to facilitate the training of ten more Peace Ambassadors. That’s ten more young voices that will be motivated to cause positive change here; ten teens that will preach the virtue of non-violence to their cohorts and ten ambassadors that will provide a positive role model to other kids to dream of a brighter future, for themselves and their country.

Meanwhile, I discovered an energetic group of young adults that have formed their own organization called AUCAYD (Artist United 4 Children and Youth development), which promotes a positive message to kids here through art, music and culture. The twenty volunteers are incredibly motivated and very well-organized (with the administrative support of the larger, more-established CCYA). Without ANY outside funding, they have managed to administer outreach projects in schools and hold weekly sessions to teach music, dance, graphic design and art to marginalized kids of Freetown. This jolly collection of souls are such a positive role model to the kids here, I decided to help promote their efforts by providing $500 (to be administered by a local friend of mine) towards buying supplies for their art and music classes and the production of a new song to promote the vision of peace they so successfully promote. With all of the problems affecting Sierra Leone, it is imperative that groups such as this can preach positive messages to these kids, urging them to stay in school, stay away from drugs and embrace non-violence. Only then can this country dream of a brighter future.

Thank you for your support – between these two projects and assisting the war amputees, I know 100 Friends has made a very positive impact here in this wonderful, though troubled country.

Addressing Guinea's Educational Shortfall: Operation Schoolbook Complete!

OPERATION SCHOOLBOOK COMPLETE!

Though there are a few government-commissioned billboards commemorating Guinea ’s 50 year anniversary of independence, people here do not seem to be in much of a celebratory mood. Though it is true that Guinea ’s independence from France united many tribes behind a strong feeling of nationalism back in 1958, the reality here today is not one of national glory, as this West African country ranks amongst the world’s lowest in terms of health, economic and educational indicators.

Another persistent worry preventing jubilant celebrations is the endemic political unrest here; in the five decades since independence, Guineans have endured coups d’etat, political purges, a repressive period known as ‘The Terror,’ guerilla wars, food shortages, mass violations of human rights, a ban on all private trade and a wide range of social unrest. There is pervasive fear that the widespread riots and street protests of 2008 will intensify in the coming months, leading perhaps to another coup.

Perhaps the greatest deficiency plaguing Guinea is the under-funded and woefully-inadequate educational system. Less than half of Guineans between the ages of 15 and 24 can read and secondary school enrollment here is only 39% for boys and 21% for girls (due to 75% rate of child marriage among the rural girls here). Guinea has never enjoyed a decent school system, which goes back to the days of French colonial rule. When the independence leader Sekou Toure rebuffed Charles de Gaulle’s offer to enter into a free federation with France in 1958, famously declaring, “We prefer poverty in freedom to riches in slavery,” the French departed, but not before looting the country of its resources, sabotaging its meager infrastructure, burning all of their files and canceling all investment and cooperation. As a result, upon independence, Guinea had almost no technical expertise and only 6 college graduates, which may be why their planned economy (without planners) was such a failure.

Besides the depressing educational indicators mentioned above, teachers are extremely underpaid, with some of the best being paid only $80 a month. Teachers I spoke with complained about extremely high class sizes– up to 150 students for an elementary school classroom, with kids squeezed in 4 to a desk. Many schools are not equipped with any textbooks; teachers are given chalk and a lesson plan and expected to “teach” the 100 kids in front of them. Without textbooks, rote memorization is emphasized, which stunts any critical-thinking skills and causes students to lose interest in their schooling.

The horrible state of the country’s educational system is directly linked to many of the social, economic and political problems here, as a population that has not received a basic education or developed any critical thinking skills cannot be expected to rationally address their problems or seek well thought-out solutions. After hearing about the challenges faced by a high-school math and science a teacher from a rural village called Wonkifong, I decided to apply the resources of 100 Friends to help address the shortage of textbooks and supplies. After getting a wish list from the principal, Operation Schoolbook was officially underway. I went to the textbook supply store in the capitol of Conakry and purchased 60 French textbooks (the country’s official language that most rural Guineans cannot speak due to educational shortcomings), as well as 200 textbooks for 9th and 10th grade physical science. In addition, we bought 200 notebooks, 200 pens, 200 rulers, 2 globes and 2 compasses for the teachers to use on the chalkboard. After schlepping the goods three hours to this little village, I spent the night on a mattress with lizards living inside (no joke, I could feel them squirming underneath me) and at the crack of dawn, I enlisted the help of a few students and a wheelbarrow to help me haul the supplies through the village to the school. The grand total for these supplies came to about $600 and upon delivery, I could see just how valued the donation was by teachers and students alike. The principal, a gentle man named Boubacar, handled each new book like a treasure and assured me that this contribution would make a lasting difference upon the quality of education at the school. As he told me himself, “Few things in this world have the lasting power of schoolbooks.” Words of wisdom indeed.

From the 9thand 10th grade students and teachers of Wonkifong that can actually learn science and French from a textbook, thanks to all of my donors. Your generous contributions are touching lives and it’s a profound pleasure to act as your dutiful conduit, even if I did pull a muscle in my back lifting the boxes of books!

Thanks for Making the African Fundraiser a huge success!

VIVA AFRICA!! Many thanks to all of you who came out to enjoy the Afro-Cuban Rumba Fundraiser at Las Tablas in Chicago! The fundraiser was a great success, with over $600 raised for my looming humanitarian trip to Africa. It was wonderful to bring so many great people (including some of my childhood friends such as this motley crew pictured above) together for such a worthy cause.