December 1st is World AIDS Day
The fight to end this scourge of humanity continues....
For local events and volunteer opportunities (Red Ribbon Campaign and others) contact PARN Your Community AIDS Resource Network via email at getinfo@parn.ca , by phone at 749-9110, or go to their website at www.parn.ca.
Red Ribbon Campaign (November 30 and December 1st, 2007)
Over 100 volunteers canvass at a variety of sites throughout the four counties by offering red ribbons to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS. In 2006, over $7,500 was raised. For more information, contact Suzanne at suzanne@parn.ca
For ideas about what you can do to make a difference in the global fight against HIV/AIDS go to the Stephen Lewis Foundation website at www.stephenlewisfoundation.org
Stephen Lewis' Speech at the launch of the GIVE-A-DAY TO WORLD AIDS 2007 Campaign
Tuesday, 13 November 2007
The Give-A-Day campaign is, as you all now know, an inspired fund-raising initiative to counter the human toll of the AIDS pandemic.
For the Foundation, and the work that we do in well over a hundred projects in 15 countries — distributing in the last four years some seventeen million dollars, with millions more in process — it has been a godsend to have the growing revenue from Give-A-Day, channeling hundreds of thousands of additional dollars into the quest for survival and hope in Africa.
The money reaches orphans; so many children beset by loneliness, fear and the inexplicable, bewildering sense of loss. It reaches grandmothers, it reaches vast groups of people living with AIDS, it reaches women who desperately need palliative care, it reaches those who need food and shelter and school fees and income generating projects. It transforms whole communities.
But for the Foundation, it does something else, something that is rarely acknowledged, but is of huge importance. Your contributions, through Give-A-Day, help to compensate the home-based care workers, overwhelmingly women, who look after the sick and the dying, the orphans and vulnerable children, all of whom would otherwise languish in an agony of isolation.
Caregivers in Africa are women who cannot tolerate the suffering that surrounds them, and devote their own time to lessening others’ pain. There is a tendency, in the world of AIDS, to characterize these women as volunteers. But they’re not “volunteers” as the western world defines that term. They are not philanthropists who have chosen to forego payment because they have resources to share. No one automatically offers payment. And yet, these desperately poor women, witnesses to the suffering of the sick and orphaned, feel obliged to help, even knowing that their sacrifices will plunge them deeper into poverty. They do all of their own family work, a multitude of tasks, and then they somehow find time — God alone knows how they find the time — to spend their days tending to the needs of others. They keep families and communities alive and breathing and coping.
Over the last five years, I’ve accompanied hundreds of these incredible women to an infinite number of homes, as they dispense food, and drugs, and ointment, and gently bathe their clients, and soothe their clients, and clean the home, and make sure there’s water, and gather the wood, and play with the children and make certain that, somehow, every child gets to school. It’s a monumental task, and they do it several times a day.
We at the Foundation, thinking about today, November 13th, and this moment in the life of the Give-A-Day campaign, decided to canvass a number of our projects, in several countries, to see how they handled the compensation of these incredible caregivers. These were all projects that do home-based care, and fully understand the need to acknowledge and compensate the work that is done. But for many of them, the financial constraints are just too great. So what do they do? They try to cover transportation costs, they provide T-shirts, they throw a year-end party, they occasionally distribute food, they help, when they can, with drugs when the caregivers themselves are ill. But nothing would make the projects happier than to provide compensation.
And some of them do. We have projects in Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and South Africa, addressing the entire panoply of care and prevention and testing and counseling … projects that attempt to pay a living wage.
Just think about it for a moment. Suppose your income were such that you could contribute $200 to Give-A-Day; that would be the equivalent of a full month’s pay, at the level of a living wage, for one Home-Based Caregiver. Let me repeat: a full month’s pay, at the level of a living wage for one Home-Based Caregiver. And if that caregiver saw an average of five clients a day, many of them of course repeatedly seen every week, and often with some children in the family, it would mean that the lives of at least a hundred people are touched over the course of the month.
You can’t imagine how it changes lives for the better. The clients hang on the sounds of the approaching footsteps of the caregivers. Frail bodies turn towards the door, a smile envelops the face, hope springs to the eyes.
Every visit I’ve witnessed is a testament to a mutual generosity of spirit. I can’t tell you how moving it is.
The world talks about the ties that bind. These heroic caregivers bind together whole societies. Their work is indispensable. The money they earn keeps them going, gives them self-respect, says their work is important. And then the money gets ploughed back into the community, into the food and the shelter and the clothing that their own families need. It makes it possible, for example, to tend to the mounting numbers of orphan children and grand-children.
No one should underestimate the power of Give-A-Day. Every dollar raised is a blow to the pandemic. And if AIDS is to be defeated, it will happen at community level, drawing on the astonishing resilience of the grassroots, especially the women who embrace the vulnerable with both courage and love.
That is the mandate and the object of the Stephen Lewis Foundation.