Getting Some Love From The Local Press

The following article was in our local newspaper, The Tennessean:

AIDS orphans inspire volunteers
Group tries to address basic needs

Faith in Action

Even while sitting in his office in a renovated Hillsboro Village bungalow, Art Stinson's mind frequently travels to Zulu country and the mortal struggle of his beloved AIDS orphans.
"You should see them," he says, turning his laptop computer around to display a digital image of children, either orphaned by the HIV/AIDS epidemic or suffering themselves, playing soccer.
Stinson recently returned from an exploratory mission trip to South Africa. He returned to Nashville armed with information about how to apply his design-build skills to revive this orphanage. The gleam in his eyes is evidence he left a chunk of his heart back in Umzinyathi.
"We brought them the soccer ball," he says. "The only things they had to play with before were a grocery cart they rode in and a tire swing in that acacia tree."
The acacia stands in front of the primitive assembly hall of the orphanage founded by Zulu Pastor Sylvester Cele's Faith in Action group, which tries to shed spiritual light on those dwelling in AIDS' shadow.
"That building needs a lot of work," says Stinson, whose Trace Ventures specializes in home renovations and additions. It's a fulfilling profession.
But in the African bush occupied by a proud tribe under constant attack by merciless AIDS, he found a desperate need for his talents. "There was only so much Pastor Cele's group could do. They really needed our help."
Stinson is a relatively "new recruit" to the Sihawukelwe Lauren's Children's Home volunteer board, sprouted from the global missions program at Christ Church Cathedral.
The board is headed by local children's activist Sandie Griffith, who like most of her cohorts is a member of the historic Episcopal church. "But we need to get help from a lot of other people," she says.
Griffith and Stinson estimate $250,000 is needed just to seriously begin their open-ended commitment.
Beyond turning the assembly hall into a dormitory, complete with kitchen and study areas, these missionaries want to tend to the youngsters' health and education needs. More knowledge may help stem the brutal epidemic.
First things first, though: provide sanitation, nutrition and basic human needs.
Griffith made her first trip to the children's home a year ago and returned with Stinson and the others this summer. "Once you've been there, it gets in your blood."
On her first trip, the children were sleeping on a concrete floor. The board purchased bunk beds, but the kids still lack reliable electricity and water and sewers.
Griffith smiles when Stinson details how the children and the village Zulus "were so excited to see us bringing something as basic as the Port-a-Johns."
Stinson says it may take two years to complete the dormitory. In the meantime, the children's home board has seeded a cottage industry, providing funds for the locals to make jewelry and carvings that will be sold here in Nashville.
"We want them to be able to help themselves," says Griffith, noting that women from throughout the village will be participating and all profits will go to the orphanage.
Seventeen AIDS orphans live in the actual facility. Dozens more have "graduated" to foster families. The board feeds the foster families as well as the orphanage residents and caregivers.
Grim reality does cast a shadow on this endeavor of hope. Some of these orphans may die before the project is completed. The AIDS epidemic certainly will bring more residents to the orphanage.
"I'm fortunate to live relatively comfortably," muses Stinson. "I have the duty to give back. I've done things in our community. Now I see this as giving to our global community."
Griffith nods. "My faith requires me to serve people and to love people. What you get back is the ultimate joy." •

By TIM GHIANNI
Senior Writer
Published: Saturday, 09/23/06

Say Its Not So

This article is especially troubling because our orphanage is in the KwaZulu-Natal Region of South Africa:




An Old Foe Gains Strength
Health authorities warn that the spread of drug-resistant TB could threaten AIDS sufferers.

Sept. 13, 2006 - The World Health Organization recently issued a warning that deadly new strains of tuberculosis appear to be spreading around the globe. A recent analysis by the United Nations organization found that new strains, known as extreme-drug-resistant TB, or XDR-TB, have been found in every continent. The drug-resistant stains, which are virtually untreatable, have killed people in the United States and Eastern Europe. HIV sufferers are particularly vulnerable because of their weakened immune systems. Tuberculosis, already the world’s fourth most fatal infectious disease, could wreak havoc with AIDS treatment programs.

How does this new deadly strain of tuberculosis compare to normal TB?
XDR-TB is extremely drug-resistant TB and is unaffected by some of the frontline drugs traditionally used for TB. We began to notice that some TB patients were becoming more resistant over time.

TB is on the rise globally—8.9 million new cases were reported in 2004, the last year there is official data. What does the global landscape look like today?
If you divide the world up into the six regions like the World Health Organization does, then TB is going down or is stable in five out of those six. But it’s going up in Africa so much it’s making the entire world total go up. That is quite impressive for a region that contains only 11 percent of the world’s population.

Are you aware of any outbreaks or clusters of XDR-TB cases?
There was one outbreak in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa this year where 52 of 53 patients died within on average 25 days. This was very concerning because it was associated with HIV and the mortality is extremely high. It would be extremely serious if XDR were being transmitted to people who have not had TB before, and this seems to be what happened in KwaZulu. It should send a warning message to all countries with similar rates of HIV that this is potential risk for them.

How worried should we be?
The World Health Organization is extremely concerned. XDR is a level of resistance, and it can occur in any of the genetic varieties of TB. About 2 percent of the TB cases are XDR. This could increase with HIV, which is really driving the epidemic.

Why are you so concerned about HIV?
If HIV comes along and disrupts the immune system then a latent TB infection can flair up. This would be horrendous for Africa. One major worry is people sick with HIV who may have intermittent fevers and coughs may not recognize XDR as the danger that it really is and delay in seeking out care.

What can we do about the spread of XDR-TB?
XDR is caused by mistakes and problems with drug supply and treatment. It arises as a result of misuse or mishandling of drugs that have been given to the patient. This is what has to change. We need to perform quick and simple surveys in places we are expecting XDR to be found—say, big hospitals in big cities. We also need greater laboratory capacity. Most places in Africa don’t have this. We also need to beef up capacity of clinicians who manage the disease and the public-health managers who have to control the process. We also urgently need new drugs to combat XDR.

How does XDR spread?
It spreads like regular TB does, by droplets. Anyone who coughs, sneezes, sings or shouts into the air produces droplets that float in the air for a while and gradually sink and can be breathed in by anybody in the vicinity.

Complete Article Here

I Want This Book

"Extreme poverty can be ended, not in the time of our grandchildren, but our time." Thus forecasts Jeffrey D. Sachs, whose twenty-five years of experience observing the world from many vantage points has helped him shed light on the most vital issues facing our planet: the causes of poverty, the role of rich-country policies, and the very real possibilities for a poverty-free future. Deemed "the most important economist in the world" by The New York Times Magazine and "the world's best-known economist" by Time magazine, Sachs brings his considerable expertise to bear in the landmark The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, his highly anticipated blueprint for world-wide economic success — a goal, he argues, we can reach in a mere twenty years. (Visit The End of Poverty Website)

Marrying vivid eyewitness storytelling with concrete analysis, Sachs provides a conceptual map of the world economy and the different categories into which countries fall, explaining why wealth and poverty have diverged and evolved as they have and why the poorest nations have been so markedly unable to escape the cruel vortex of poverty. The End of Poverty does not deliver its worldviews from on high: Sachs plunges into the messy realities of economies, leading his readers through his work in Bolivia, Poland, Russia, India, China, and Africa, and concludes with an integrated set of solutions to the tangled economic, political, environmental, and social issues that most frequently hold societies back.

Writes singer Bono in the forward, "[Sachs] is an economist who can bring to life statistics that were, after all, lives in the first place. He can look up from the numbers and see faces through the spreadsheets." Rather than a sense of how daunting the world's problems are, Sachs provides an understanding of how solvable they are — and why making the effort is both our ethical duty and a self-interested strategic necessity.

Fighting poverty $1 at a time

Bangladeshi women gather at a micro-credit meeting.


NEW YORK (CNN) -- It all started with $50. In 1988, that's what it took Noni Bala Ghosh to revive her family's business of making sweets to sell in Kholshi, her tiny village in Bangladesh.
Family members had given up the business because they could no longer afford to buy milk to churn into rich chhana, a thick cottage cheese used to make creamy sweets.
Driven to despair, Noni heeded the advice of several women in her village who had taken loans from Grameen Bank, a lending organization that developed the poverty-busting lending program known as "micro-credit," in the 1970s.
Through a series of small loans from the bank, she soon bought a cow and began to supply her own milk, and eventually engaged her two sons and husband, Gopal, to help support the family business she led. After 3 1/2 years, Noni had become the key supplier to a prominent sweets shop in Dhaka. Once again, she could afford to feed and clothe her family.
Though $50 seems like a relatively small amount to most, it can be the key to breaking out of poverty once and for all for the more than 1 billion people in the world who are living on less than a dollar a day.
Since its beginning, the micro-finance model of providing small loans to help expand or start a self-sustaining enterprise has helped more than 8.2 million of the world's poorest people -- in at least 115 countries -- to stand on their feet.
"I never thought it would reach so far," said Dr. Mohammed Yunus, the founder of the micro-finance system. He first learned of its ability to change a poor person's outlook on life when in 1976 he decided to lend a total of $27 to pay off the loan-shark debts of 42 villagers in rural Chittagong, Bangladesh.
"When I gave them that money, I didn't think much about it at that time. But the villagers' excitement -- they looked at me like I had liberated them."
These life-altering loans are distinctly different from typical bank loans in that 96 percent are awarded to women, and most are for amounts under $200, according to Grameen Foundation USA. None require collateral or guarantors or even proof of skill in a trade or craft; instead, lenders rely on personal accountability to the small community of borrowers to which each woman belongs.
Repayment, which generally takes place within six months to a year, exceeds 95 percent, according to Grameen Foundation USA.
Opportunity and Investments are Key:
As part of the CNN special "The Poverty Trap," which airs Saturday and Sunday at 8 p.m. ET, former U.S. President Bill Clinton sat down with CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta to discuss micro-credit and other potential solutions for eradicating global poverty.
"Intelligence and dreams and willingness to work are evenly distributed throughout the world. What's not evenly distributed is opportunity, investment, and systems ... that work. There has to be a connection between effort and result. And in many poor and unstructured areas of the world, that connection doesn't exist," Clinton said.
The Clinton Global Initiative, focused on ending world poverty by creating such connections, supports micro-finance organizations such as Grameen Foundation USA, which has reached more than 2.2 million borrowers through partnerships in 22 countries.
In addition to micro-credit, Clinton discussed other effective anti-poverty programs designed to make individuals self-reliant, including Heifer International, which has been giving livestock to poor families for almost 60 years. The program has saved lives across the world, from the dry dusty villages of war-torn Rwanda, to the farmlands of Clinton's own home state of Arkansas.
Despite promising solutions inching toward the end of the poverty trap, it remains a global scourge: 30,000 children die from poverty every day, according to the United Nations; one-third of Detroit, Michigan, residents survive below the poverty line; trillions of dollars have been dedicated to end the cycle; yet poverty continues with no end in sight.
Still, Clinton acknowledged the vast breadth of the task he has set out to accomplish with a note of optimism. "We're in better position now to make a positive difference than ever before, because of what we know and all the mistakes we've made in the past."

Are you kidding me?

On our 1st night in South Africa, some of the pilgrims ran into, and talked to, Bill Clinton at a restaurant in Johannesburg. He was in South Africa for Nelson Mandela's Birthday and can be seen above talking to our friend.
Pretty Cool, Huh?