ONE Campus Challenge Outreach Ambassador Melissa Boles– who you’ll recall recently joined ONE on a trip to Africa– writes about climate change and development:

Just as Congress has reconvened, it seems fitting that my first Political Science paper of the semester was on the relationship between climate change and poverty in developing countries. I have learned in the last few days that the drought and agricultural problems I and my fellow ONE Campus Challenge (OCC) Africa Trip students heard about in Kenya are not only worse than we thought they were; they also aren’t going to get better any time soon.

This March, Purdue University published a study by Noah Diffenbaugh, Thomas Hertel and Syud Amer Ahmed showing how climate change could increase poverty in developing countries. While the study focuses on urban workers, the basic premise can be used with just about any demographic: people living in poverty are going to be hardest hit by climate change if we don’t take action soon.

Diffenbaugh told the Purdue Communication and Marketing specialist, Elizabeth Gardner, that “extreme weather affects agricultural productivity and can raise the price of staple foods, such as grains, that are important to poor households in developing countries.” He also pointed out that “it is important to understand which socioeconomic groups and countries could see changes in poverty rates in order to make informed policy decisions.”

When our OCC group was in Kenya, we spent some time with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), and one of the things I remember most is that Kenya has a huge agricultural market, but they are coming up against major obstacles — one of which happens to be the weather they are experiencing. Agricultural market or not, Kenyans can’t sell their products anywhere if they can’t even grow them.

While Kenya is going to be the country I reference most for a long time, it isn’t the only country running into these problems. Africans are only going to invest in seeds they know will grow in their area, but if the weather is poor all over the place, can they really know what will grow best?

Heat waves, droughts and floods cause agricultural problems and crop damages around the world, but most people in developed countries such as the United States and countries in the European Union are going to be at less of a loss if their crops can’t grow or are damaged because of the weather. In the fight against poverty, the promotion of better agricultural practices has to start somewhere, and it might as well start at the bottom — where the countries most in need exist.

5% of this year’s Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act devoted to helping poor countries adapt to climate change could begin to make that difference. If we can begin to make a difference, then countries like Kenya that want to be agriculturally strong, and have the potential, can begin to take the next step.

Tell your senator to invest in helping the world’s poorest people overcome the threats posed by climate change here.

-Melissa Boles
Campus Outreach Ambassador for CA, ID, MT, NV, OR, WA

During the OCC trip to Kenya last week, we took a break from the hot Kenyan sun with an unusual refreshment: sweet potato juice.

The juice was part of a sweet potato buffet that greeted us at the end of our visit with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and some of its Kenyan partners. The day started with a visit to a satellite center of the Kenya Agriculture Research Institute (KARI). The center has developed new varieties of sweet potatoes to be introduced in the central Rift Valley. The new variety is not only enriched with essential nutrients like Vitamin A, zinc and beta carotene, it’s also resistant to viruses and drought, has a shorter growing season, and a higher yield. In a year where drought has failed Kenya’s maize crop and an estimated 10 million Kenyans are in need of food aid, many farmers raising sweet potatoes have been able to keep their families fed.

The process to reach this point was a long and careful one that involved local farmers at every step. It was farmers in the central Rift Valley that identified sweet potatoes as the first crop to be improved. They felt that sweet potatoes could both enhance their food security and provide extra income if marketed properly to consumers. What they lacked was a type of sweet potato that could fight off viruses and weevils, and also provide key nutrients. With help from AGRA, KARI was able to cross different breeds of sweet potatoes to come up with a variety that met the farmers needs and would be appealing to eventual customers. Throughout the cross-breeding process, local farmers were brought in to vote on everything from color to taste to moistness.

Although the sweet potatoes have been thriving, their long-term impact has yet to be determined. One of the biggest challenges is for farmers to move beyond producing food for their families, marketing the potatoes so they can earn additional income. This is where the sweet potato juice comes in. AGRA and KARI are helping local farmers think through how to make their product attractive to the consumer and brainstorming opportunities to expand the sweet potato value chain: farmers can earn additional income by processing the potatoes into different products, and these enterprises could potentially employ other people in these rural areas.

This is the piece of the puzzle that is central to pulling people out of poverty not only in Kenya, but across Africa. With nearly two-thirds of Africans earning a livelihood from agriculture, projects like these are essential in unlocking the continent’s potential to feed itself and to increasing incomes, both of which help combat poverty. If paired with investments in infrastructure and assistance navigating developed-country markets, investments in crops that can flourish in Africa’s climate, smallholder farmer education, and the development of the agricultural value chain, could help farmers both access and become competitive in local, regional and international markets. In the end, what is simply a sweet potato for us in the United States is the key to a new and prosperous future for Kenyan farmers and their families.

-Nora Coghlan

Our ONE Campus Challenge students are on the ground in Kenya. Steven Thai reports back:

Another amazing day in Kenya! Today I was able to meet with many people in my age group! Most of the people we were able to meet today were HIV-positive. This was an uplifting experience because most of these people have so much hope and a positive outlook on life.

Where I would like to focus my blog post on today is MSM (men who have sex with men) and the political impact of the 2007 election. We met with a group that is participating in outreach and support group services from Tuungane Youth Center in Kisumu.

First off, a little background on the situation of these men. Most of them live in the shadows of Kenya because it is illegal for men to have sexual contact with other men. But at the forefront of their concern is the large stigma that is attached to being a man who has sex with men. Some of these men would not identify themselves as homosexual, but rather heterosexual. This is because some have become commercial sex workers in order to make a living. Others would classify themselves as homosexuals, but they may never be able to openly be who they are. All of these men knew their HIV status.

During the 2007 post election violence, many of them lost friends, family members, and partners. Some also had to flee to outlying cities of Kisumu because of what the violence does to their tribal/ethnic heritage. For commercial sex workers, it was also a very difficult time because financial means of purchasing sex were very limited to their clients.

Some of the members of this group talked about starting their own revolution so that they can receive the basic right to be themselves. They also talked about not being able to speak to their members of Parliament because they would be jailed or ousted for being MSM.

This was also a time for them to ask us questions. Many of them thought that LGBT people in the United States were treated fairly just like other citizens. We informed them that much of the United States has a large stigma against homosexuality. They were very surprised by this.

What many of these men felt that they needed was much more access to MSM health care. But most importantly, water-based lubricant, which increases the likelihood of condom usage. Condoms are readily available in Kenya but lubricant is very expensive and many cannot afford it. This was something that the MSM community feels that funding for sexual health for all must be increased.

That’s all I have today! If you have any questions, please leave a comment!

-Steven Thai

Our ONE Campus Challenge students are on the ground in Kenya. Melissa Boles reports back:

Today was spent learning a lot about youth, and visiting a number of facilities that reach out to youth ages 10-21 with HIV counseling and testing, STI treatment, and even male circumcision. The clinics have served over 12,000 women in their family planning program, which teaches parents how to talk with their children about sex and safe sex practices.

Some of the areas have women and children days, where the services, which are always free, focus on the women and children that come to the facilities. There are a number of support groups for single mothers, HIV-positive teens and young adults, and wives in the area.

I spoke to one woman today named Eunice Chacha. She is 22 years old, with two children, and found out she was HIV-positive three years ago. She was always very sick, and finally was tested. When she told her husband, he left her. She found herself alone and sick, with one child and a baby on the way. She attempted suicide twice before the Tuungane Youth Center stepped in and got her free assistance, as well as a support group to talk to. She is now very healthy and strong, and both of her children are HIV free.

I think every woman I met today reminded me that women are very powerful, no matter where they live or what challenges they face. I am eager to see what more I can learn about women in the next couple of days.

-Melissa Boles

Our ONE Campus Challenge students are on the ground in Kenya. Tomas Moreno reports back:

Sorry for not blogging for a day, our time in Kenya has been very hectic. But amongst all of this chaos of going from site to site there has been a lot of hope expressed by the stories of the people we have been able to talk to.

More than this, they have shared their innovative ways of approaching the problems they face (such as the astonishing MPESA program). But that is not what we looked at the past two days. We researched the local health of the Kisumu area, which boasts the country’s highest rates of HIV/AIDS with a whopping 14%, and how they work to stem this and a myriad of other issues. What I focused on was the economic issues facing those with infectious diseases in and around Kisumu.

The most inspiring story was at Kagua CBO (Community Based Organization). Here, people that have HIV/AIDS live together in a community, supporting each other as well as finding hope and strength in the fact that they aren’t alone. But, the most inspiring part of this was when we were able to go visit some of the families in their homes. Here, we met Phieria Opende Agola.

Phieria is 65 (at least, she could not remember her exact birth date), and lives with her grandson and granddaughter who both have HIV/AIDS. She takes care of them because her son and daughter-in-law died from HIV/AIDS almost 10 years ago. Since then, she has devoted her life to her grandchildren and soon moved next to her other son and daughter-in-law (who was 21 with four children; she had her first child at the age of 11). They care for seven children between the two of them, but mostly take care of them separately.

This means that she must make the two-hour journey to Lake Victoria to get water for her family. She usually takes a 21-L jug that none of us could carry for more than a few seconds standing still, much less walking up and down hills.

Maureen, the other daughter-in-law, had a dream of opening up a business so she could work her way out of poverty but would need 3000 KSH (just over US$39). And she cannot save the money because currently they live off of a paltry 500 KSH (US$6.) a month. Put in context, four of us spent 680 KSH that morning for seconds of our breakfast…

The thought of living off of that for a month, while caring for two children, is crippling even at my age. To think of doing that at 65 is unimaginable. But Phieria did say that she found hope in Kagua and her grandchildren both had big dreams of being an attorney and a teacher. And I find so much hope in their hope; the fact that they, despite massive economic barriers, even compared to people in similar situations have these dreams and plans is truly inspiring.

-Tomas Moreno

Our ONE Campus Challenge students are on the ground in Kenya. Stephanie Parrish reports back:

If I had to sum up the past two days in one sentence, I would say that Kenyan youth and American youth have a lot to learn from each other. I have had the opportunity to interact with some of Kenya’s most inspiring young people. What I’ve come to learn is that all socioeconomic, geographic, political and cultural differences aside, young people across the world are not all that different. At the core, we all have struggles and we all have dreams. It is just the luck of the draw, really, that determines the difficulties we will face in realizing those dreams.

Yesterday we flew to Kisumu, Kenya in the Nyanza Province. After visiting the Miriu Health Clinic (funded by PEPFAR), we went to various homes in a remote village that have been sprayed for malaria prevention (part of the President’s Malaria Initiative, PMI). At one particular homestead, I met a fascinating young woman. It seemed odd that she was at home in the middle of the day, since the children from other homes we had visited were at school. It turns out that she is enrolled at an all-girls’ secondary school not too far from her home. The day before we arrived, however, the students of the school went on strike because they were not receiving food for lunch. This was promised to them as a part of their school fees. This simple, yet remarkable story was so amazing to me in that a group of young women were able to organize so quickly and effectively to take a stand against their school’s administration when their needs were not being met. Since the strike had just begun the day before our meeting, I am unaware of any update on its success. Regardless of the outcome, however, I found myself in awe of the strength these girls have already shown.

Later, we visited the Kagwa Community Based Organization, an organization (funded by PEPFAR) that provides services to improve the lives of those living with HIV in the community. They prepared a very moving and powerful performance for us. I was most affected by a group of young people that shared with us a poem and two songs about their experience living with HIV. I was unable to understand every word of these pieces because they were sung in Kiswahili, but the words were almost unimportant. I found myself tuning out the words anyway as I made eye contact with different individuals in the group and saw the hope and strength in their stares. It was very clear that they have found a supportive community in Kagwa that has allowed them to live their lives positively, regardless of their HIV status, as I have heard many Kenyans speak about this week.

Late that night, around 8:30pm, we drove to the Tuungane Youth Center to see their Moonlight initiative. Targeting at-risk youth, the initiative provides counseling, HIV and STI testing, substance abuse recovery support and many other services. It was a little nerve-racking because we were given specific instructions to stay together, stay with our directors and find someone if we ever felt uncomfortable. The scene of this street is virtually indescribable. People of all ages were crowding the streets, drinking from bottles, dancing to music and laughing with their friends. A tiny waiting area, barely lit, housed about 15-20 people waiting to receive services. Next to this, lining the streets, were four small tents, acting as the examination rooms. Despite the unfamiliar surroundings, it was encouraging to see so many people taking advantage of this great program. In my mind, the most inspiring part of the Moonlight initiative is the Mobilizers. These are young members of the community dedicating their time to a most important cause: prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS.

While other members of our group went into the tents to witness testing and counseling sessions, I stayed outside to speak with the Mobilizers. I spoke with Steve, Caroline, Eunice, Elizabeth and Solomon about their experiences with the program and why they are involved. They have all finished secondary school but were unable to afford university fees. After hearing about the Tuungane Youth Centre, they were eager to help and get involved. Tuungane provides them with training in community outreach, dialogue facilitation and in-depth knowledge of issues surrounding HIV/AIDS in Kisumu. Each night, the group interacts with community members, educating them on benefits of knowing their status, male circumcision, condom use and faithfulness. One of their main goals is to bring as many young people to the Centre as possible to work towards a safer and healthier youth community. I was so inspired by the intelligence of these students. The wealth of knowledge they have about effective means of reaching their peers is unique and invaluable. As we discussed university, their dreams were so big, yet so attainable: becoming community health workers, social workers, public health officers and doctors. All of them are so thankful for the opportunities given to them by the Tuungane Centre, but they don’t seem to grasp their value in the community. I am not sure they quite understand how special their commitment is. To them, this is life. There is no other option and they have a genuine passion for helping others and themselves. All were eager to tell their stories to the camera, asking for more resources so they can continue their outreach efforts and increase their impact.

They jumped at the opportunity to exchange e-mails and I am so looking forward to keeping in touch upon my return home. At my college campus, I see young activists daily. They work towards positive change and dedicate countless hours and energy to their projects. The dream of creating a better world is not unique to Kenyans or Americans; it is in all of us. When I spoke with these young people, I heard the passion and the excitement in their voices. I saw hope in their eyes. Their reasons for the work they do run so deep: they have watched HIV/AIDS take away their friends and family, they watch their friends struggle through substance abuse because they have nowhere else to turn. They feel a responsibility to their community to create change, and hearing their stories has instilled that same responsibility in me.

-Stephanie Parrish

Our ONE Campus Challenge students are on the ground in Kenya. Bryant Shannon reports back:

On Tuesday, we had an early flight out of Nairobi. We were headed to Kisumu, a community near Lake Victoria where we were able to visit a clinic funded by PEPFAR. They serve over 1,200 patients that have HIV. Half of these patients were tested because they were sick, and the other half were merely curious about their status. The clinic provides counseling services in preventative health, nutrition, and hygiene.

When an HIV patient’s CD4 count (a measure of the number for helper T cells per cubic millimeter of blood) dips below 250, they are given antiretroviral (ARV) drugs. USAID helps fund these ARVs. Patients are only required to pay 200 Ksh (less than US$3) for their laboratory tests and their medications. These drugs, when taken as directed, can lengthen and improve a patient’s quality of life.

Kisumu’s HIV prevalence is more than twice Kenya’s national average. This is attributed to the fishing culture of the community and the number of people commuting through the area. Fish are in such high demand that often women pay high prices, and are sometimes forced to have sex as payment for the fish.

The clinic has significantly decreased mother-to-child transmission of the virus to below 10%, with the additional funding they have received for the medications. We met with Brightone Odundo, a nurse in the clinic who told us about the complications that arise from combating HIV in addition to opportunistic diseases that take advantage of a compromised immune system, such as tuberculosis (TB). Over 80% of this clinic’s TB patients are also HIV-positive.

Another portion of our busy day that I found particularly interesting was their outreach program to decrease the prevalence of malaria, which is spread by mosquitoes. USAID provides insecticide for the clinic’s outreach workers to spray peoples’ homes.

One of the homes we visited was that of Millicent Adhiambo Obuya. She was widowed 10 years ago and has four children. Her children would frequently get malaria in the past, until she was educated about spraying and using anti-malaria nets from the clinic’s community outreach workers.

Once every year, members of the clinic spray the homes of people in their community. Millicent was warned to remain outside of the home for 2-4 hours and then to sweep and dispose of the contents away from the home. This minimizes the adverse effects of spraying in and around the home. She was also educated on the importance of bed nets in preventing malaria. The clinic sells these nets at a greatly subsidized cost of 50 Ksh (less than US$1). These nets normally would cost US$8-10. Since Millicent’s family began sleeping under bed nets and getting their home sprayed, they have had no incidents of malaria. It was a great success story to hear about funds efficiently allocated and making a difference in the fight against malaria.

Although the clinic has made significant headway with its progressive outreach program, things are far from perfect. Many of the community members use the bed nets to fish instead of to prevent malaria. They would rather utilize them for the short term of catching food then sleeping under them to prevent malaria. Others do not access the clinic enough to get educated about the importance of insecticide and bed nets. In addition, much of Kenya does not have the funding that Kisumu receives for many of these great educational outreach programs.

Today showed me there is a lot of hope in the fight against these infectious diseases, yet still much to do. Educational outreach is a very successful way to get people to understand how to prevent these diseases, which is necessary to get their cooperation for these preventative measures.

-Bryant Shannon

The ONE Campus Challenge students have landed in Kenya and will be regularly sending back reports from on the ground. This one comes from Washington State University student Melissa Boles. Check here for more updates!

Jambo!

No video from me tonight, I’ve had a long day and have another long one ahead of me, but I wanted to recap the day a little.

We started the day at Kitie Secondary School, where there are 280 students, 110 of them girls, all of whom were taking exams when we arrived. The principal took us around the school, showing us everything from the latrines to the area where the water was collected. They don’t have running water at the school, so there is an employee who goes to the well four times a day, brings the water back, and sends it from one end of the property to another through a pipe. When the water reaches the large tank near the kitchen, it is mixed with chlorine so that the students do not get sick from drinking the water.

We spent a lot of time with the principal, but we were also able to go in to a couple of classrooms. We met a girl named Monicah Kioko, who is a Peer Educator (someone who educates other students about HIV/AIDS) and wants to grow up to be a Peer Educator trainer or possibly a Lawyer defending the rights of women. We went into her classroom and talked to the other students for a few minutes. They seemed very shy, but once we started handing out ONE bands they were pretty excited.

There aren’t enough teachers at the school. The principal told us they have 10 teachers, two student teachers, and would run more smoothly with sixteen teachers. One teacher’s desk was so stacked with papers and folders that he barely had enough space to work in!

These teachers are working very hard and not getting paid very much. The students are also working hard, and some of them are rewarded by being accepted to University when they graduate, though if they can’t pay for it, they can’t go. Some of them cannot even pay for the tuition at Kitie. Children that are orphaned, as well as others that deserve on the grounds of merit, are funded through USAID, but not very many. 3,300 students throughout the country are funded. There are nearly 6,000 applications waiting at USAID for someone to say, “yes, you can now go to school.”

Despite all of this, there is a demand for teachers, as there are not many people who can teach. We went to a teachers training college and talked to some of the students there, who told us it is very hard to pay for school, uniforms and books, and even if they do get into school and get all the way through (it is a two year program), they sometimes cannot find a job. Some students want to teach where they leave, but there is no demand for teachers where they are, and some want to teach in a different place, but there is a demand for teachers where they live. The Kenyan government has trouble understanding why people don’t want to go where there are jobs, so they make it hard for the new teachers to relocate and find a job. We heard a lot about that from a couple of the students.

After the teacher training college, we went to the elephant orphanage, which was pretty great. The caretakers stay with the baby elephants 24/7, because elephants get separation anxiety, and they feed them milk as well as send them out into the national park. The elephants are eventually released back into the wild, but it is good that they have someone to take care of them until they are ready to do it themselves.

I guess that’s all for now. Tomorrow we leave the hotel at 5 AM to fly to Kisumu, Kenya, so I’m going to get some rest.

Kwa sasa, kwaheri!

-Melissa Boles

The ONE Campus Challenge students have landed in Kenya and will be regularly sending back reports from on the ground. This one comes from University of Michigan student Stephanie Parrish. Check here for more updates!

After visiting the Kitie Secondary School, we drove through Machakos to get to the Machakos Teacher Training College. We were warmly welcomed by the Deputy Principle and invited to come inside the campus. My first impression was that it was a beautiful campus! Similar to colleges back home, they had separate buildings for different classes and administrators. There was a beautiful grassy area in the middle with tables for students to study. We witnessed a lot of studying because the first year students (it is a two year program) have their midterm exams this week.

It was so generous of about 20 students to join us for lunch and to talk about their experiences during such a stressful time. After introductions, we heard from students about the kinds of courses they take, their experiences in teaching practicums, the financial burden of attending the college and the challenges they face throughout their studies. Two students in particular were very helpful and told us about their experiences. In their teaching practicum, one of the biggest challenges they face is the language barrier. They also spoke of the difficulties they will face in finding teaching positions.

One of the most interesting parts of our visit was learning that this is one of three colleges in Kenya that trains teachers with disabilities. These students are fully integrated into the classroom, which is completely unique to this school! While we all talked, two students were signing to another student so that he could be equally as engaged in the discussion! Our time here was short but it was incredible to see such motivated and passionate students. They have all been through so much to get to this point and I have no doubt that they will be successful and change many lives through their teaching!

We are on our way to the giraffe sanctuary right now and the road is getting pretty bumpy. Check in with us soon for pictures and videos from today!

-Stephanie Parrish

This Friday, the ONE Campus Challenge (OCC) is sending five of the top student anti-poverty advocates in the United States to Kenya for a week of first-hand, hands-on experience with the people, issues and programs OCC students work to affect – and we have a new site to chronicle their adventures. Check it out, here.

We chose the five students based on their outstanding individual efforts during the 2008-9 OCC season, and also from the excellent projects they submitted on how they will use their experience in Africa to inform their OCC work during the upcoming 2009-10 season. The students are:

Bryant Shannon, from the University of Florida in Gainesville;

Melissa Boles, from Washington State University in Vancouver;

Stephanie Parrish, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor;

Steven Thai, from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa; and

Tomas Moreno, from Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Learn more about the OCC, the students, and the trip through our new, interactive OCC in Kenya site.

I asked the students what aspects of the trip they were most excited about, and the overwhelming response was the African people.

“I am looking forward to meeting people affected by extreme poverty, but who have been able to come out of poverty with the help of foreign assistance such as USAID,” said Steven Thai.

“I’m most excited about meeting new, amazing people, as well as learning more about their lives. I can’t wait to hear stories from women and men that I get to talk to about what their lives are like in Kenya,” said Melissa Boles.

“I’m also pretty excited to see how everything I have learned in school and through ONE will help me relate to them,” she added. “Mostly it just doesn’t really feel real yet.”

Indeed, the purpose of the trip is to build a bridge between ONE’s grassroots advocacy campaign and the issues and programs ONE members work to affect, giving these five students first-hand knowledge they can use to help build better OCC programs across the country.

The students will share their experiences first-hand with their fellow students and all ONE members through blog entries, video journals, and Facebook and Twitter updates. You can keep up with them and send them your comments and questions on our new OCC in Kenya website, here.

-Emily Stivers