Ashley Judd visited Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as an Ambassador with Population Services International’s Five and Alive program in late April. She wrote her experiences in a personal journal. Below is an except from one her last days on the trip.

Day Five:

There is a weekly call in radio show called “Abajene,” a rally cry for youth, which is hosted by a young idol we have empowered with medically accurate information. For kids without electricity and phones (so many!) our Cinemobile does tours to rural parts of the country gussied up with a audio/visual kit in order to attract kids, give them “infotainment,” and let them use the provided cell phone to call in their teen age dilemmas and inquiries. On site, there is dance, singing, games, recreational pursuits, a football pitch, and job skill training. Within these “services” kids learn everything from personal hygiene, prevention and treatment seeking behaviors (how/when/why to go to a medical clinic), and let us not forget, they have a chance to simply be kids, to play, to run, to forget, for a few precious moments, all their burdens and cares, the back breaking chores that await them at home, and how they will probably be going to bed hungry. Again.

I love this approach, not just because it is holistic, but because it embodies the ideal of collaboration with other grassroots organizations.

-Ashley Judd

Read the rest of this entry, on Five & Alive’s website..

Five & Alive, a program of Population Services International (PSI), provides children and their families with the education, products, services and care needed to improve health and save lives in more than 30 countries. www.fiveandalive.org

The Congo government reached an agreement (expected to be signed today) to end an insurgency that has forced more than 400,000 people from their homes.

“The conflict between the Congolese government and a rebel army led by Laurent Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi general, was part of the deadly legacy of the Rwandan genocide, which ensnared Congo in a vast regional conflict that began in 1996 and has limped on to the present despite a peace agreement formally ending the war in Congo in 2003.

According to some estimates, the Congo war and its aftermath have killed more than four million people, mostly because of disease and hunger, more than any other conflict since World War II.”

Read the full piece here.

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UPDATE: “Squabbling threatens to sink east Congo ceasefire”

KINSHASA (Reuters) – Last-minute disagreements over a peace deal between the Congolese government, Tutsi rebels and Mai Mai militia threatened to scupper efforts to end fighting in the country’s east on Tuesday.”