Africa
Rana Abuhilal is a 17-year-old ONE member from Dublin, Ohio. She wanted to share an interview she did with a teenager in her community from Sierra Leone, who is doing amazing things for her country halfway across the world.
Tabetha John left her home in Sierra Leone to live in the United States at age six. Ten years later, she continues to stay connected to her home country donating clothes, books and more to Africa.
Born in Freetown, Tabetha grew up around tropical beaches and had a great family. But on a recent trip to Sierra Leone, Tabetha said she witnessed poverty at a whole other level. After Sierra Leone’s civil war, many people lost their homes, and even more than that.
“A lot of people on the streets are missing limbs. I’ve seen homeless people missing their arms, or missing part of their leg,” she says. “A lot of [people] have scars on their faces too.”
Seeing these extreme cases of poverty motivated her. On the other side of the world, Tabetha gives back to Sierra Leone by donating clothes, shoes and books to the homeless.
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Photographer Morgana Wingard reports on a USAID-funded water project in Afadjtator, Ghana.
When I wake up, I groggily roll out of bed, and half-asleep, I jump into a hot shower. Then, I fill up my water bottle with cold water from the tap, brush my teeth with water from the faucet, and wash my hands. These simple amenities that we take for granted are truly luxuries. Because in Africa, 70 to 80 percent of disease is related to water. Most people don’t have a faucet with running water, or even clean water nearby that they can drink or brush their teeth with.
We visited a joint project with USAID and Rotary International that provides clean water to thousands of people in Afadjtator, Ghana. As we arrived, the townsfolk swarmed us with welcoming cheers. Though we didn’t build the wells they are benefiting from, our tax dollars did. The United States is contributing approximately $13.4 million to improve water and sanitation in Ghana over the next four years. And thanks to this join project in Afadjtator, 86,000 more people will be able to wake up in the morning and get a glass of clean water.
Captions, from top to bottom and right to left: New well build through the joint water and sanitation project with USAID and Rotary International; Woman from the community carrying water from the well back to her house; Ed Goeas walks with children from the community; Jen Pihlaja walks with children from the community; Women filling up at the new water pump; Sheila Nix, ONE’s US Executive Director cuts the ribbon with local chiefs for the newest water pump in the community; Laurie Moskowitz, ONE’s Senior Director of US campaigns, laughs with local community members.
Beauty of Rwanda contacted the ONE Blog through Twitter, and we were intrigued by their beautiful products on their website. Here’s their amazing story:
The hardworking men and women of Rwanda inspired Salha Kaitesi to start her business, Beauty of Rwanda. She came across basket weavers in Rwanda and after talking with them, and she knew they were the ones she wanted to help out the most.
Basket weaving is a skill that many Rwandese women have, passed from one generation to the next. The women are survivors of the Rwandan genocide; and Hutu and Tutsi women have put their differences aside and are weaving baskets to improve their lives and those of their children.
Beauty of Rwanda empowers Rwandese women by selling their handmade crafts. It is not charity, but does promote fair trade. The weavers in rural Rwanda are facing poverty and Beauty of Rwanda is helping them to overcome that.
The women are the bread winners of their families because either their husbands were killed during the genocide or are in prison for the crimes they committed during the genocide. Some are living with HIV and need the income in order to buy essential medicine. Beauty of Rwanda’s aim is to promote socio-economic well-being of vulnerable groups in Rwanda.
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This piece is cross-posted from Morgana Wingard’s Wanderlust blog.
During a recent trip to Uganda, I met the hardworking cooks of Amazima –- Nancy, Joanne, and Josephine. You think it’s hard to cook for your family? Trying cooking for more than 400. These women sweat over massive cauldrons of rice, beans and chicken every Saturday to feed children from the community.
It’s part of a larger program called Amazima Ministries –- a US-based nonprofit. According to the latest UN stats from 2009, there are an estimated 2.7 million orphans in Uganda. Amazima’s founder, Katie Davis, started the organization at merely 19 to feed, educate and encourage these vulnerable children. To learn more, visit http://www.amazima.org/.
Several of us from the US team are currently in Ghana on a listening and learning trip with a group of bipartisan political influencers. The group includes four Republicans and four Democrats, all of whom have very strong ties to key leaders, decision-makers and presidential candidates within their parties.
TAMALE, GHANA: A health worker checks a child for malnutrition at Nyankpala Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) during ONE’s listening and learning trip to Ghana. Photo by Morgana Wingard
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Tens of thousands of supporters of South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), rallied to celebrate the ANC’s 100th birthday this weekend. The ANC was established in 1912 in the central South African city of Bloemfontein, where the celebrations were held.
ANC members during the early days
The ANC is credited with being the first inclusive African liberation movement, uniting South Africans from diverse ethnic and economic groups. The ANC led the opposition to apartheid, the state-enforced racial segregation that persisted in South Africa from 1948 to 1994.
The government’s ban on organized opposition meant the ANC was soon classified as a terrorist organization, and many top ANC leaders spent decades in South Africa’s prisons. Most notably, Nelson Mandela served 27 years in prison before leading negotiations that led South Africa to a multi-racial democracy.
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ONE member and Peace Corps volunteer Brandon Green will be sharing his experiences in Burkina Faso with ONE Blog readers in the series, “Back to Africa” over the next few months. We look forward to hearing all his adventures!
Nadine is 14 years old and in the 7th grade. She wakes up at 4 a.m. every day to sweep the courtyard and house before her father wakes. Then she walks to the pump to fetch water for the entire family for the day. She then prepares breakfast, most likely a type of porridge made from millet. The younger children eat first and if there is any left, Nadine might get a little. She readies the children for their day at school or in the fields. After quickly washing up, she bikes the 20-minute ride to get to school. She usually arrives just in time.
Nadine doing chores with her sister. Photo credit: Brandon Green.
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