Photo drives refugee reunion

What started with a correspondents photograh turned into worldwide feedback of sympathy, and fueled a writer’s desire to reunite the family.

From Jerome Delay, Associated Press Writer.

Eleven-year-old Protegee carried her sobbing niece on her back as they searched for relatives in a sea of people in eastern Congo.

An Associated Press photograph of the girl — using her filthy T-shirt to wipe the tears from her face as 3-year-old Reponse clung to her neck and wailed — prompted hundreds of e-mails from people around the world hoping to help them.

I returned to Kiwanja on Sunday to try to reunite the girls with family and even succeeded in finding them. But it turned out that not all problems in Congo can be solved by an outsider’s sympathy.

When I first photographed Protegee on Nov. 6 in a crowd of thousands in the town of Kiwanja, she told me only her first name and that she was looking for her mother.

I learned later that she and Reponse had wandered alone for three days after being separated from Protegee’s mother on Nov. 3 as the family fled on foot from their village of Kiseguru, about 12 miles away.

Protegee had spent one night sleeping in a church, huddled with Reponse under a flimsy scarf. “I had no food or water,” she said, speaking in the Kiswahili language.

———————

After searching and finding that the mother had found the children but sent them to another village to be safe the writer helped unite them again with his car.

———————

Protegee, Reponse and Esperance are back in Kiwanja now. They have set up a cot in the corner of a room on the Catholic church grounds. Outside, the U.N. World Food Program is distributing food, but the situation in the town remains volatile.

Before I left, I gave Esperance the photograph of her daughter and granddaughter. She handed it to Protegee, who, with Reponse in her lap, gazed at the image. I left them there on their cot, clutching the photo, one of their few possessions.

Asked when they would return to their village, Esperance replied: “When the war is over.”

Read the full story: A photo of 2 little girls and a reunion in Congo

Championship ring to help save children

Former NFL player Je’Rod Cherry is raffling his SuperBowl championship ring in hopes of helping children.

Cherry, who played for New England, Philadelphia and New Orleans in a nine-year NFL career, is raffling his 2001 Patriots Super Bowl ring on Nov. 27 to raise money for children’s charities around the world. “I was moved by some pictures I saw of a child in Africa on his deathbed, and in the background waiting was a vulture, in essence, to consume him,” said Cherry, who lives in Ohio now. “What I saw there moved me to say, ‘What can I do to make a difference?’ What can I give sacrificially from myself to show I do have care and concern about this child’s predicament as well as other organizations that help people across the world?”

Cherry says he cherishes the ring, and played football 21 years to get to the pinnacle of the profession. “But using this ring to help children who are starving … and who have no hope will be a greater feeling than what I felt the day I actually won the ring.”

He’s raffling the ring instead of auctioning it so all fans would have a chance to win it, not just the richest ones. Five tickets cost $10, and can be purchased at netraffle.org. Deadline for purchase is Nov. 27 at 9 a.m.

“After the decision to do the raffle was made,” Cherry told me Saturday, “I said, ‘Wow. I’m actually going to relinquish this ring.’ It’s not going to be easy. Before that season, I’d played football all my life, but I never won a championship. My high school team won one league game in Berkeley [Calif.]. I went to Cal. I started my career with the Saints, and we never won there.”

He got to the Patriots with the middle-class free-agency class of 2001, and as I reminded Cherry, that first Super Bowl team was a bunch of Je’Rod Cherries. It’s fitting he won the ring with a bunch of blue-collar players like him.

Cherry’s disappointed with the raffle kitty so far — it’s approaching $75,000 — but he hopes even if the proceeds aren’t what he hopes for, “I may spur someone who hears about this or reads about a person giving up such a prized possession to do something for others.”

Purchase your raffle tickets at Netraffle.org (here)

Created by Jostens, the 14-karat white gold Super Bowl ring worn by the Super Bowl XXXVI champions, the New England Patriots, features 142 diamonds. Forty-two diamonds encircle the bezel, which is the edge of the ring’s face, and two larger football-shaped diamonds are on each side of the bezel. The face of the ring displays the Patriots logo made from red garnets and blue sapphires trimmed with diamonds. A figure of the Lombardi trophy is behind the logo and is made of platinum, a large marquis diamond, and two tapered baguette diamonds.)

Related Story -

• Cherry hopes hollow ring will save children - ESPN

From: SI.com (Peter King), Youtube, Netraffle.org

eBay bans ivory sales

In response to growing pressure from international law enforcement agencies and conservation groups, eBay, the online auction giant, announced it would ban all commerce in ivory, including most heirlooms, to avoid providing a market that would encourage the slaughter of endangered elephants.

The global ban on ivory sales will be enforced starting January 1, 2009.  Exceptions to the ban include products made before 1900 that contain small amounts of ivory.

The announcement came ahead of  a report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare that over a six-week period tracked more than 7,000 posts offering body parts of protected wildlife, including pelts, teeth, bones, horns, and feathers. The report, titled “Killing with Keystrokes” [PDF], found that the United States was responsible for more than 70 percent of the trade, an amount nearly 10 times more than the two countries with the next highest volume, Great Britain and China. Nearly three-fourths of the posts were for ivory products.

By far, the single largest seller was eBay, with 73 percent of the total posts tracked on US websites.

The online auctioneer tried a limited ban on ivory last year, blocking all cross-border sales. According to eBay’s official blog, that ban attempted “to balance the protection of endangered and protected species while also providing a way for sellers to offer legitimate ivory products legally allowed for sale within domestic markets.”

But the illicit ivory sales continued. “…given the complexities of the global ivory trade, and the distinct and unique characteristics of the eBay Marketplace,” says eBay’s blog , “the sale of any ivory on our site continued to be a concern within the company and among stakeholders.”

In speaking with the International Herald Tribune, eBay spokeswoman Nichola Sharpe said, “It’s just so complicated.  As we’ve said over the years, we are not experts” in the items bought and sold through the site.

“We don’t have possession of the items,” she said. “We never allow anything illegal to be sold. Where there are complex laws, we work with a number of stakeholders to make sure we are in compliance. That’s especially true with ivory.”

Last year, the company instituted a ban on international sales of elephant ivory products, but Jeffrey Flocken of the animal welfare fund said it “has not worked at all.”

First captive Black Rhinos released into wild in 25 years

Fifteen critically-endangered black rhinos have been released at an undisclosed location in Kenya with hopes that this pioneer group will breed naturally, repopulating an area they once roamed abundantly. The release is the first time in 25 years that captive rhinos have been returned to the wild.

Overseen by the Kenyan Wildlife Service and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), it is hoped that the release will be the first of many. According to an article from ZSL the fifteen rhinos were sedated and had GPS transmitters installed in their horns before being moved to their new home. The fifteen individuals were selected from a single herd, so the animals would already be familiar with one another. If the release proves successful, ZSL hopes to take what is has learned in Kenya to Uganda and Tanzania for similar projects there.

Kenya once had as many as 20,000 black rhinos. In two decades that number dropped to 350, largely due to poaching for their horns for markets in Asia and the Middle East, which use the horns for medicinal purposes. Currently Kenya’s black rhino population has been growing slowly but steadily: about 500 black rhinos live in wildlife sanctuaries.

See full article at Mongabay.com

Commitment to African Higher Education - $350M by 2010

Presidents of the seven U.S. foundations comprising the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa today announced their unanimous decision to continue both their collaborative and individual grantmaking
aimed at strengthening higher education in Africa beyond their original ten-year commitment.

The Partnership was created to strengthen Africa’s institutions of higher education so that they can better contribute to poverty reduction, economic growth and social development in their respective countries.  Outcomes from partners’ investments range from more and cheaper Internet bandwidth for universities and the establishment of research and training networks in the sciences and social sciences to the launch of a new Internet gateway for the collection and dissemination of research.

The presidents noted with great pride that by 2010, $350 million in Partnership grants will have assisted universities and other African institutions and programs dedicated to improving higher education access, excellence, research and diversity for men and women at select universities in Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Speaking on behalf of the seven foundation partners, Vartan Gregorian, the current rotating chair of the Partnership said, “By strengthening a core group of universities through collective and individual investments, the foundation partners have helped to nurture a rising generation of women and men who will contribute to the further development of democracy and civil society on the African continent.  To enable
universities to continue to address Africa’s many complex challenges, however, demands that we affirm our long-term commitment to build upon this progress.”

Launched in May 2000 by Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation, the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa represents both a belief in the importance and viability of higher education in Africa and a mechanism to provide meaningful assistance to its renaissance.

Between the Partnership’s establishment in 2000 and September 2005, the founding partners contributed more than $150 million to build core capacity and support special initiatives to further the development of higher education in six African countries: Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda.

The Partnership was re-launched for a second five-year period on September 16, 2005. The re-launch represented several milestones. Two additional foundations joined the Partnership: the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Together, the six foundations pledged a minimum of $200 million over the next five years. A major initiative to supply cheaper and more reliable Internet access to Partnership grantees through a bandwidth consortium was announced at the re-launch. At the same time, Kenya was added to the list of Partnership countries. In 2006 Egypt and Madagascar became Partnership countries.

In April 2007, the Partnership welcomed its newest member, the Kresge Foundation.

First Pediatric HIV/AIDS Clinic in Tanzania

The Abbott Fund joined representatives from the U.S. government, Baylor College of Medicine, the government of Tanzania and other partners today at a U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in the construction of the first pediatric HIV/AIDS clinic in the country.  The clinic will be in the Mbeya region of Tanzania.

To date, the Abbott Fund has provided a total of more than $28 million in grants and donated products to support the treatment of children with HIV in the developing world.

“Building this clinic represents an important expansion in Abbott’s commitment to improving access to care for children in the developing world during the last decade,” said Catherine V. Babington, president, the Abbott Fund. “It fulfills a critical need in Tanzania, where we have been improving health systems not only for people with HIV, but also for those with other chronic health issues as well.” The new clinic will bring the first pediatricians trained in the special needs of children with HIV to Mbeya.

It is estimated that there are currently more than 150,000 (UNAIDS 2008) children in Tanzania living with HIV/AIDS and in need of treatment and care. Mbeya has the second highest rate of HIV in the country, with a prevalence rate of more than 13 percent among a population of more than two million. According to the National AIDS Control Project (NACP), last year only 2,280 children were registered to receive care with half receiving antiretroviral (ARV) therapy. In contrast, almost 16,000 adults in Mbeya are on ARV therapy.

“While we are making progress in enrolling adults into HIV care and treatment, our services for children have severely lagged behind due to lack of trained physicians and other necessary resources,” said Eleuter Samky, M.D., medical superintendent, Mbeya Referral Hospital. “We expect the new center of excellence to accelerate our ability to make progress against our national treatment goals for children with HIV.” The NACP goal is to have children comprise 20 percent of all people on treatment in Tanzania, 88,000 children, by 2010.

The Mbeya center of excellence represents a unique partnership between the government of Tanzania, Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative (BIPAI) and the U.S. government, supported by the Abbott Fund. The Abbott Fund is committing more than $2 million to the project, which will be run by BIPAI. The clinic will be staffed by physicians from BIPAI and the Pediatric AIDS Corps, while physicians and other health workers from the region will be trained in the special needs of caring for children with HIV. The U.S. government will provide funds for the ongoing operations of the clinic through the PEPFAR program.

“The Mbeya center of excellence will provide the foundation for pediatric HIV treatment for the foreseeable future, helping not only to save children’s lives but increase health care worker capacity in the country,” said Mark W. Kline, M.D., president, Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital. “We are confident that we will see the profound improvements in children’s health in Mbeya that we have seen across Africa when integrating pediatric HIV clinics into national AIDS programs.” Today, the BIPAI network clinics treat more than 26,000 children, representing the largest population of treated children with HIV in the developing world.

The Tanzania center is modeled after the pioneering work conducted by BIPAI and supported by the Abbott Fund at the Romanian-American Children’s Center, which opened in April of 2001 in Constanta, Romania. In this approach, children are not only provided antiretroviral medicine and other medical treatment, but are supported by a comprehensive program to address both the children’s and their family’s other daily needs. This program has reduced pediatric AIDS mortality by more than 90 percent in Constanta –– the epicenter of pediatric HIV in Europe.

In 2007, BIPAI opened the first pediatric HIV care clinic in Malawi, also supported by the Abbott Fund. This original clinic has now expanded to include satellite clinics in rural areas, treating nearly 2,300 children with HIV.

Children Helping Children

Rosedell Elementary School, Saugus, California

www.redcrosshomtownheroes.org

Rosedell in a word… Eager

Rosedell is a Hometown Hero because…
The students of Rosedell Elementary School are heroes because they have taken on a year-long service project to promote awareness about measles and raise funds to vaccinate children in Africa and Asia against the disease. Read more

Story of Grace

As shared by Mary Ann McCoy,
Founder and Executive Director of Children of Grace

I met Grace Talitwala when I arrived in Jinja, Uganda in 2002. She was a lovely, young widow that sincerely welcomed me into her country and into her heart. Read more

Doctors Without Borders/MSF Treating Thousands of Malnourished Children in Southern Ethiopia

In the past month Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has admitted more than 4,000 severely malnourished children into its nutritional programs in the Oromiya and Southern Nations and Nationalities People’s regions (SNNPR) of southern Ethiopia. On May 13, MSF set up a stabilization center to provide 24-hour medical care to severely malnourished children suffering from complications such as malaria or pneumonia in Ropi, Oromiya region. Since then two more centers have been set up in Senbete Shinquille and Shashemene, Oromiya region. In total 927 children have been admitted to these three centers, with 290 currently receiving care. Read more