Special Message from SFA CEO
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jewels....@gmail.com
Nov 25, 2008, 3:53:48 PM11/25/08
to Song For Africa
Greetings friends of SFA,
As I write this inaugural piece for the second Song for Africa
newsletter, I'm sitting in the Winnipeg SFA branch office while
watching Thomas L. Friedman being interviewed by Charlie Rose via the
ubiquitous YouTube. Personally, I have been a fan of Mr. Friedman
ever since I witnessed his skills as a moderator at the Davos World
Economic forum. Since then, I have been attempting to keep up with his
intellectual hubris. I bring this up because at the beginning of the
interview he made a very interesting point on the collective undertow
in North America - the fact that for the first time in many
generations, we on average will not do better economically than our
parents; that for the first time our relative share in the quality of
life quotient or the world's wealth (highest occurring just after
World War 2) will be worse than the previous generation.
I'm a strong believer that there is a positive flip side to this,
which is the emerging crop of new qualifiers for how one defines
success in their life. In my travels and experience there has been an
ever broadening motif by young people who talk about their "life's
work". They talk about the desire to make a real impact in the new
world order, beyond or even instead of the desire to chase the middle
class dream without meaning. I find this very inspiring and one could
argue this was the primary reason why I recently found myself back in
Africa for the third time.
With that in mind I ended up in the back of a very full van traveling
from the capital city of Rwanda (Kigali) on the way to Kihere with
SFA's film director Derek Horn and some Partners In Health
representatives. Derek and I had already been en route for
approximately three days in order to get to our first destination, so
you can imagine the state we were in. We spent a few days with PIH and
the local FACEAIDS rep, touring the countryside, witnessing the
tremendous impact that these two organizations have already had in the
area in the three short years they have been there. We had the
pleasure of attending the opening of Rwanda's first ever two storey
hospital that has a patient catchment of approximately 400 000 people.
What is staggering about this is that before PIH came into the area to
train the local capacity (by invitation from the Rwandan government),
there was not a single doctor for those 400 000 citizens. The model
has been so successful that, unofficially, patients have been crossing
the border from the Congo in order to benefit from it.
In the end, Derek and I were there to research and scout for SFA's
second documentary entitled Rwanda: Rising Up. There is no better way
to do this type of work than to go the local level and start
interviewing patients that both PIH and FACEAIDS support. What we saw
time and time again was not only a very progressive attitude amongst
the people who have come a long way since the genocide of fifteen
years ago, but an underlying current of blameless dignity. We met with
many patients living with HIV, some of whom were terminal and not once
during our filming did anyone take the opportunity to lash out to the
outer world for not doing anything sooner. Needless to say, Song for
Africa is in the process of expanding to Rwanda in order to support
some of these patients.
A second example is a church we visited called Nyarubuye. At this
site, a few days into the genocide, 5000 Tutsis (men, women, and
children) were brutally slaughtered, mostly by use of farming
implements. The church is operational again and to say the least, it
left me with a feeling that I can't quite articulate, knowing what
took place there not long ago. The curator then took us to a locked up
old classroom with all the processed remains of the victims laid on
the floor. Experiencing the physical proof of such an atrocity was a
first for me. Once again, I was taken aback by the lack of guilt
projected on us by our Rwandan hosts. As a side note to this second
documentary and its accompanying record, we are currently in talks
with Alexisonfire and The Trews to participate amongst other great
Canadian artists once we solidify our relationship with the shining
musical stars of Kigali.
Next we were off to Kenya where we had the absolute pleasure of
meeting SFA's Nairobi rep Rebecca Ngaywa for the first time and
checking on our project sites on the ground. The SFA primary school in
the Mara is nearly complete and is just about open for business. We
did however enjoy a joyful welcoming ceremony from the local Masai
warriors and school children who will very shortly be taking classes
there. The stark reality came crashing home when the post-election
violence of last year hampered the construction process and I
witnessed first hand the IDP camps (Internally Displaced People) that
the world has forgotten and left behind. The following day I had a
joyful reunion with Nicolas from the VCT clinic who was highlighted in
the first documentary. It was exciting to talk about how SFA can help
expand clinic operations and we are beginning to implement some of
those ideas. Finally, we had a day in Kibera, which sadly has now
become Africa's biggest slum, and as always is a simultaneous
testament to mankind's failures and to resilience of spirit. I was
very proud to learn from our partners at CARE that the SFA Scholarship
Program is the first of its kind in Kibera and is truly
groundbreaking, although it also demonstrates the incredible vacuum of
need there. All of our scholarship recipients are doing very well
thanks to the efforts of SFA's Nairobi rep and of our international
partner CARE. By this time next year we have projected to have at
least one of our recipients attend a post-secondary education
institution, which will help blaze a trail of hope for that
marginalized community.
With great crisis comes great opportunity, and if our part of the
world is in an economic crisis, and our generation is slipping down
the GDP ladder a bit, then as I stated earlier, I think we have the
chance to redefine what it means to be successful in our minds. We can
take this moment and work towards leveling the playing field for
others elsewhere, as one day it may be us who are the ones asking for
help.
d
Check out pics from Africa visit our Facebook page here
As I write this inaugural piece for the second Song for Africa
newsletter, I'm sitting in the Winnipeg SFA branch office while
watching Thomas L. Friedman being interviewed by Charlie Rose via the
ubiquitous YouTube. Personally, I have been a fan of Mr. Friedman
ever since I witnessed his skills as a moderator at the Davos World
Economic forum. Since then, I have been attempting to keep up with his
intellectual hubris. I bring this up because at the beginning of the
interview he made a very interesting point on the collective undertow
in North America - the fact that for the first time in many
generations, we on average will not do better economically than our
parents; that for the first time our relative share in the quality of
life quotient or the world's wealth (highest occurring just after
World War 2) will be worse than the previous generation.
I'm a strong believer that there is a positive flip side to this,
which is the emerging crop of new qualifiers for how one defines
success in their life. In my travels and experience there has been an
ever broadening motif by young people who talk about their "life's
work". They talk about the desire to make a real impact in the new
world order, beyond or even instead of the desire to chase the middle
class dream without meaning. I find this very inspiring and one could
argue this was the primary reason why I recently found myself back in
Africa for the third time.
With that in mind I ended up in the back of a very full van traveling
from the capital city of Rwanda (Kigali) on the way to Kihere with
SFA's film director Derek Horn and some Partners In Health
representatives. Derek and I had already been en route for
approximately three days in order to get to our first destination, so
you can imagine the state we were in. We spent a few days with PIH and
the local FACEAIDS rep, touring the countryside, witnessing the
tremendous impact that these two organizations have already had in the
area in the three short years they have been there. We had the
pleasure of attending the opening of Rwanda's first ever two storey
hospital that has a patient catchment of approximately 400 000 people.
What is staggering about this is that before PIH came into the area to
train the local capacity (by invitation from the Rwandan government),
there was not a single doctor for those 400 000 citizens. The model
has been so successful that, unofficially, patients have been crossing
the border from the Congo in order to benefit from it.
In the end, Derek and I were there to research and scout for SFA's
second documentary entitled Rwanda: Rising Up. There is no better way
to do this type of work than to go the local level and start
interviewing patients that both PIH and FACEAIDS support. What we saw
time and time again was not only a very progressive attitude amongst
the people who have come a long way since the genocide of fifteen
years ago, but an underlying current of blameless dignity. We met with
many patients living with HIV, some of whom were terminal and not once
during our filming did anyone take the opportunity to lash out to the
outer world for not doing anything sooner. Needless to say, Song for
Africa is in the process of expanding to Rwanda in order to support
some of these patients.
A second example is a church we visited called Nyarubuye. At this
site, a few days into the genocide, 5000 Tutsis (men, women, and
children) were brutally slaughtered, mostly by use of farming
implements. The church is operational again and to say the least, it
left me with a feeling that I can't quite articulate, knowing what
took place there not long ago. The curator then took us to a locked up
old classroom with all the processed remains of the victims laid on
the floor. Experiencing the physical proof of such an atrocity was a
first for me. Once again, I was taken aback by the lack of guilt
projected on us by our Rwandan hosts. As a side note to this second
documentary and its accompanying record, we are currently in talks
with Alexisonfire and The Trews to participate amongst other great
Canadian artists once we solidify our relationship with the shining
musical stars of Kigali.
Next we were off to Kenya where we had the absolute pleasure of
meeting SFA's Nairobi rep Rebecca Ngaywa for the first time and
checking on our project sites on the ground. The SFA primary school in
the Mara is nearly complete and is just about open for business. We
did however enjoy a joyful welcoming ceremony from the local Masai
warriors and school children who will very shortly be taking classes
there. The stark reality came crashing home when the post-election
violence of last year hampered the construction process and I
witnessed first hand the IDP camps (Internally Displaced People) that
the world has forgotten and left behind. The following day I had a
joyful reunion with Nicolas from the VCT clinic who was highlighted in
the first documentary. It was exciting to talk about how SFA can help
expand clinic operations and we are beginning to implement some of
those ideas. Finally, we had a day in Kibera, which sadly has now
become Africa's biggest slum, and as always is a simultaneous
testament to mankind's failures and to resilience of spirit. I was
very proud to learn from our partners at CARE that the SFA Scholarship
Program is the first of its kind in Kibera and is truly
groundbreaking, although it also demonstrates the incredible vacuum of
need there. All of our scholarship recipients are doing very well
thanks to the efforts of SFA's Nairobi rep and of our international
partner CARE. By this time next year we have projected to have at
least one of our recipients attend a post-secondary education
institution, which will help blaze a trail of hope for that
marginalized community.
With great crisis comes great opportunity, and if our part of the
world is in an economic crisis, and our generation is slipping down
the GDP ladder a bit, then as I stated earlier, I think we have the
chance to redefine what it means to be successful in our minds. We can
take this moment and work towards leveling the playing field for
others elsewhere, as one day it may be us who are the ones asking for
help.
d
Check out pics from Africa visit our Facebook page here
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