Milena Pandy-Szekeres is an honour student in McGill University’s International Development Studies Programme, studying economics, international languages, anthropology and political science. For the summer of 2006, she will be working as a volunteer Economic Development Intern in Northern Kenya.
From May to August, 2006, Milena will be the Pastoralist Women’s Rights Empowerment Assistant for IMPACT (Indigenous Movement for Peace Advancement and Conflict Transformation), which is a non-governmental organization based in the Laikipia region of northern Kenya.
Currently, Milena is seeking funding, in the way of donations and sponsorships, to assist her in carrying out this vitally important work, which will give women in rural villages a “hand up” in achieving economic independence.
Why does this deserve your financial support? Women in Africa rarely have legal protection from male aggression and violence; women in Africa rarely have land rights or rights of inheritance; and women in Africa rarely have their own financial independence. And yet, it is women who bear the burden of caregiving, food production, and even the fetching of water. Often without even basic human rights, women are the core of the society and of the economy.
Last autumn, Stephen Lewis, Canada’s United Nations Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa, gave the 2005 series of Massey Lectures. Broadcast across Canada on CBC radio, the lectures detailed Lewis’ connection with the continent of Africa, his travels there, and his observations regarding the HIV/AIDS pandemic which is now sweeping the continent. It was passionate listening.
Stephen Lewis told of the Africa which he first visited thirty years ago, when, in his youth, he travelled the continent. He described it as an amazing land, full of joy, colour, music, dancing and the vibrant thrum of life in places full of vitality. Every city, town and village he visited exhibited similar exuberance. It was a joyful thing to hear Lewis describe in his lectures, what he had seen and experienced.
However, Lewis’ picture of today’s Africa, thirty years later, is stunningly different.
Stephen Lewis tells today of a continent under threat of eradication by HIV/AIDS, where hundreds of thousands of adults in the prime of their lives have died, and where even greater numbers of children are orphans. The vibrant Africa he had grown to love as a young adult is largely gone. The scourge of HIV/AIDS has decimated populations of adults so that in some areas, entire villages are composed of only the elderly and children. The pandemic is taking away the very people needed to maintain the economy - the mothers and fathers of these now orphaned children.
Stephen Lewis told of his visit to one village where he was introduced to an elderly woman and her husband, both in their ’80’s. Standing behind them were their grandchildren. Here were thirty-two young children, all dependents of this elderly couple who were too old and infirm to provide for them. All of the children’s parents, the offspring of the elderly couple, had died as a result of AIDS.
According to Lewis, such dreadful stories are now commonplace. The proportion of orphans in Africa is estimated to be at around 30 percent. Thirty percent of children are growing up without parents. Lewis states that it is also quite common to find child-headed households where the eldest child is acting as the parent to his or her siblings. The average age of that eldest child in such families, says Lewis, is eight years old. Imagine that. Eight year olds are completely and utterly responsible for raising their younger siblings.
There is no single solution to the problem of HIV/AIDS in Africa. Lewis speaks of the need for the World Bank and developed countries to eliminate and forgive Third World debt, so that the African nations have the resources to tackle the pandemic. He also speaks of making widely available the anti-viral drugs and the health care resources that are so vitally needed to keep the young adults alive. Perhaps the biggest single initiative, however, is work to improve the standard of living for women.
Women in Africa are the core of the economy. Women are the child bearers, the caregivers of children and the elderly. Women are also the farmers. Women are also the ones who fetch the water, not an insignificant chore, sometimes walking ten to twenty kilometres per day in search of water to take home for washing, drinking and cooking.
Women are the heart and soul of African society and the core of local economies, and yet, due to their low status, are disregarded.
“... I see the evidence…in the unremitting carnage of women and AIDS – …young women, who crave so desperately to live, …who can’t even get treatment because the men are first in line, or the treatment rolls out at such a paralytic snail’s pace… who are part of the 90% of pregnant women who have no access to the prevention of Mother to Child Transmission and so their infants are born positive… who carry the entire burden of care even while they’re sick, tending to the family, carrying the water, tilling the fields, looking after the orphans… the women who lose their property, and have no inheritance rights, and no legal or jurisprudential infrastructure which will guarantee those rights… no criminal code which will stop the violence… because I have observed all of that …and am driven to distraction by the recognition that it will continue, I want a kind of revolution in the world’s response, not another stab at institutional reform, but a virtual revolution." — Stephen Lewis, April 2005
If you raise the status of women, says Lewis, you stand a very real chance of improving everything.
Milena Pandy-Szekeres’ work in northern Kenya during the summer of 2006 is directly related to the ‘revolution’ that Stephen Lewis is talking about. Helping the poor women in the villages to achieve economic independence is supremely important. Assisting women to start their own businesses and allowing them to gain financial autonomy is absolutely key. Milena will be working very hard with the non-governmental agency IMPACT, to fulfil this aim. 
Donations and sponsorships are very gratefully requested, to assist Milena with the expenses involved while she is carrying out this volunteer work in Kenya.
Claude Presbyterian Church in Caledon, Ontario, is coordinating the receipt of donations on Milena’s behalf. 100 percent of your donation will go directly to fund Milena’s work in Africa, and tax receipts will be issued. Please make your cheque payable to: Claude Presbyterian Church and mark it: AFRICA FUND
Mailing Address:
Claude Presbyterian Church, 15175 Hurontario Street, Caledon, Ontario, L7C 2E3
www.claudechurch.com
For further information, email Elizabeth Szekeres.
Thanks so much for your help with this most worthwhile project.
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