| THE STEPHEN LEWIS FOUNDATION |
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At a Youssou N’Dour concert in Toronto in August 2004, the acclaimed Senegalese singer asked the audience: “What do you (the west) think of when you think of Africa? AIDS? War? Poverty? I want to show you that there is more to Africa…a reborn Africa…a beautiful Africa. New Africa.” BWI’s focus on Africa’s children and hunger issues addresses an urgent need. Both of these issues are exacerbated by the AIDS pandemic that is ravaging the region. 1) Women and Children:
Not only are women the most affected, they also carry all of the burden of nursing, care-taking and additional labour. Most importantly, when mothers die, they leave their children behind: Over 20 million children will be without one or both parents in sub-Saharan Africa by the year 2010. 2) Family income is gutted as wage earners die: Plots of land are left untended as many of the farmers and labourers that work the land are dying resulting in significant food production issue in countries like Botswana. As bleak as it may seem, there are organizations and people providing hope and inspiration – a dream of a New Africa. One such person is Stephen Lewis – the U.N. Secretary General’s Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa. He has worked tirelessly on working on the systemic issues facing Africa and generating interest and macro funding support. However, he came across a number of grassroots organizations that he saw were extremely effective at a local level and needed support urgently. As a result, he formed the foundation that bears his name in 2003. He told BWI’s own Stewart Borden, at a Toronto Rotary meeting this year, “The Foundation has now received in that relatively brief space of time, over a million dollars, with minimal solicitation, and we’re getting the money out as responsibly and quickly as possible to a number of grass-roots projects in several countries, addressing issues of palliative care, and orphans, and yes, grandmothers, and associations of people living with AIDS…fundamentally all of the groups who are so vulnerable and so incredibly poor, and yet can perform miracles of human intervention with a few thousand dollars.” I will be supporting with BWI’s matching funds, the Stephen Lewis Foundation. I have asked that the donation be directed to a specific project: the Reach Out Mbuya Parish HIV/AIDS Initiative, that serves the local community in Mbuya, on the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda. The project includes a clinic which administers ARV treatment, a sewing workshop, a micro-credit scheme and support for school children affected by AIDS. It is staffed almost exclusively by volunteers, both expatriate and Ugandan, with more than half of the program staff being HIV positive.
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