Our Projects - International Projects

print this page

Sisterhood of the School Jumpers

news@TimesRecord.Com

02/26/2009

Uniform donations strengthen ties between St. John's and school for Ugandan AIDS orphans By Rachel Ganong, Times Record Staff BRUNSWICK — Near Kampala, Uganda, students at Mbabaali School for AIDS Orphans are wearing uniforms that once clothed St. John's Catholic School students in Brunswick. "I remember wearing those uniforms," St. John's eighth-grader Danielle Nickless said about the black, green and red plaid jumpers that the school donated last year. Their donation started an ongoing relationship between the two sets of students that has prompted St. John's 23 eighth-graders to work on behalf of Mbabaali students for mutual benefit. St. John's students are fashioning beaded bracelets to sell in an effort to meet the gaping needs of Mbabaali School, where students have contributed drawings to sell on note cards for the same purpose. In the process, St. John's students are learning to help others, and Mbabaali School students are learning to help themselves, according to Mary Tennant. "Even though there aren't a lot of resources, there are things that can be done," Tennant said, explaining why the Ugandan students are contributing to a project for their benefit. A parent of St. John's School eighth-grader Meilin Brodeur, Tennant is coordinating St. John's eighth grade service project with jewelry maker and fellow Rotarian Laurie Weber-Taft. Having twice visited Uganda as a member of the Coastal Rotary Club on service grants and having worked on other Ugandan service projects with Rotary, Tennant introduced the country and its needs to students. "I did a Power Point," she said. "It's poverty stricken; AIDS is rampant.." The Ugandan school needs food, supplies, "just about everything," she said. Tennant remembers distributing Nickless' uniform and others in May as the school uniforms began their second life of service to Ugandan students. School staff want uniforms, she said, to separate AIDS orphans from other children who try to slip into the classrooms. In St. John's eighth grade classroom, students brainstormed how they could help. "This is our major service project," eighth grade teacher Eleanore Holland said, noting the students started the project last year by researching Uganda. "This year, it's more creative, hands-on and working to make some money." Students settled on making jewelry to sell to benefit the Mbabaali School, where students study in their old clothes. "Just to make that connection that these are kids about their age," Weber-Taft said, about how the shared uniforms have personalized the service project.. On Tuesday, she and Tennant met with St. John's students as they strung shiny beads into bangles and made plans to sell them before services and Lenten suppers at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, which has a sister parish relationship with Kisubi, Uganda. Even the boys threaded multi-colored beads in patterns of their own design. "I think we're doing it for a good cause, which makes it OK," said Alec Bollinger about making jewelry. Seated next to two other boys in his class, he wouldn't go so far as to say he enjoyed making jewelry, but the trio affirmed they liked helping others by doing it. "We also did like this huge project — a research paper — where we learned about the poverty and AIDS epidemic," Bollinger said. Knowing they were trying to help students facing both challenges kept Jake Doughty focused on beading bracelets. "I just put like six beads and then one of these bigger beads," he said, estimating someone might pay three or four dollars for one of his finished products. His classmate Kaitlyn Thompson figured a higher value for project as a whole. "It's really giving us an opportunity to help," she said.

from the Times Record, Brunswick, Maine

Service above Self in South Africa

news@TimesRecord.Com

6/16/2008

Area Rotarians focus efforts on orphanage and hospital
By Jill Paperno Standish, Times Record Contributor — Special to Neighbors

BRUNSWICK — Although it's a 15-hour plane ride away, the small hospital of St. Mary's and the orphange of St. Vincent's in Marianhill, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, have been host to a steady stream of visitors from Brunswick, Bath, Boothbay Harbor and Kennebunkport. Since 1988, Rotarians and other generous Mainers have made the long trip to help the Sisters of the Precious Blood deliver hope and solace to the people of this area.

Out of the small group of 17 Coastal Rotarians, seven have made the trip.

Heading up the work in South Africa is John Dennen of Harpswell, a gregarious man with wild hair, hazel eyes and an electric charge about helping others. He says he's simply going by Rotary's creed — which is "Service above self" — but even among Rotarians, Dennen — who returned from his latest trip in late spring — is considered a catalyst for change.

It started in 1988, when local Coastal Rotary members got together to raise $6,000 to provide an incubator for the babies at St. Mary's. Since then, with the help of International Rotary, Coastal Rotary members have provided such varied items as medical bags for 400 outreach volunteers, sewing machines for a women's empowerment group and a portable X-ray machine, to name a few.

St. Mary's Hospital is small — a 200-bed facility — but its need is great. Its catchment area contains 750,000 people, half of whom, according to Dennen, are sick. Many of them are HIV-positive.

The government has been very slow to react to the threat posed by AIDS, he says, and for years the only help victims received was from religious and other service organizations. Catholic, Muslim and Jewish helpers worked together to feed and provide medical care for people carrying the HIV virus.

Dennen said at the hospital there are 35 to 40 babies born each day. Many of the mothers are HIV positive. If mothers agree to testing and they are found to be HIV positive, they are given a drug called Miverpine. The baby is delivered by Caesarean section, which reduces the risk of transferring the HIV virus by 90 percent.

However, Dennen says, the stigma of being sick with the AIDS virus is so great, that many mothers refuse to have the test.

Rotary, which always has the goal of leaving local inhabitants more self sufficient, received a grant to buy teaching equipment for a new nursing laboratory. They provided models so that the nurses could learn more about delivering babies.

Dennen believes it is not only important to provide life-saving support, but also to improve the quality of lives. Thus, with the help of Coastal Rotary, enough money has been raised to provide the orphans at St. Vincent's with a new playground.

Dennen said with the financial backing of Coastal Rotary and help from his wife, Indrani, and a South African college student, Deolin Subramony, they built the playground from scratch. Indrani, who met her husband while they were both living in South Africa. said the temperature reached 100 degrees, and they had to contend with electric shutdowns as they worked.

"We got to hang out with the sisters, and the kids were there a lot, attracted to huge bags of lollipops and candy," she said. "At the end of it the kids were so appreciative and so grateful. There were big smiles on their faces."

Another Rotary project this year was brought about by a tragic combination of circumstances. A visitor to the pediatric ward at St. Mary's might see a child dying in her hospital bed, while at the foot of her bed, her siblings would be playing cards. "Many children were abandoned by their moms because they think it's the only hope children have," Dennen said.
He surmised that the families were dealing with illness, hunger or domestic violence, and found it impossible to take care of the children. The orphanages are full, there is a hole in the community of people from the age of 30 to 40 due to AIDS, and grandparents are overwhelmed with children to care for.

So Rotary has sought a temporary solution that has a double use: Members built a deck on the second floor pediatric unit where these children can go until a home is found for them, and also where the young hospital patients can get fresh air. The deck was built by Biddeford carpenter Darryl Brdzinski, who gave up a month of his time to finish the project.

Beri Kramer, president of Heartwood College of Art, headed up another construction project by the Rotary Program in Kennebunkport this year. With the help of local volunteers and John Dennen, she traveled to Greytown where Rotarians had started a water project. Three bore holes in different locations had been drilled and pipes were attached to a merry-go-round or "play pump." When children play on the merry-go-round, water is pumped to a 5,000-gallon holding tank.

The pumps were placed in a public location, which would make it a safe place for women and girls to collect water.

Not all of Rotary's projects are physical buildings, however.

Susan Paluska of Bath traveled there to help children with schoolwork while they were in the hospital. As no homework ever arrived, Paluska found more basic needs to attend to: she helped the nuns serve breakfast, played games with the children and hugged or fed crying babies.

"I brought bubble stuff to get smiles like Patch Adams," she said.

At St. Vincent's, she helped children in grades 7 through 12 with basic English. Paluska knew it would be hard to quantify what she did, but she was busy every minute of her days doing it.

Another group of local people who went in 2004 and 2005 are Margaret Lonsdale, Mary Tennant and Bruce Goodman. Lonsdale and Tennant are social workers. They taught the trainer for health care aides how to do basic psycho-social assessment, how to talk with people who are dying, and how to support the families of people who are dying. Now there are 460 community outreach workers helping the families in KwaZulu-Natal.

None of this work was done without some personal risk. Paluska was surrounded by three 15-year-old boys who wanted her money. When she faced them down and showed empty pockets, they left her alone. But after that, afraid for her life, the nuns assigned a guard to her. Paluska said groups of teenage boys are "so brazen, not in school, no place to live and no parental supervision." Many children live in dwellings headed up by other children.

However, even with the difficulties inherent in being a middle-class Westerner in an impoverished area, people involved with the project often felt a deep sense of amazement and satisfaction. Lonsdale said they were greeted at the beginning of breakfast with the sound of women singing.

She noted that people would frequently tell her, "I'm so glad you've come, because you've just symbolized that others care for us."

To help Rotary's work in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, contributions can be sent to Coastal Rotary, P.O. Box 911, Brunswick, ME 04011

Well Drilling Project

Displaced People's Camp, Gulu and Soroti, Northern Uganda

A Matching Grant paid for 2 new wells and the repair of 3 others in the Displaced People's Camp in No. Uganda. The Italian Humanitarian group that did the drilling not only did the job at cost, but also repaired a 4th well and planned to drill a 3rd, as one of the wells did not provide the amount of water that they thought it should.  When Mary Tennent went to Uganda on VSG # 61901, she visited all of the wellsites.