Nadja, I am looking into the maxi-pad donations. I saw something about this on TV and have read about it in a few magazines. I've gotten several boxes to send to these girls that so desperately need them. We may collect them through this campaign and send to the girls. They are in East Africa, I believe, but I know girls/women all over Africa do need them. I know from personal experience that not all these girls can afford to buy them, and sometimes they just don't even have access to this. It is indeed a luxury. I will post information on where to send them if you would like to donate them to the appropriate agency sooner, rather than later. Thanks and God Bless!!! I have attached a link on the maxi-pad issue at the bottom of this post!!!
Da Man Himself A.K.A. Ibrahim Dabo - $12
Ishmael Dabo - $12
Renee Baker from Renee Baker Designs - $30 (NEW)
Stan - $2
Anonymous (30 individuals) - $110, 8 packs of bic pens.
Christophe Guibert de Bruet, Esq. - $12
Joyce Koo, Esq. - $12
Mary Brown, Esq. - $100
Randolph Shingler, Northwestern Mutual Financial Advisor - $100
Miatta Dabo, Esq. - $250
Boutique Mix - $2000
Angela Holland, Esq. - $12
Delia Patterson, Esq. - $12
Bryon Wasserman, Esq. - $12
Sarah Gans - $12
Sherika Jones - $12
Basil Henderson - $12
Teresa Bernhardt- $12
Chandran Iyler, Esq. - $12
Tilshop Girl - $30
Pastor Bai Sesay $20
Daniel of Daniel's Counter
Mountain Girl from Mountaingirl's Musings
Abbey from Random Thoughtsof Life
Jack Figura
SDSue from sdsiouxlakotaconnections.blogspot.com
Sierra Express Media Newspaper
It is wonderful that one of the main priorities of our new government is to tackle the pervasive corruption that has damaged Sa Lone. I applaud this priority and know that it will increase accountability of civil servants to the people. We must not, however, forget to implement changes in agencies responsible for instituting reform for the children. We can fight corruption all we want, but if we don't take care of the children, repair the extensive damage done to them, and provide a safe environment for them to heal, we will merely be "chasing our tails." The children are the leaders of the future. We must ensure that when the time comes they are able to be leaders that can carry our great nation into the future. We need to promote education and health reform for our children. These are not privileges - they are rights. Voting is a privilege. Education, food, health, safety and shelter are Rights!!!!!!
We don't want the needs of the children to be lost in the "big" agenda. Let's face it, if we fix today and leave tomorrow still broken, then there really is no future. The present government will not be around in 30 years - those kids, the ones who need our help right now, will be running Sa Lone in 30 years. Let us start now before its too late. We don't want history repeating itself. Let's take a look at where the children have been over the last decade and in the following weeks, decide on how to move forward. [I am enclosing a series of poignant and heartbreaking stories that should fuel our need for reform. Things have obviously improved since the time these stories were printed, but we need to remember where we've been so that we don't forget where we need to go - Included in the earlier post below].
2008 Pledge
Please note that there is no criticism of the government here. This is a task for all Sa Lone folk. We can all do our little part to facilitate progress for the children. For those of us outside of the diaspora, sponsor a child, adopt a school and do a book drive, send pens or pencils, buy ten pairs of shoes and send for ten lucky boys or girls at a school of your choice (you can even go to payless for this). Ask each and every one of your friends and/or colleagues to donate one dollar (US) or one pound (UK) or one euro (Europe) a month for twelve months and on December 31st, 2008, buy school supplies and/or clothing, and non-perishable goods and donate them to one or more lucky schools.
Ask for 50 cents a month if a dollar is too much. Ask your friends to donate all their old clothes or shoes so that you can send it to a trusted individual or organization that can distribute it to those who truly need it. Pledge to make 2008 a year of change for rebuilding Sa Lone - one innocent child at at time. Just sending pens, pencils, notebooks, crayons or whatever you can afford for one child makes a difference!!! My friends and I are putting together a 2009-2010 Calendar. We hope you support us and buy them next year. We will use the money to buy school supplies/uniforms for children at a deserving school(s). I will have more details later!!!!
If you want to take the pledge, please let me know in the comments section below and update us on your monthly progress. We will support and encourage you all the way!!!! At the end of this month, I'll do a post on the logistics of this pledge. Please remember, we are not sending cash home. We are buying school supplies, uniforms/clothes, basic necessities and non-perishable food items with the money we collect. Common, join us for a good cause. Today I rounded up 7 individual colleagues of mine who have each agreed to donate a dollar a month in 2008. This brings my individual pledge total to 32 individuals. You can do it!! Support the children. They need us now, more than ever. Education is vital to sustain continued economic and social reform anywhere in the world.
As a proud graduate of an HBCU, I can proudly tell you that "A Mind is a Terrible thing to Waste."
When our children are not in school, the rebels will find something for them to do. You have seen pictures of our kids carrying guys. Our kids being trained to become child soldiers. Our kids being taught how to steal, rape and kill. A picture speaks a thousand words.
We don't want that. We don't need that. They don't deserve that!!! Give them hope!! Give them dreams!! Give them inspiration!!! Give them ambition!!! Empower them to become leaders of tomorrow.
Let us do what we can to prevent rebels from hacking off the limbs of innocent babies!!! Be the voice of these innocent children. Help educate them. Help feed them. Help Clothe them. Just Help Please!!! Please take Pledge Poll [located on the left side of this blog].
HOW THE PLEDGE PROCESS WORKS - The Campaign starts on 1/1/2008 and ends on 11/30/08. You may start now if you want to :-)
1. Please leave a comment in the comments section of this post indicating that you will participate in the Pledge Campaign. Please take the Pledge Participation Poll located to the left of this blog.
2. When you successfully recruit new pledge members, please send an update via email to me or the comments section so that we can all celebrate your success. You may keep all the pledge $$ or send them to me if you prefer. If you do send me your pledge money or any supplies, please leave a comment stating you have done so. That way I am accountable to you and other participants. Indicate what supplies you sent to me or the amount of cash/checks you sent to me. We are operating under the honor system and I trust that we will all do the right thing.
3. It is up to you to inform of us of your monthly pledge amounts (any amount per month works. If people just want donate a lump sum, that's fine too).
4. It is ok if some people just want to donate school supplies, clothes, book bags or shoes. You may keep all the supplies until the end of the campaign or send them to me if you prefer.
5. We are operating under the honor system. I expect that you will collect and honestly account for all the donations/contributions you collect. If you find that this honor system does not work for you, please, please either buy school supplies immediately so that you don't have idle cash lying around or contact me to send me the money/items.
6. Please check in via the comments section or email me periodically so that we can all keep track of our progress.
7. Throughout the year, I will inform you of which schools or organizations will benefit from this campaign.
8. At the end of the year, all the supplies and other materials will be shipped to Sa Lone. All of you will have a say in where your money goes. We will make those decisions around August 2008.
9. The shipping and delivery costs will be sponsored by Boutique MIX.
10. I am always eager to hear your comments via this blog or at my email address at SaLonePikin123@hotmail.com.
11. My biggest thanks and gratitude go to Sierra Express Media in Sierra Leone for posting this Sa Lone Pikin blog on their website in an effort to raise awareness about the campaign. Thanks to "borborh" for supporting this message!!!
12. In Early 2008, Boutique Mix will sponsor a 24 month calendar for 2009-2010 as part of the fund-raising campaign. I will update the blog periodically with progress (including pictures) of the photo shoot and other events. I will let you know when the calendar becomes available for sale. The calendar is part of the 2009 campaign to raise money to create a scholarship fund for one deserving student at the University of Sierra Leone, and to help revamp the University Library. Part of this money will also be used to donate to Kiva for micro loan funding.
13. My deepest gratitude to everyone for participating and/or spreading the word.
14. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns.
15. Please make a note of the names of all contributors so that we may list their names on the blog at the end of this campaign. We have a full year to go. We hope to keep the passion and momentum going throughout the year. Thanks for all your help and support!! You Rock!!!
Here is a helpful NY Times article on the MAXI-PAD ISSUE.
November 12, 2007 - A Not-So-Simple Plan to Keep African Girls in School
By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH
THEY call it the Map of Africa.
It is a cute name for an acute problem: the stains that African girls often endure when they are menstruating and the rags or camel’s skin they use for protection fail. “Girls who can’t manage their period stay home, and that is affecting their education,” said Michelle J. Vaeth, communications director for FemCare, the Procter & Gamble unit that makes Always pads and Tampax tampons.
So FemCare is tackling the problem head-on. In March, it inaugurated Protecting Futures, a program to first build bathrooms, then educate teachers and finally distribute free pads, in hopes of keeping African girls in school. Protecting Futures is not FemCare’s first foray into Africa. For two years, it has been working with the Girl Child Network, a nonprofit, to give its pads to schoolgirls in Kenya, and it is compiling data to quantify the effect that the program has had on attendance.
Yet skeptics abound. Esther Duflo, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that absentee rates are the same for boys and girls in much of Africa, and that programs like providing free uniforms and books seem to increase attendance. “What’s keeping children from school is the costs of attending,” she said.
But studies by the Forum for African Women Educationalists, a nongovernmental organization, seem to support FemCare’s hypothesis. “Girls will stay home rather than be embarrassed,” said Faith Macharia, the national director of the forum’s Kenya chapter. She said the studies showed that “cumulatively, they can lose a whole month of schooling each year.”
Protecting Futures, which started its first venture with two schools in Namibia, is the latest entry in Live, Learn and Thrive, Procter’s three-year-old program in which managers of many brands find ways to better the lot of children in poor countries.
Its Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program has been providing sachets of its Pur water-purifying powder at cost throughout Africa. Its Safeguard soap has provided the product as well as hygiene education to children in Pakistan and China. Pampers has teamed with Unicef on a promotion in which it donated a dose of tetanus vaccine in Africa for every package of diapers sold in Britain.
Protecting Futures may be the most complicated project Procter has undertaken yet. FemCare cannot distribute pads unless the girls have private places to change them — so it is building bathrooms. The girls need clean water for hygiene, so in one school it is piping water from two miles away. It built dormitories at a school heavily attended by children from nomadic tribes.
It also needs to find ways to dispose of the pads, in some cases for practical reasons, in other cases for cultural ones. In some parts of Africa, people believe that one’s blood can be used to cast a spell, so girls would fear leaving bloodied pads exposed. Procter will probably install small, sealed incinerators near the new bathrooms, and train teachers to burn the pads.
Procter also plans to send nurses or doctors to the schools four times a year to troubleshoot health problems, provide health education and distribute pads. The Protecting Futures staff is working with local groups to teach girls more about puberty, even when that means training male teachers to address a subject that is often considered off limits.
“Discussions about sexual maturation are just not commonplace in African society,” said Ms. Macharia of the forum. “The parents hope the teachers do it, the teachers hope the parents do it, and the girls wind up thinking that menstruation is associated with doing something wrong.”
Protecting Futures knew it would face problems carrying out its projects. Gregory S. Allgood, director of the children’s drinking-water program, has been working in African communities for several years, and enlisted some of his own contacts among philanthropic and government groups there to help the new program. (They pointed out the blood-spell connection.) And he made sure that the FemCare people sought the aid of local leaders in schools.
“In Kenya alone, you need 20 partners,” he said. “The culture in rural areas is different from Nairobi, which is again different from the north, where so many of the Somali women are.” In Kenya, FemCare is working with the Ministry of Education, tribal leaders, Unicef and Ms. Macharia’s group. It is also working with Hero, a school-based campaign that the United Nations Association of the United States of America, a nonprofit group, runs to assist children in AIDS-ravaged parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Yet Protecting Futures has run into snags beyond the hurdles it had anticipated. FemCare got into a mini-brouhaha with a council in Namibia when it neglected to register the location of its workers’ camp site. Protecting Futures is on hold there until the issue is resolved. Meanwhile, it has sped up its program to introduce puberty education in South Africa.
“We’ve made a five-year commitment to expand this program in Africa,” said Ms. Vaeth of FemCare. “So from a long-range timing standpoint, we aren’t missing a beat.” The question, of course, is what’s in it for Procter? A great deal, marketing experts say. For one, girls who use free pads today can turn into paying customers when they grow out of the school programs. They could persuade their mothers and aunts to use the products.
“When you need to change a culture, it’s good strategy to start with the younger generation,” said Jill Avery, an assistant professor of marketing at the Simmons School of Management.
And the program sits well with the Kenyan government, which has cut tariffs on Procter’s sanitary pads. Lisa Jones Christensen, an assistant professor at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, who is familiar with Procter’s philanthropy programs, says that Procter receives special treatment when its containers hit Kenya’s docks.
“No one is saying, ‘Just unload the pads, leave the boxes of Tide,’ ” she said. “This program is giving P&G a license to operate in Africa for all its products.” There is a payback in the developed world, too. “The idea of keeping an African girl in school resonates strongly with our consumers,” Ms. Vaeth said.
children 1 children 2 children 3 children 4 children 5 children 6 children 7 children 8 children 9
Thank you!!
New Times Article & Picture Source
4 comments:
Thats brilliant! ... x
AWESOME information. You are great! Seriously!
great cause
they need so much
i think the main culprits are the imf and world bank
they give them money and set the conditions on how to use the money instead of letting them do what they need to do in order to build up their country
Knowledge is Power!
How do I add myself..or how do I go about giving a tiny donation?
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