Last night I attended what has now become an annual fundraiser for the Stephen Lewis Foundation, the Dare to Wear Love fashion show. (See a longer, earlier post from last May.)
For it, 25 Canadian designers were given a bolt of cloth from Africa and asked to come up with something great. And so they do, designing concoctions that run the gamut from wacky to wonderful. Such is creativity – as the proceeds from the tickets goes to the Foundation’s various grassroots projects throughout Africa.
Yet I am struck by nonetheless with a question a friend raised: what does any of this really have to do with issues of poverty – in this case HIV/Aids? Aren’t we all there just to show off our outfits and our networks and how fabulous we are as we swill our cocktails?
Obviously I can’t answer for everyone – and in the end of course, the money we paid for our tickets is crucial to many people who earn the price of one of those cocktails in a week.
Chris Tyrrell, one of the show’s organizers, told me a little while ago that he didn’t want to find a way of doing some good – and I’m paraphrasing here — by concentrating on the hard luck of those people, on their victimhood, but rather on their strength, determination and ability to carry on. I agree, and feel strongly that a focus on the poor as survivors, or as protagonists, rather than victims is as crucial as the material help they may receive from us. It empowers them and us.
And I have to admit I also liked the fact that this fundraiser wasn’t a dour affair. After all, creativity and self-expression, however crazy, are hugely important aspects of our humanity.
Daring to Wear Love
23 OctSaving los 33 – More Than a Miracle
15 OctWatching the reaction last night to the gripping finale of the Chilean miners’ saga, I was struck by how many people kept referring to the successful extraction from their underground prison “a miracle.”
Clearly, though, rather than magic, it was an extraordinary feat of engineering that saved their lives – much as some of the miners credit their faith in God with managing to stick out 69 days in a collapsed mine 700 metres below ground.
Yet the amazing work of those engineers who worked quickly to not only find the miners, but communicate with them and eventually bring all of them to safety, reminds me of an organization a lot of people might not know much about: Engineers Without Borders.
Admittedly, I don’t usually think of engineers as a — shall we say – particularly altruistic lot. Their skills allow them to do a great deal of good, but also harm. And while it are politicians, not engineers, who decide to do it in the first place, they are the ones who find ways to build dams in the Amazon and run freeways through underprivileged urban neighbourhoods or places like the Frederick Law Olmstead-designed park in Buffalo.
Meanwhile, male engineering students have a reputation for being little more than a macho and irresponsible bunch of guys, the phrase “Engineers Rule the World’ a sort of mantra for them.
So the amazing work of Engineers Without Borders is a refreshing antidote to that view. According to EWB’s Kyle Baptista, their various chapters throughout North America counter ERTW with ESTW –Engineers Serve the World — “and that’s really gone head to head with the ERTW mantra,” he says.
Co-founded in 2000 by two University of Waterloo engineering grads, Parker Mitchell and George Roter, this non-profit currently unites some 50,000 professionals and students to combat the root causes of poverty in Africa through development projects. They all believe, according to their website “that the next generation of rural Africans should have the same opportunities to improve their lives, that we have right here at home. To help make this a reality, our members and volunteers apply all the creativity, technical skills and problem-solving approach for which engineers are known.”
In fact, says Kyle, one factor that led to the establishment of EWB was Roter and Mitchell’s recognition of the under-utilization of the engineering profession in poverty reduction.
Now EWB volunteers spend anywhere from four months to three years in rural African communities, he says, “really understanding the needs before they start working on the ‘soft skills’ and capacity building with other partner organizations. So, a fairly different model and fairly different perspective for engineers.”
And with its focus primarily on the university campus, and chapters developing “on their own” in a host of schools, Engineers Without Borders, he says, “has really sort of polarized the perspective on engineers in Canada.”
Check out their website (Rapper/songwriter K’naan will be performing at their 10th Anniversary gala next Janurary) for more information about this great organization.
Voices for Change
12 Oct
Harvesting the Fruits of Solidarity
I subscribe to a great wordpress blog called What Gives, one that offers a daily dose of optimism by shining light onto a series of wonderful projects, many of them set up by regular folk who are just trying to help others. A particular favourite was one that rescued baby elephants. Others showcased Room to Read, the Little Flowers School for children in India too poor to pay school fees, and yet another, One World Futbol, that brought unbreakable plastic soccer balls to impoverished youngsters around the world. Recently, tho’, I was inspired by one on something called the Voice Project to investigate further and come up with an article for the Toronto Star.
The Voice Project not only offers viewers truly amazing video clips of musicians singing to support a cause – in this case, women in northern Uganda who are trying to bring home family members press-ganged into Joseph Kony’s notorious Lord’s Resistance Army. It also introduces to people like me the talents and integrity of a great many superb musicians one might have heard of before.
But aside from that, it provides a glimpse into the connect between art or music and honest (as opposed to press-hungry) solidarity. As Bedouin Soundclash bass guitarist Eon Sinclair told me during the interview I did with him for the article, “I think that as artists we are afforded a real opportunity to really create awareness of some things, whether you like it or not. You have a platform to do it. Not everyone chooses to do it but think the three of us,” he added, referring to the band, “have grown up somewhat socially conscious with some reference for our environment and the people that inhabit it as well. So whenever we have those opportunities we try to think critically about how we can help.”
As the article states, the band chose a song by K’naan, another extraordinary talent, who Canada has adopted as its own despite the fact he was born in war-torn Somalia. K’naan not only contributes a lot to important causes – his producer, Sol Guy, frequently speaks in schools about the power of culture in effecting social change – but often addresses social, race and I would say even political issues head on in his art.
In fact, art and music can sustain and entertainment us, and also work as powerful weapons against status-quo thinking. “From the moment that we are able to step in front of a group of people,” said Eon, “and have them appreciate the music and take it in, you realize how powerful that medium actually is. Having a great speech or a powerful quote is a great thing to be lasting, but a melody or a rhythm seems to be able to quickly penetrate people.”
So aside from the link to my article, do yourself the favour of checking out The Voice Project at www.voiceproject.org
Another Tragic Anniversary
8 Oct
This girl had just seen her mother killed by the Taliban.
Photo credit: rosewithoutathorn84
It’s been a busy past few weeks, so I missed the anniversary – not that of 9/11, the other one — the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. (October 7th to be precise.) I was reminded again of the absurdity of this enterprise by an article in today’s Globe and Mail, outlining the attempts of the United Arab Emirates government to force the Canadian government to give it lucrative landing rights here in return for continuing use of an air base there called Camp Mirage. Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks this war has nothing to do with bringing good things to the Middle East, even though it would never occur to me to try and reap some sordid benefit from it. The Harper government refuses to be strong-armed though; they’re going to use an airbase in Cyprus – at even greater cost to the taxpayer.
Now, I join most of humanity in finding the Taliban a despicable lot. I don’t agree with the invasion but I know the fundamentalist pseudo-religious group would undoubtedly put someone like me in jail or do worse if they could if I lived in their poverty-stricken nation.
What continues to bother me is the ridiculous notion, taken as a given here by a supine and infotianment-driven media that troops are there to defending Canada. The U.S. uses that ploy as well, only harping on the side issue, that of bringing democracy to the region.
But what constitutes the democracy that is costing nations that have nothing to do with Afghanistan thousands of lives and billions of dollars? The Karzai government. The New York Times ran a long piece a few weeks ago on how the U.S. government can’t figure out why so many Afghanistanis detest this gang of corrupt autocrats. And worse, don’t seem to find the Taliban such an unpalatable option. They have been operating under the assumption that the citizens of that benighted nation can tolerate the corruption, lawlessness and extraordinary injustice that are the hallmarks what of the article called “Corrupt-istan.”
This rationalization says the article, “ seems to have turned out terribly wrong. It now seems clear that public corruption is roundly despised by ordinary Afghans, and it may constitute the single largest factor driving them into the arms of the Taliban.”
Now honestly, this isn’t rocket science. Previous wars (like Vietnam) have made it pretty clear that people won’t suffer a lazy, murderous, thieving government just because it calls itself democratic. How our governments ever believed that Afghanistan would be okay by simply getting rid of the Taliban – and sticking anything else, however bad, in its place — is beyond comprehension.
I have seen some self-righteous war-boosters point to the Taliban attacks on schools that educate girls as sufficient reason for our continued presence there. But really, in the end, which is worse? A group that won’t let girls go to school, or a group that steals the money to build that school and parks it in what the Times described as “waterfront villas” on “the splendorous avenues of Palm Jumeira in the United Arab Emirates.”
But no one should even be asking that question. Neither option is even remotely acceptable. So why are we propping up one while fighting the other? Why hasn’t occurred to anyone that the people of Afghanistan need to make their own decisions? Is it possible that the decision-makers in our countries are as disdainful of the rights of ordinary Afghans as both the Taliban and the Karzai government? Nine years on and who knows how many deaths at this point and the only message I can think of sending to both the Afghans and the soldiers stationed there, is ‘Sorry.”
