Start Where You Are!

On this World AIDS Day (the 4th since the inception of "Got Cents?"), we celebrate the news from UNAIDS and WHO about the 17% reduction in the rate of infection over the past eight years. That's good news!

We are crushed, however, by the numbers that remain -- 19,000,000 Africans who have died needlessly from a preventable disease; 12,100,000 African children orphaned by the disease; 7,000 people newly infected today.

These numbers are numbing. Which is why we started Got Cents? in the first place. How can we possibly know what these numbers mean, if we can't visualize them.

And so, for the past four years, we've tried to give a physical demonstration of what AIDS is doing in Africa.

We displayed 1,000,000 pennies in the pouring rain in 2005.

We displayed 3,000,000 pennies and built HIV/AIDS Caregiver Kits to send to Africa.

We went to Africa.

We took our message to both the Republican and Democratic parties at their conventions, with a "little" help from ONE.org and WorldVision.

In the end, we tried to do our little part to make the world more aware.

We even made a movie.

And we are reminded of some of the first words we blogged, four years ago:

With only 10% of the world’s population, Africa has nearly 65% of the world’s cases of HIV/AIDS. According to the best estimate from UNAIDS, at the end of 2004, nearly 25.4 million Africans were infected with the disease, and each day, more than 6,300 Africans die while 8,500 more Africans become infected. As a result, the continent now has more than 12 million children who have lost at least one parent to AIDS, a number that is growing at an estimated rate of one new orphan every 14 seconds (or five new orphans as you’ve been reading) to 18 million by 2010.

So, like most Americans, I looked at a super-sized set of problems facing the African continent and thought only in terms of super-sized solutions; solutions that only superstars could provide, but not me; not my family. I’m not a callous guy, but even deeply compassionate people, in the face of enormous suffering, will undertake avoidance as a sane option, right? After all, what could I do?

My wife and I often encourage our daughters by telling them, “Just start where you are, use what you have, do what you can, and it will be enough.” Somehow, pennies seemed like the place to start. First, we had a lot of pennies. Second, it occurred to us that if we had so many pennies, others might as well. So, we set out in pursuit of the truly insane goal of collecting the millions of pennies it would take to display one penny for each person estimated to have died of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa as of the end of 2004 on World AIDS Day.

From the very beginning, the undertaking seemed impossible. Then others started doing what they could with what they had. A family held a penny bake sale. Several schools held penny wars. A pre-school collected 1,400 pennies -- one penny for each African child born that day with HIV/AIDS. A group of Stanford University students put penny jars across the quad during the last week of school and raised hundreds of dollars in pennies, coins and bills. A stranger designed a website and suddenly complete strangers were giving us their pennies. Our garage floor began cracking under the weight, literally.

Since then, my wife and I and our two teenage daughters have traveled to Ethiopia as a family five times, where we work at schools for orphans and destitute children. From the very first time, we saw a tiny piece of Africa’s immense suffering, and it broke our hearts. Avoidance would have been easier and less painful, but, oh, what we would have missed: like the smile appearing on the lifeless face of a woman dying of AIDS as someone rubbed her back or the joy in watching my teenage daughter picking up Wendmagegn -- a seven-year-old (now 13) orphaned by AIDS at age two -- and wrapping him around our hearts. What an incredible joy watching my family giving and growing and doing what they could.

Somehow, even in the face of enormity, it seemed like “enough.”

Pennies and backrubs can’t possibly change Africa. Not by themselves and not from one family. Yet, I’ve begun looking at Africa’s plight and asking a different set of questions, like “what if each of us gathered our pennies from our drawers and closets?” (that would be $2 billion) or “what if each of us took the time to learn the name of a child orphaned to AIDS?” and “what if each of us took the risk of letting our hearts be broken by the people of Africa?”

In a world where I don’t have to do it all, only what I can, maybe I don’t have to be a superstar to help Africa. Maybe it only takes each of us starting where we are, using what we have, doing what we can, and it will be “enough.”

Christmas is the Power of ONE (live from Ethiopia)

As our small American team settles into Christmas Eve, we marvel at the sights and sounds of the people of Ethiopia. Although we have visited this marvelous and impoverished country many times, something magical settles over us as we acknowledge the power of the season.

We have been in Ethiopia four days now, but today we spent our first full day in the northern Tigray region. Presently, we are staying with the Oasis Foundation in Shire, near Enda Salassie, a few-hour walk to the Eritrean border and a few-hour drive to Sudan or Axum.

There are no Christmas ornaments or trees anywhere to be found and no one is anxious for gifts. Rather, the people of this region are focused on survival through subsistence – the ability to raise just enough food or money to care for their family – usually with less than $2.00USD per day.

This morning, I visited a relatively new cooperative started by the Oasis Foundation for female heads of households. The Oasis Foundation, started by Karin van den Bosch just three years ago, has been given small tracts of land here in Shire in order to start woman’s cooperatives. Typically, with the equivalent of $800 USD and a small land grant from the government, the Oasis Foundation helps a group of 30 women form a cooperative, fence the property, dig wells, obtain seed, and plant crops for cash and food. Because the land belongs to the cooperative, the women are keen to care for it carefully and to guard it against cattle over grazing and other threats.

Five months after the first seedlings were planted, the woman’s cooperative I visited this morning was harvesting a crop of chickpeas and fillings sacks for sale at the market. With just $800 USD, two hectares and five months into the project, the women are already self-sustaining.

Karin is pleased. Years ago when she came to Ethiopia from Holland as a Christian missionary to live and to serve, she wasn’t quite sure what God had in mind. Today, she manages a number of projects in and around Shire. Of course, she is quick to note that “she” doesn’t do anything, but rather it is all done by “us” or “we” – a reference that, she reveals only when I ask, refers the 37 Ethiopians on staff with the Oasis Foundation and, most importantly, her trust in this partnership with God. (If you get the chance, try asking Karin how she does her fundraising, but don't be surprised if she says she doesn't.)

Of course Karin is best known for her work establishing and operating Grace Village, the only orphanage in the region. Grace Village currently cares for 47 orphan children with “house mothers” – usually women who are unable to return to their prior lives and villages after suffering and healing from obstetric fistulas. Karin’s work at Grace Village is powerfully featured in the documentary, “A Walk to Beautiful.”

But Karin has become so well known for her success in caring for the physical, educational and spiritual needs of the children at Grace Village, the local and national governments of Ethiopia have regularly asked her to “help” with other projects. So, today, Oasis Foundation runs Grace Village, four health projects (including three clinics), a school and now four cooperatives for women head of households. And although the latter projects serves 120 households in the Region, Tedessa, the Assistant Director of the Oasis Foundation notes that the government of Ethiopia estimates that the region presently holds 4,800 female head of households living at subsistence levels.

So, as the sun is setting and a billion stars begin to emerge in the country sky, I can truly see shepherds in the distance, tending to their flocks by night. I find myself marveling at the power of Karin’s life on this region. And I find myself marveling at the power of the one life 2,000 years ago.

And that’s when I realize the power of one.

My family and I have long been strong proponents of the ONE campaign and its efforts through ONE.org. Birthed in wish list of Bono following his receipt of a TED award, ONE has produced an impact in policy on behalf of the world's least powerful through a simple idea -- the power of one voice, coming together with millions of others as ONE.

But here, this evening of Christmas Eve, in the northern most parts of Ethiopia, I reflect on a different power of one -- the power that one life can have on the lives of others.

That’s when I remember the words of Nelson Mandela:

“When you let your own light shine, you unconsciously give others permission to do the same.”

Merry Christmas from Ethiopia!

World AIDS Day 2008

Quietly, and without much notice or fanfare, the world again remembered the impact of the AIDS pandemic -- the more than 25 million mothers, sisters, aunts, grandmothers, daughters, fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, grandfathers who are infected with the HIV virus.  

Today, individuals (in groups and alone) remembered the 19 million sub-Saharan Africans who have died of HIV/AIDS including more than 6,000 who died today, and the more than 8,000 who are infected today (including 1,400 African children born today with HIV transmitted from their mothers).

Quietly, but not without deep pain, we whisper, "we care."  And we vow not to stop caring!

And we ask, "what now shall we do?"