Organization #2: Support for International Change

The climb is getting closer!  On our last conference call as a group, we got to talk to Kati, from Support for International Change, a health organization that works exclusively in Tanzania.  SIC was founded in 2002, and has been working hard in rural Tanzania ever since, with an EXTREMELY LIMITED budget.  It's amazing what these folks accomplish with so little.

SIC is a health organization, working to reduce the affects of HIV/AIDS on the rural population in Tanzania. They do this several ways:

1. The "know your status" campaign.  Working alongside Tanzanian community health workers, SIC seeks to educate people on how important it is to know their status.  Knowing your status is the most simple, cost efficient way to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS.  A similar campaign was carried out in the USA from 2007-2010, and 29,503 people tested positive for HIV, and 18,432 of those people didn't even know they were infected!  If that is true of the United States, think of how much more people in developing countries are unaware they have the disease!  Here's the link to the study in the USA: USA HIV Testing Campaign.
2. Linking rural areas to HIV treatment centers and testing.  Even if people in TZ know they have HIV/AIDS, a lot of times access to treatment is limited.  Support for International Change helps transport people into cities or towns to get access to treatment.  If there are enough people in a rural area who need tratment, SIC will bring the treatment to them.
3. Mobile Health Clinics.  SIC has purchased several Land Rovers that they use to do rural HIV testing and perform other health services.  Some folks in Tanzania live hours and hours away from any sort of healthcare, and for many people, an encounter with SIC is likely the first time they've had medical attention.

In regards to how 3 Peaks 3 Weeks and the Peaks Foundation aids SIC in their work, Kati said something to this effect:

"3 Peaks 3 Weeks gives us enough financial support every year for us to be able to think long term about different projects.   Our organization is very small, so many of the donations we receive are small as well.  We are usually financing projects week to week.  With the money the climbers raise, in the past we have been able to purchase Land Rovers to create mobile health clinics, and have also been able to expand into different regions in Tanzania and reach more people.  Our important efforts would not be able to happen on such a scale if we did not have the support of the Peaks Foundation and their team of 3 Peaks 3 Weeks Africa climbers."

SIC MISSION: To limit the impact of HIV/AIDS in underserved communities and to train future leaders in global health and development.  (I can't think of many mission statements better than that...)

SIC WEBSITE: http://sichange.org/

THE POWER OF INVESTING IN WOMEN

Here is a AWESOME article from Forbes magazine that really shows how important it is to invest in women and girls.  Highlights from the article:

• Only 7% of philanthropic dollars are given specifically to programs for women and girls
• 70% of people living in poverty in the world are women
• Investing in women can change the outcome for her entire family: women are more likely than men to put money they receive back into their own household.

The Peaks Foundation is one more organization that is reaching around the globe to support issues relating to women and girls!

Dusting off an old video

Hey Everyone!  My mom just reminded me that my brother and I (read: my brother with minimal help from me) made a sweet video about the School of St. Jude when we visited back in 2008.  All the video footage was shot while we were there, and nearly all the pictures are from our trip as well.

It gives a pretty good picture of what a school day is like at the School of St. Jude.  It's hard to believe that their first Secondary School (High School) graduating class will graduate in 2014!  That grade of students started out the school as first graders in 2001, when the school had only 3 students.  You can see from the video how much the school has grown and prospered!

Cheers!

Katherine

Motivation...or lack thereof.

Training to climb 3 mountains isn't easy.  It's even harder if you have trouble motivating yourself to kick your own butt (me!).  A few days ago, I got to attend a soccer practice session run by Wake Forest Men's Soccer coach Jay Vidovich.

Coach Vidovich

He's amazing at what he does, the intensity and effort he demands from his players is so high.  He has so much energy while coaching, and so much knowledge about the game.  At the end of the session during our Q & A, he gave us a quote that is so simple, but makes a ton of sense.

"The only discipline that lasts is self-discipline." -Bum Phillips 

Makes loads of sense.  In my profession as a soccer coach, I can have players motivated at practice and at games, but if they aren't putting in their best effort all the time, even when working with the ball at home, they'll never reach their full potential.  The discipline to work hard and push yourself is something you have to practice to be good at it.  You gotta want it!

Now that I have outgrown the "team" environment for workouts (I never thought I would miss having a coach yell at me), my own self-discipline is now more important than ever.  This has become glaringly apparent in my 3 Peaks training.  I'll have a great week of running, spin class, and some lifting, then the next week do next to nothing.  I'm going to try and break that terrible cycle by holding myself more accountable, and actually WRITING DOWN a schedule, instead of just moving things around, or pushing workouts back, and back, and back....

Discipline. Let's do this. 

Buffalo!

Hey there little guy!

I just learned that there will be a guy with a machine gun on our Mt. Meru climb...because of the Buffalo!  Apparently you REALLY don't want to run into one of them.

Keeping Buffalo at bay, apparently.

Africa! Did you know....

• 15% of the world's population lives in Africa...over 1 billion people call it home.
• There are 54 sovereign states, and 52 of those 54 states have national soccer teams!
• The borders of African states today are nearly the same as they were during European colonialism.

That last point is disheartening, and I think it's a lot of the reason why we're now seeing so many struggles for power in these countries. Egypt, Tunisia, Lybia, Sudan, Congo....all of these countries have seen struggles because of extreme ethnic and religious differences between the peoples that live within the borders of their own countries.

I think Wikipedia puts it nicely with this section on Post-Colonial Africa:

Post-colonial Africa

Today, Africa contains 54 sovereign countries, most of which still have the borders drawn during the era of European colonialism. Since colonialism, African states have frequently been hampered by instability, corruption, violence, and authoritarianism. The vast majority of African states are republics that operate under some form of the presidential system of rule. However, few of them have been able to sustain democratic governments on a permanent basis, and many have instead cycled through a series of coups, producing military dictatorships.
Great instability was mainly the result of marginalization of ethnic groups, and graft under these leaders. For political gain, many leaders fanned ethnic conflicts that had been exacerbated, or even created, by colonial rule. In many countries, the military was perceived as being the only group that could effectively maintain order, and it ruled many nations in Africa during the 1970s and early 1980s. During the period from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, Africa had more than 70 coups and 13 presidential assassinations. Border and territorial disputes were also common, with the European-imposed borders of many nations being widely contested through armed conflicts.
Cold War conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as the policies of the International Monetary Fund, also played a role in instability. When a country became independent for the first time, it was often expected to align with one of the two superpowers. Many countries in Northern Africa received Soviet military aid, while many in Central and Southern Africa were supported by the United States, France or both. The 1970s saw an escalation, as newly independent Angola and Mozambique aligned themselves with the Soviet Union, and the West and South Africa sought to contain Soviet influence by funding insurgency movements. There was a major famine in Ethiopia, when hundreds of thousands of people starved. Some claimed that Marxist/Soviet policies made the situation worse.^[48][49][50]
The most devastating military conflict in modern independent Africa has been the Second Congo War. By 2008, this conflict and its aftermath had killed 5.4 million people. Since 2003 there has been an ongoing conflict in Darfur which has become a humanitarian disaster. AIDS has also been a prevalent issue in post-colonial Africa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The best way to see positive change in Africa is to first become educated about what is going on, and why it is happening.  I'm no expert, but I'm trying to learn.

 Thanks Wikipedia!

Peaks Foundation intro Video

 REALLY COOL PROMO VIDEO FOR PEAKS FOUNDATION

Check this video out.  It won't let me post it right here, which is stinky, but the link works.  Take 2 minutes and watch it.  The kids singing in the video are from St. Jude's School in Tanzania.  At the end they're singing the Tanzanian national anthem, which I am currently learning.  "Ibariki, Africa..."