We want to hear what you have to say.

One Beauty Can Overcome Any Beast

In February 2004, my best friend in the world passed away. Grief is always terrible but in this... Continue Reading

In February 2004, my best friend in the world passed away. Grief is always terrible but in this case, it was life-altering in a big way. Karen’s untimely tragic death to routine shoulder surgery followed the loss of both my mother and stepfather, and a bout with breast cancer. This not only changed my life, my heart, and my future… but led to a move for me and my family 10,000 miles away to live in Cape Town, South Africa.

Over the two weeks I spent sitting in the hospital by Karen’s side, her brother Mitch Besser, an ob-gyn working in South Africa, told me how he had started employing and empowering HIV-positive mothers in the community to help pregnant women prevent the transmission of HIV to their babies. And he invited me to come to South Africa to see what he was doing.

That first day, accompanying Mitch on hospital rounds, I fell head over heels in love with the bravest, most spirited, extraordinary women I had ever met. One after another, they told stories of tragedy, heartbreak, and hopelessness. Yet none of them gave in to them…they sang, they laughed, they endured…and they gave me hope. So much so, that I called my husband that night to say I wanted to work with Mitch to turn mothers2mothers (m2m) into an organization worthy of the African women that needed it so desperately.

At that time, pediatric AIDS had almost entirely been eliminated in the U.S., yet over 1,000 babies were being infected daily with HIV, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. The Mentor Mothers we trained over the course of the next years achieved dramatic results. Not only do they educate and support HIV-positive women to access lifesaving treatment, they are professionalized and financially independent, becoming role models in their communities and reducing stigma. Mentor Mothers also provide much needed support to medical staff at critically understaffed health centers. They have become a third tier of medical care, forming trusted relationships with clients. They are game-changers!

Game-changers like Beauty, now a m2m Mentor Mother, who at age 17, when most adolescents feel that life has just begun, thought hers was over. On her way home from school, she and a friend decided to stop by a mobile clinic and get tested for HIV, sure they had nothing to worry about. Beauty was so frightened when her results came back positive. “I knew very little about the virus. All I knew was that it is a killer. People in my community incorrectly referred to HIV as AIDS and everyone knew that AIDS kills,” she says.

She didn’t tell anyone her status as she feared she would be judged harshly and did not follow the nurse’s advice to start treatment. Two years later when she became pregnant, Beauty’s HIV status was still her biggest secret. There was no one she could tell how worried she was about infecting her unborn baby or raising a sick child.

Beauty soon discovered there were women at her clinic near Pretoria, South Africa, ready to stand by her side and help her through these terrifying times. They were HIV-positive mothers, employed, trained, and empowered by mothers2mothers (m2m) as Mentor Mothers.

The first Mentor Mother Beauty met was Irene Nkosi who had also tested positive as a young woman, and was living proof it is possible to have an HIV-negative child and lead a full and healthy life. “Mentor Mothers became my pillar, people I would turn to when I needed support and advice,” Beauty says.

Beauty started treatment and disclosed her status to her mother, who assured her everything would be fine. Disclosing to her partner was more difficult, as initially he did not take the news well. With the help of the Mentor Mothers, Beauty encouraged him to get tested for HIV. She may have saved his life because he, too, was positive.

Beauty is one of the nearly 1.7 million HIV-positive women that m2m has reached since its founding 15 years ago at a single Cape Town clinic. We are now currently operating in seven sub-Saharan countries, providing education and support to women and their families in hundreds of health centers and communities. Our Mentor Mother Approach has been proven to improve health outcomes of mothers and infants, while also achieving significant savings in averted HIV treatment costs. And through the tremendous efforts of Mentor Mothers like Irene, we have virtually eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV among our clients according to UNAIDS guidelines, which define elimination as less than 5%. In 2016, we were thrilled that our average transmission rate was only 1.6%!

 

Today 300 babies are still infected with HIV daily in sub-Saharan Africa, which is both tragic and unnecessary. m2m is evolving even further to help end this epidemic. Several years ago, we took an exciting step that for the first time brought Mentor Mothers out of health centers and placed them in communities. Community Mentor Mothers are now visiting the homes of pregnant women and new mothers who have not engaged with the health system or have missed appointments, and encouraging them to access treatment at the health facility. By going into homes, we also have an opportunity to interact with other family members – including male partners, older children, and adolescents – and link them to healthcare. In 2016 alone, m2m reached more than 1.9 million women, children, adolescents and male partners.

We are also making sure that children not only have the opportunity to survive but also to thrive, by educating and supporting parents and caregivers on early childhood development. And when they enter adolescence, we are using our same peer model to make sure that they don’t become one of the 7,500 adolescent girls, between the ages of 15 and 25, to be infected with HIV each week.

As for Beauty, her life is full of possibilities. She is now employed by m2m as a Mentor Mother and works in the same clinic as Irene, the Mentor Mother who first helped her. When an adolescent girl arrives at her clinic, she makes a point to meet with her and give her the support she wished she had had when she was first diagnosed. “I have to be a friend to them, because I know how I felt as a 17 year old who had just tested positive. I was lonely and had no one, so I know it is not easy being HIV positive, and a pregnant young person. You are scared to tell your parents because you are still a child yourself,” she says.

Beauty is now the mother of not one, but two children…both are HIV negative. That baby she worried so much about is now four years old, a girl named Ntokozo which means “happiness” in Xhosa.

It is stories of women like Beauty and Irene – women who are providing health and hope to so many – that inspire me each and every day. And as the mother of two daughters myself, nothing is more important than teaching them that one Beauty can overcome any Beast…even HIV.

Robin Smalley is the Co-Founder and Director of mothers2mothers.  To learn more about their life-giving work visit m2m.org or follow them at @m2mtweets.

I’m Not Stupid! I Just Never Learned to Read

“Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society.... Continue Reading

“Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories. Literacy is a platform for democratization, and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity. Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition. For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right…. Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.”  – Kofi Annan

What is it like for a person who doesn’t know how to read?

What would it be like for you if you didn’t know how to read?

I am 81 years old.  I have been a Sinsinawa Dominican sister for sixty years.  My first ministry was to teach first grade.  I learned to teach reading.  After those first five years I was sent to teach high school.  As the years moved forward I had many different ministries, but what I have been most passionate about and most committed to all of these years is to help persons who can’t read learn how.

Why? Because I have learned what persons who can’t read experience.  They are labeled “stupid”.  Many of them believe they are while others know they aren’t, but still they know that is what others think.

I have worked with many men over the years and have helped them to be able to read.  Formerly incarcerated men, young men in jail, men who lived in the projects where I worked.  After an evaluation that takes only a few minutes, I can determine if the person will be able to read.  After I make that assessment, I can help most individuals learn to read and write after just two forty- five minute sessions!

Many of the individuals begin to cry!  They can’t believe it.  They say that they may never have been in jail or prison or feel so “stupid” if they had only learned to read when other kids in their first grade learned.

I have learned that most of these individuals saw that they weren’t catching on like the rest of the kids. They started feeling “stupid”.  Others saw them as “stupid”.  So, it was “fight” or “flight”.  Many said they would become the class clown.  Others said that they would do anything not to be called on so they wouldn’t look and feel stupid.

At the end of the year, they were passed on to the next grade.  And then on and on until they got into too much trouble and were kicked out of school or dropped out. This continues to be one of the most tragic situations in the public school systems.

I continue to do whatever I can to work with individuals who can’t read.  Their entire life is changed.  I would encourage anyone who would like to help, to do so.  What is critical is that you know how to teach reading.  Tutoring is great to assist individuals who need some help, but if a person doesn’t know how to read, it is critical that they learn how and then it is unbelievable to see them become a NEW person.

One of the young men at the jail learned to read.  I asked him what was one thing that he felt was good since he had learned to read.  He said  that when he is on the bus he now can read the street sign that is the signal for him that the next stop is his stop.  He never knew when/where to get off.  He then started citing some of the other things…like the signs on the store fronts.  One guy told me that he could now go out with a date to a restaurant.  He was always too embarrassed because he couldn’t read the menu.

I was asking a young man in jail to tell me about himself.  I was supposed to be helping individuals prepare for possible employment.  I wanted to find out what the individual might be interested in and then hopefully guide them that way.  He said I don’t know what you want to know. I said, just tell me things you might like to do, tell me things you like, what interests you, etc…  He didn’t know how to answer.  He said I am 22 years old and you are the first person who has ever shown any interest in me…and then he started to talk and went on and on…

Sr. Ginger Phillips is a Sinsinawa Dominican who has devoted her life to her ministry. In addition to teaching men to read she has also helped them with job training and new business creation.  Much of her volunteer work has been through St. Leonard’s Ministries in Chicago, an organization that provides housing and support services to formerly incarcerated men and women.  Ginger loves Spanish tapas and makes the most delicious chocolate nut clusters you’ll ever taste.

Put a Ding in the Universe

“I want to put a ding in the universe.” -Steve Jobs Tegucigalpa, Honduras – inside a 3 room... Continue Reading

“I want to put a ding in the universe.”
-Steve Jobs

Tegucigalpa, Honduras – inside a 3 room building at the Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos (NPH) ranch for orphaned and abandoned children

“This is stale air,” I think to myself as we enter the doorway. I’m next aware, after walking in, of the confused scattering of the room’s inhabitants: a lone young woman on a couch, a girl in a wheelchair near her, a young woman standing against one wall apart from two others in wheelchairs. No one faces the same direction. No one converses.

A television plays in the corner. No one watches.

I’m accompanying Don*, an American volunteer and part of our group. He’s asked me to join him as he spends time at the home for young ladies with impairments and disabilities (i.e., “special needs”).

I silently but immediately regret my decision to join him. Being here makes me uncomfortable. No one offers us a place to sit. No one welcomes us. The air doesn’t circulate. We don’t know where to stand and we’re both having great difficulty simply striking up a conversation. Any conversation.

I don’t kid myself that Don invited me along for my charm alone; I’m here in part to help translate. But, despite our efforts there’s no conversation. One woman physically turns her back to us. Another explains that Carmen*, the back-turner, is simply mad at the world and we shouldn’t take it personally. We don’t know if this explanation comes from a young lady with special needs or an NPH caregiver because no one has introduced themselves.

Our hope of parlaying this nugget of information about Carmen into a dialogue dies out immediately. No conversation ensues. I’m at a loss. Having no kids of my own let alone special needs children, I feel hamstrung. Even a basic conversation starter such as, “do you like playing soccer?” isn’t relevant to these young ladies.

We struggle.

My discomfort grows. I look up at the minute hand of the clock which has stopped dead in its tracks. The stale air grows somehow staler to me.

Don gets an idea. “Can you explain to someone that I’m hoping to get a pencil and paper?” he asks me. I translate. A search begins. One young lady returns from the other room with a range of items bearing no discernible similarity to pencil and paper. We offer her exaggerated thanks but continue to search. A pencil is found.

He draws a quick sketch of the face of the first girl able to bring him paper. She tilts her head and looks at it. She looks back at Don’s face and then back at his drawing.

He repeats the process for a second young lady. A third looks at his first drawing and immediately identifies Maria*, the apparent name of the sketch’s model. “Maria!”, she says loudly while pointing at her. Others in the room look up.

“Draw me next!” one of them says. “No, draw me first!” says another.

Don sketches nearly all of them before the end of the evening, when we need to leave because it’s “lights out” time at the home.

No one would claim his sketches are works of art. Certainly not Don. The vast majority are recognizably his model’s face, but not all. As demand for his work grew and became a clamor, he had to draw fast in a less than ideal setting.

However, you can’t judge the impact of art by objective standards alone. His sketches made these girls happy. Or in some cases, caused them to be disappointed that his reflection of how they look to the outside world isn’t a pretty picture. But it made them feel alive. Noticed. Something about how he really looked at each of them, into their eyes, so that he could sketch them, awakened a type of human contact many of them seldom receive, I think.

“Donald” one of the girls says suddenly as we depart. At that moment, my heart skips a joyous beat.

Personal space is cherished at an orphanage. The locker of each girl in the home is the one place they can preserve what is personally important to them- photos of family members, meaningful mementos. After our visit I was told that only one of the girls he sketched doesn’t keep his drawing proudly displayed in their personal locker. She carries it around in her wheelchair with her.

I think Don “put a ding in the universe” that night. If you listened closely, you may have heard it.

*Note: This is a true story, but names have been changed.

Yes, men are part of the AWE Community as well!

Pete Dougherty and I met while on a mission trip with my family to Guatemala.  He is the Midwest Development Manager for NPH USA. After a career on Wall Street, Pete began assisting NPH USA in 2015. He became a Spanish/English translator, mission trip participant, member of their regional board of directors and a child sponsor. In 2016, he joined them full time.

NPH USA transforms the lives of abandoned and disadvantaged children with homes, healthcare and educational programs in Latin America and the Caribbean.