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First Person: Stephen Lewis

On making a world of difference
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Stephen Lewis Photo by WFP/Brenda Barton.

Stephen Lewis seems almost taken aback when asked if $10 can really make a difference in Africa. He well knows just how far $10 can go. It can mean the difference between an orphaned child going hungry for weeks on end or having food to quiet those growling hunger pains. It can mean the difference between a young mother living and dying with HIV/AIDS in squalor, or having a bar of soap, clothing and a sleeping mat to ease the pain. It can mean the difference between millions of African grandmothers having support as they care for their orphaned grandchildren rather than facing the struggle alone.

Ten dollars can mean a world of difference.

As UN Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa from 2001 to 2006 Stephen Lewis saw the devastation wreaking havoc across the continent where women are disproportionately affected by the pandemic (three women are infected for every two men) and children are being orphaned at the most alarming rates — 13 million orphans to date, expected to grow to 18 million by 2010.

He decided to do something about it. That something was to create the Stephen Lewis Foundation. It has raised $26 million since 2003, money that is funneled into grassroots organizations where it can directly help the people most in need. Some of that money has come from $10 donations, others larger, like the $100,000 cheque from the Sechelt man who recently sold his house.

To listen to Stephen Lewis is to begin to understand the frustration of a world watching but not helping. To hear him talk is to realize the emotional and human toll of HIV/AIDS in a place like sub-Saharan Africa. He says it is not hopeless. He believes Africa will be able to beat the pandemic ravaging its people but it needs help. That help isn’t coming as quickly as Africa needs it, a fact that baffles the Canadian humanitarian.

In the second part of his interview with Pique Newsmagazine’s Alison Taylor, Stephen Lewis speaks candidly about the crisis and insists the world take notice. He is speaking at Whistler Secondary School tomorrow (Friday, Oct. 19). All the proceeds will go to the Stephen Lewis Foundation — www.stephenlewisfoundation.org .

Pique: Can you share a small story that stuck with you from last month’s trip to Kenya, South Africa and Lesotho?

Stephen Lewis: At one point outside Nairobi I met with 40 grandmothers. The grandmothers have become important to the Stephen Lewis Foundation because of the tie between the grandmothers of Canada and the grandmothers of Africa. I met 40 African grandmothers and they said to me that they each wanted to stand and tell their story. And it was really quite overwhelming because every story was basically identical. The grandmother would stand and say ‘I buried my daughter last week.’ ‘I buried my son last year.’ ‘I buried my daughter-in-law two years ago.’ ‘I now have their children living with me.’ ‘I have seven children, nine children, 11 orphaned grandchildren living with me.’ ‘I’m 70 years old. How much longer will I live and what will happen to the children when I die?’ And there was so much intensity. They’re such magnificent women. They’re so determined to keep their grandchildren going and yet the pain of losing their own children is etched in everything they say.

Pique: Why is it so important for them each to tell their own story?

SL: Just because they have this visitor who’s indirectly helping them and they just want me to know personally what’s involved. They don’t want me not to know who they are as individuals and what they’re dealing with.

Pique: Your “Grandmothers to Grandmothers” campaign has been a great success, raising well over $1 million in a year and a half. You brought 100 grandmothers from 14 African countries to Canada and introduced them to grandmothers here. Why was it so important to build solidarity between the African and Canadian grandmothers?

SL: I don’t want to pretend that that was carefully calculated or thought out. The idea of engaging with the grandmothers was my older daughter’s idea. She runs the foundation. And it was Ilana who came to me and said “Dad, there’s something happening in all of our projects. We’re hearing more and more about grandmothers and they seem to be completely abandoned, deeply in need, no one’s doing anything for them. Shouldn’t we be doing something special?” I said “Sure. What do you have in mind?” And she said, “How about a grandmothers to grandmothers campaign… We should be making the grandmothers of Canada fully aware of what the grandmothers of Africa are coping with. And we should make the grandmothers of Africa understand how much support they have.”

(On the eve of the International AIDS conference in Toronto in 2006, the Stephen Lewis Foundation brought 100 African grandmothers to Canada to meet their counterparts here.)

… (I)t was the most intense and extraordinary two and a half days I’ve witnessed in a very long time. It was really something to behold. And the bond of solidarity that was built between the two groups was extraordinary. When we held our first press conference… in March of 2006… there were four grandmothers chapters in Canada. And now there are 177. Coast to coast there are grandmothers groups and they are incredibly strong. They’re women of a certain age, some of whom have resources, all of whom have energy, many of whom have time. It’s like unleashing a movement. And the grandmothers in Africa are now networking and tying together. They’re so emboldened and they’re so excited that they have this understanding in Canada. Apart from the money, which is desperately important and very valuable, there is real understanding developing…

Pique: I think as we start to learn more about our role and perhaps our responsibility as global citizens, the question that needs to be answered is “what can we do here in Whistler?” Your website lists how we can help — by volunteering, holding an event, making a donation. Does something as small as a $10 donation, of which you say $9 will go directly to those at the grassroots level in Africa who need it most, does it make a difference?

SL: Oh god yes. I mean, $9 is a cornucopia for a child who doesn’t have food. If an orphaned kid can’t go to school because he or she can’t afford to pay the school fee, then they don’t even get one meal a day at a school feeding program. They certainly don’t get meals over the weekends. The $9 would buy them food for a couple of weeks at least, probably more. It makes a huge difference.

Pique: Some would argue that we have enough problems in our own backyard.

SL: Of course, this is always an argument. The answer to that argument, I think, is always we also have enough in Canada to be able to do both. There’s no reason to neglect the plight of poverty in Canada, and particularly amongst Aboriginal communities, and not play a role in the world. God knows every other country is playing its role in the world. We’re now giving a lesser percentage of our gross national product to foreign aid than most of the major industrial countries. It started to decline in the last two or three years. We are now the only country in the G8, the only country in G8, whose percentage of GNP that goes to foreign aid is in decline. It’s very incremental, to be sure, but they’re all moving up. We’re the only country that’s in decline.

Pique: You talked about the international community and its lack of response at a recent press conference statement in Nairobi. You say: “What is so incredible about the inertia and passivity of the international community is the weight of evidence they had before them, and the total blank indifference with which the evidence was treated.” You were talking specifically about the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but the statement applies to Africa and AIDS in general. In the face of the staggering numbers, in particular that women are disproportionately affected by the pandemic and make up 59 per cent of those living with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, why don’t we, as a global community, seem to care?

SL: I don’t know. I cannot answer that because for me it’s completely inexplicable… You’ve got to ask yourself “what is going on?” I think what’s going on is that the government’s of world run by men just don’t care about the plight of women. What’s going on is the brutal reality of gender inequality. Part of that inequality is to be grotesquely sexually abused on the one hand, but also to be ignored on the other.

Pique: You’re sounding the call for an international agency for women with a billion dollars a year to fight this battle. What will it take to get this started?

SL: That’s the ultimate. It’s on the table. It’s before the General Assembly. There just has to be a lot of advocacy to try to drive it through. And ultimately you can’t deal with these issues in compartments and in different pieces. You have to have some kind of omnibus capacity on every front, from female genital mutilation to sexual trafficking to HIV/AIDS to rape as a weapon of war, you’ve just simply got to move on all fronts… If we keep at them, if we keep hammering the issue home possibly it will get passed in the General Assembly before the end of this year. And then they will appoint an under-secretary general, a leading woman internationally, and then we’re on our way, I hope. It’s for all the women’s issues, from economic empowerment to honour killings, it’s for everything.

Pique: It was during your time as the UN’s Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa, from 2001 to 2006 that you founded the Stephen Lewis Foundation in 2003. Why begin the Foundation?

SL:… It’s rare that the major UN agencies will actually put money into rank and file grassroots organizations that do the work right in the villages and at the communities. And that’s what I realized was missing as I traveled and that’s why I wanted to set up the foundation…. I knew nothing about foundations…. I had actually thought, it’s kind of comical in retrospect, I’d actually thought it would be great if we could raise two or three hundred thousand dollars a year and try to do something for a handful of communities in two or three countries where small grants of five or 10 or 15 thousand dollars can make such a major difference. And they can. And then suddenly it burgeoned and the generosity of Canadians became overwhelming and we’ve now raised over $26 million since we started it… I’m very thrilled with what’s happening. It’s just extraordinary. And the foundation has become well known in 13 or 14 countries in Africa and it’s become well known for the best of reasons I think. And I say this almost detached because although I sit on the board I don’t do the work…. And what the foundation is known for is flexibility, a sense of urgency, money goes out fast, there’s very little bureaucracy. It’s hard because you have to keep track of the projects you’re funding, you have to appraise the proposals you receive. We won’t give out money without knowing what we’re giving it to and we like to monitor the groups who are receiving the money to make sure the people that need the resources are getting them. But there is a reputation of the foundation in Africa for being fast, principled, non-bureaucratic and tremendously sympathetic and accessible.

Pique: How does it make you feel to have your name attached to all that work?

SL: I’ve removed it from my mind. I feel distant and dispassionate and neutral. I remember when people told me I had to call it my own name. I was extremely embarrassed. I actually phoned David Suzuki… and he said “Stephen, it worked for me! You might as well do it.”

Pique: Is there hope?

SL: There’s more hope in Africa than outside. I think the international community is still moving terribly slowly, painfully slowly. But Africa is fighting valiantly. And if they do get enough support, they’ll break the back of the pandemic.



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