Keeping Girls in School

We met this little girl during our visit to the Berga wetland project in Ethiopia. Her eyes enraptured all of us visiting that day. More than one of us spontaneously recalled the iconic cover of National Geographic with the young Afghan girl and her striking green eyes. This one was close on our heels the entire time but never uttered a word.

And it is for girls like her that I want to help this school and others like it get better sanitation facilities. So girls like her can stay in school past puberty.

It makes sense when you think about it, but one of the major reasons girls drop out of school at much higher rates than boys in this part of the world is the lack of private, sanitary toilet facilities. If girls do not have separate and passable facilities when they start menstruating, they stay at home at alarmingly high rates. Without any of the help of pads or tampons, going through this transition to womanhood in public without facilities is simply not something girls will or will be allowed to do.

And of course the negative ripple effects are enormous. Higher levels of education are connected to so many positive things for girls and women:

--higher income and economic opportunity;
--greater decision-making power within the household and the community;
--more resources invested in the health, education, and nutrition of her own children;
--more control over when and how many children to have, in part through higher usage of modern contraception; and
--smaller family sizes that typical enable greater investment in each child;

…and the list goes on and on.

So this vicious cycle is one that needs to be broken in places like Ethiopia where the facilities for schools need resources for so many things, including clean and private pit latrines. Just as the negative ripple effects can be so terrible, so too can the positive ripples of such minimal investment pay tremendous dividends in the lives of kids and especially girls like the one pictured here.

The Beatles on My Diet

Temptation to the left of me! Temptation to the right of me! Here I am, stuck with a middle again! (to paraphrase the Liverpool four)

All of Kirsten's family in town for a big family birthday celebration led to two Memorial Day weekend garden parties and lots of leftovers. And then last night a trip to Baltimore for little Erik's first ball game. As you can see, he didn't leave much for Daddy to finish!

Film on Forgotten Fistula Crisis in Ethiopia

It would be interesting to know what percentage of Americans have heard of obstetric fistula. Actually, I guessing it would be next to none. Not that anyone would spend the money to conduct the poll.

Obstetric fistula is an injury suffered from prolonged labor in childbirth that is avoided or repaired where babies are delivered in hospitals. In parts of the world where hospitals are few and far between in remote areas, it is a different story. And a heartbreaking one for an estimated 2 million young women and girls told touchingly by filmmaker Mary Olive Smith in the documentary A Walk to Beautiful. The film's website says about obstetric fistula :

Short of death, the most devastating effect of neglected childbirth is obstetric fistula, a hole that forms between the vagina and the bladder or rectum during prolonged, obstructed labor. This horrific injury leaves victims incontinent. Some develop nerve damage in the feet and legs.

The risk of obstetric fistula is much higher for young girls who often have prolonged labor as their babies are simply too big and a safe Cesarean section is not available. If the physical injury wasn't enough, the social and economic consequences for the victims are life-shattering. The incontinence and associated smell often leads to ostracization by family and social networks, leading the woman and sometimes her children to be shunned.

We at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington were lucky enough to host Mary Olive, a former colleague, last week for a screening and discussion of this film that tells the story of five Ethiopian women and their difficult roads to treatment at the famous Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. It gives outsiders a glimpse of this terribly unfair malady and its devastating impacts while providing hope and inspiration from these particular women and girls who overcame tremendous hurdles to even reach Addis for care.

I don't know if they have obstetric fistula records at the small room that serves as the health facility at Berga wetland project. The two young women with one year of health training (see picture) who work there do deliver babies and they record deliveries on handwritten charts on the wall. I will try to find out more about their particular experiences and how far away a hospital is for example. In the meantime, find a way to watch the award-winning film A Walk to Beautiful.

From Denmark with love (and calories)

My wife Kirsten is from Denmark and the girls are attending a terrific Saturday afternoon Danish school with 60+ kids. Play games, do art projects, watch movies, sing at the Embassy on holidays (see picture), and learn about Denmark.

And eat. Eat Danish Danishes which are of course not called Danishes and are much better than what we in the United States call Danishes.

And drink Danish beer. Not the kids mind you, but the parents, at the yearly fundraiser. Carlsberg, Elephant. Really, really good beer.

So yes, the yearly fundraiser was this weekend. I did my part by buying plenty of the open faced sandwiches, drinking Carlsberg, and having one small piece of the kringle as the pastries are called. Not exactly great for the diet.

Did I mention the beer?

Kids there and kids here

I have said that the kids of Berga, so charming and in such need, captured my heart when I visited their school. It is memories of their smiling faces and obvious hurdles that keep me motivated to find ways to support their school and associated projects.

There are smiling kids closer to home who are also motivating this crazy combination of trying to lose weight to raise money for the Berga community. They are close to home because they are IN my home - my three little ones pictured here.

What are the school needs?

I have mentioned a school for young kids is at the center of my efforts - really it was the kids who provided the true inspiration. Geremew Selassie and Zewditu Tessema of the Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society brought us to Berga last November and were our experts, guides, and interpreters. I stayed in touch after the trip and asked them to tell me about the school and its needs. Here is some of what Geremew Selassie wrote me:

The Maru-Chebot First Cycle (grade 1-4) Elementary School is located in Ada Berga Woreda, Chebot Kebele. The total area of the school is over 16,600 sq. meter. A total of around 400 students are currently attending in the school. There are 8 teachers. The school has only one block. It is built of
local materials (wood and mud), a roof with corrugated iron-sheets ceiling, and cement floor. The block consists of four class-rooms and an office.

The old school block is in such a dilapidated condition that the
teaching-learning process is seriously affected.

The main problems of the school can be summarized as follows:
. Walls are crumbling;
. The floors are badly damaged or worn out;
. Most of the students are sitting on the floor because of shortage of
desks;
. Doors and windows are broken down and need repair;
. Chalkboards are small and of very poor quality;
. Rooms have no ceilings;
. The compound is not fenced;
. Class-rooms are over crowded; and
. A number of students who are either from very poor families or have no parents cannot afford to buy simple educational materials.

Parents and the community at large have been trying to improve the condition, by pulling together their own resources and soliciting funds. They have not been able to make significant differences with their own meager resources. With the number of students growing every year, the existing capacity is approaching breaking point and the teaching -learning process will certainly deteriorate further. Hence, there is a dire need to build additional classrooms.

Repairing the school is not only a matter for improving the teaching-learning process. Many parents, including the Site Support Group members are sending their children to this school. The repair will have a positive impact to the conservation efforts around Berg wetland.

Since the school is only up to grade 4, then after, the students have to go to Enchinee, which is 5 km. away. This means the students have to walk 10 km. everyday, a very tough routine for 4th graders, who are quite young. So there is a need to up grade the school up to grade 8, by building additional classrooms. By the time the students complete grade 8 close to their homes, from then onwards, they will be strong enough to cover the 10 km. daily walk.

What are the goals?

I've been thinking long and hard about setting two goals: the amount of weight I should aim to lose by December 31st and how much money I would like to raise for the Berga school which is formally called the Maru-Chebot First Cycle (grade 1-4) Elementary School located in Ada Berga Woreda, Chebot Kebele, Ethiopia. Having specific targets focuses the mind for weight loss and fundraising!

Let's focus on the second question - how much money should I realistically try to raise? I want to be ambitious and set a high goal so as to not undershoot. Yet what is that in an age of the Internet and ideas catching on? I suppose if things go well, I could always revise the number.

I want the amount raised to make a real difference in the lives of those living in the community. I asked once for details on what the school needed and friends at the Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society who are working with the community gave me a detailed list. To round up, it would be $25,000. Yet this would only be to repair and upgrade the school for grades 1-4 and perhaps expand. But for reasons that will become obvious, the real goal is to expand to grade 8 so these little ones aren't unrealistically expected to walk 5km each way to go to school for older kids.

And what about supporting all the other terrific and equally vital services that are part of the integrated community effort: the micro-credit program to give women the capital they need for producing butter, the medical supplies and modest salaries for young women with one year of medical education to provide a very basic maternal and children's health services, maintenance for the well that provides safe drinking water, resources to upgrade the rudimentary sanitation facilities, resources so the community continues to refrain from cutting the wetland grasses to preserve the nesting area of the White-winged Flufftail, resources so the community can develop eco-tourism around the Flufftail that only nests in this wetland and in a few places in South Africa.

So....I need a higher target for the need is much greater.

Progress....of the Slow Variety

Greetings fellow travelers. I've got a couple of half written posts on how amazing the people are in the Berga wetland community I visited in Ethiopia. It is why I am not a prolific blogger here or at New Security Beat where I blog at work. I want to write too much and make it just right. And that of course takes time.

So I am trying to turn another leaf and be short and sweet (as opposed to quick and dirty) with blog posts.

I've been down as many as seven pounds. This morning it was just five. Still working up the courage to tell you all where I am starting from. Have to save that detail for later (I think they call it a teaser), but suffice it to say, I have lots to lose.

I was in New York City on work travel last week and it is always tough to diet on a trip. And I take a lot of trips. But especially in a city with so many wonderful restaurants. That said, I saw a lot of UN cafeterias and dining rooms although they are not horrible if you make the right choices. If....

And I can report that the Amtrak salad is reasonable but perhaps not delightful. Best option is stocking up at the sushi stand in Penn Station although when your train is delayed for nearly five hours, you end up eating your sushi with your hands standing in front of the big board ready to dash to a gate. Not that I am bitter or anything.

I am still working on making it easy to make a per pound pledge to spur me to lose weight and to raise money for this terrific multi-dimensional education, conservation, health, development project in Ethiopia. I have some prospects for working with a group that can make your donation tax-deductible and making the money transfer more formal. Stay tuned for details.

For now, feel free to email me at geoff DOT dabelko AT gmail DOT com if you would like to make a pledge. I will gather them up and then formalize them with receipt etc once we get a formal system set up.

Getting Started

So I was eating a bag of chips when I thought of this idea, trudging along in my daily workday pilgrimage commuting one hour each way between the suburbs and downtown Washington, DC. Two disparate desires came together in a single scheme: losing weight (and lots of it) and raising money for a poor but fantastically dynamic village project in Ethiopia.

I haven't been doing either very well recently so while putting the two together somehow struck me as crazy, I didn't immediately discard the idea and retreat into my iPod.

I need to lose weight and so while I had just bought the chips, I was guiltily thinking about how to shed the pounds as I was putting them on.

In the strange way the brain works, I was also pondering ways to support a community (slide show) in Ethiopia I had visited for just a few hours last November. I was visiting with a small group of American environmentalists there to speak with community leaders about their innovative combination of education, environmental, health, and income generating efforts. We were connected to this particular community by the Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society because they were building all these efforts around a modest looking ground nesting bird called a White-winged Flufftail.

But I'm giving you too much detail about what excites me about this integrated development project. I haven't told you how these two joint concerns came together in the form of a plan to achieve both weigh loss and more resources for this community.

I had recently supported some family and friends with pledges for their walk for a cure efforts to battle breast cancer. And it struck me that perhaps I could raise money for this community by gathering per pound pledges for losing weight. If I could manage to share my rather shocking weight total with the world and figure out a way to gather and disburse pledges, I might actually muster the discipline to lose some serious waistline baggage.

So this self-imposed pressure scheme is what I will be trying to get started in coming days. This blog will grow as I hopefully shrink and the contributions for Berga grow. Stay tuned for more details on the fascinating Berga Wetland Project that is so much more than the name suggests.