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FOR MANY grandmothers in Africa, it has become commonplace to care for their
grandchildren who have been orphaned by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. There is a
Kelowna connection with these African grandmothers.
Meet Lydia Genesis. She is a widow who was thrown out of her husband’s house and is allowed by relatives to live in a tumbledown shack with a grass
roof. She sorrowfully told a local aid worker that dogs have a better place to
live.
Zachariah Yeiju, director of family care at the Gembu Centre for HIV/AIDS
Advocacy, located in Gembu, Nigeria, confirmed the reports of her need. The
centre now provides her with minimal funds for school fees, food and clothing
for her four children. More money is badly needed to build her a house. Lydia’s plight has been taken on by a group of grandmothers on the other side of the
world.
Meet Wilma Lepin. The Kelowna woman heard about the plight of grandmothers in
Africa and noted the work being done by the Stephen Lewis Foundation through
groups called Go-Gos (the Zulu word for granny). As a result, Lepin started a
group in Kelowna called Gifts to Grandmothers.
Women – most of them also grandmothers – come from several churches and meet every Thursday at Trinity Baptist Church for
a sewing bee. They make and sell simple tote bags and jewelry to raise funds to
help the African grandmothers. They sell the totes at Trinity and at a Saturday
farmers’ market in Kelowna. The cost is $40 per bag.
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This group of about 50 women started cranking out totes in October 2007 and by
July 2008 had sold 1,267 bags. Now the total sold has reached more than 3,000.
All proceeds go to help the orphans of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Uganda, Nigeria
and Ethiopia. Contact: giftstograndmothers.com.
– Dorothy Brotherton
December 2009
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