Pasadena teens reach out to Africans in need
Half a world and almost immeasurable economic differences separate the privileged students of Polytechnic School in Pasadena from the nomads of Niger and the genocide victims of Darfur. Yet the three groups have a common bond, thanks in part to one student's visit to Africa last year.
In March 2006, Leslie Brian, 17, and her parents joined Wodaabe nomads in the Niger desert in a "volunteer vacation" offered through the Nomad Foundation, a 10-year-old nonprofit organization based in Ojai.
Their mission was to hand-carry supplies -- including thimbles, embroidery thread and scissors -- to remote encampments and return with handcrafted items to sell in the United States. The proceeds benefit the Nomad Foundation's work building schools, restoring wells and supporting women's cooperatives.
The Brian family spent two weeks in landlocked Niger, an impoverished country in western Africa. They moved with the Wodaabe nomads, a cattle-herding people who measure their wealth by how many cattle or zebus (humped cattle) they own. The family observed the five wives of a Wodaabe chief sitting in dusty, stark encampments and embroidering beautiful headbands and patches.
Now, in an effort to help the sewing cooperative and injured and displaced victims in war-torn Darfur, Leslie Brian and several schoolmates are stitching Africa-shaped patches made by the Wodaabe women onto brightly colored T-shirts made in Los Angeles. They are selling the T-shirts to raise money for a June 8 dance-a-thon and silent auction. The money from that event will in turn support the Darfur Peace & Development Organization, an Indiana nonprofit that sets up schools in refugee camps and provides other humanitarian aid in the troubled Darfur region of northwestern Sudan.
The Wodaabe women, meanwhile, are making $5 per patch, a princely sum in a country where that amount can feed a family for a day.
"The thing that's miraculous to me is that these girls, coming from the opposite end of the spectrum, are willing to reach out and touch the other side of the world in this way," said Leslie Clark, president of the Nomad Foundation.
The Polytechnic schoolmates have latched onto an issue that has galvanized students across the country. In the past couple of years, students at Cleveland High School in Reseda, Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles and Temple Israel Day School in Hollywood have been among those raising awareness about the Darfur crisis.
- Group Wants UC to Cut Sudan Ties Jan 18, 2006
- Auschwitz Survivor, 83, Sees a Parallel in the Sudan Crisis Oct 11, 2004
- Sudanese Refugees Reunite to Plan Future May 31, 2005
