By Kevin Young

Hot Hot Heat's Steve Bays and Muhizi Patrick from Rwandan group Holy Jadoves in the newly-built studio in Kigali

For musician/producer Darcy Ataman, founder of Canadian Artists for African Aid Inc., a.k.a. “Song For Africa,” what began as his  “little contribution to the world” is now an ongoing mission to raise awareness about humanitarian issues in Africa and make a definable difference in some of the most poverty-stricken areas of Kenya and Rwanda.

When Ataman enlisted Billy Talent, Big Sugar, Choclair and other acts to perform on “Song For Africa,” a song he’d written with Rob Wells, Luke McMaster and Simon Wilcox in 2006 to raise awareness about the African AIDS pandemic, he had no idea how far the concept would expand. Now, four years later, Sony Music Entertainment Canada will put out a digital-only album June 15 and a documentary will air on Citytv June 12 at 8 pm (EST), both entitled Rwanda Rising Up.

“I just got the first mix back yesterday for the lead single [‘Beautiful’] and it’s phenomenal,” says Ataman, who is CEO and executive director of CAFAA, now based out of Winnipeg, Manitoba, but with interns and volunteers in Toronto; Montreal; London, England; Rwanda and Nairobi.

The song will be serviced to Canadian radio March 22 and features Crash Parallel’s Tim Edwards with the Rwandan group Holy Jadoves. It will be available on iTunes March 30.

Edwards, along with Hot Hot Heat’s Steve Bays, Damhnait Doyle and Sarah Slean, traveled to Kigali, Rwanda to record with Grammy-winning Canadian producer David Bottrill (Silverchair, Tool, I Mother Earth). The album also features The Trews, Billy Talent, Classified, Choclair and Operation MD.  The track listing is still to be determined.

Operation MD, featuring Cone McCaslin (Sum 41) and Todd Morse (H2O, Juliette Lewis & The Licks), is presently completing its track. “They are working around samples I gave them from a traditional Rwandan group I gave them — the Jean Basqueau band,” says Ataman.

Producer David Bottrill interacts with some children in a village that CARE is supporting

“Song For Africa” will not appear on the album, but it did the trick, getting the momentum going for CAFAA, which incorporated as a non-profit in November 2006. According to SoundScan Canada, the single only sold 1500 copies, but significant funds were raised from other sources. “I don’t know the specific number regarding money raised on the single,” Ataman says, “but we’re about at the half-a-million mark now, including money from private donors, corporate sponsors, and sale of the single and documentary DVD. You hit up everyone and anyone.”

The idea for the charity single came as a result of his pastime in the studio, reading online news sites such as BBC and Australian newspapers. Ataman, a producer/engineer/mixer, who has worked with DJ Kemo from Rascalz, Grand Analog, McMaster and James, Canadian Idol winners Ryan Malcolm and Kalan Porter, and Philadelphia producers Dre and Vidal, says he would often “reboot” his brain this way after long hours in the studio.

“I would see these stories about what was happening in Africa and I was really dismayed that it wasn’t in the local news or domestically,” he says. “Why wasn’t a news story over here? The more I learned about it, the more I wanted to level the playing field a little bit.”

In addition to Billy Talent, Choclair and Big Sugar, the original CD single and video pooled the talents of Damnhait Doyle, Kyle Riabko, Not By Choice, Luke McMaster, Simon Wilcox, Rob Wells and Easily Amused. Initially, Ataman considered “Song For Africa” a one-off, “my little contribution to the world,” he says, but in August 2006, after its premiere at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, the project gained momentum. The video went into medium rotation on MuchMusic; the single stayed at No. 2 on SoundScan’s CD singles chart for the entire month and the project received television coverage on eTalk, ET Canada, CTV News and CBC News.

“In the fall of 2006, I took my first trip over to Africa,” he recounts, paying for it with his own money. “The first time I went to Kenya and I went to some rural areas in the Maasai Mara and [then] I went through the urban slums. There’s a place called Kibera, which is now the biggest slum in Africa, period. There are one million people in 11 square kilometres without any provisions whatsoever.

“Once you’ve seen behind the curtain of the world, so to speak, it really becomes hard to forget about it and go back to your regular life.”

So Ataman didn’t go back to regular life, not entirely. He decided to do a documentary, also entitled Song For Africa, which was directed by Derek Horn in the summer of 2007. The humanitarian organization CARE Canada “helped logistically with the Kibera portion of the film,” he says. The idea of the doc, as Ataman puts it, was “to follow the money trail and say, ‘Your dollar went here and this is how it changed someone’s life in a sustainable way.’”

Along with CARE, Ataman developed the SFA Scholarship Fund, an aid initiative, aimed at ensuring that at least some of the youth and children living in Kibera get a chance at an education.   “We were filming there and met these absolutely wonderful kids that have a work ethic that I’d never seen before,” Ataman says.

“When you live on less than a dollar a day and eat once every two days, school fees are almost impossible [to pay for], but everyone needs something different. It took about five seconds on the ground to realize that it was utter madness to think I knew what was best for them. You have to sit down and have a dialogue that’s mutually respectful. We have a rep that goes once every two weeks to visit recipients and their families. It’s very individualized.”

Ataman speaks of one girl who he first met two years ago. “She literally lived in a cardboard box, and she was very shy because most of the people in her situation are, because they’re bombarded daily by the worst parts of life. I asked to see her homework and she brought me this biology and physics homework I certainly couldn’t understand.” Now 17-years-old, she’s prepping for med school.

But the program offers help beyond that, extending to whatever is needed to allow recipients to continue their studies. For instance, a student who had contracted Malaria received medical treatment thanks to the scholarship program’s flexibility and was able to recover and return to school.

The Song For Africa documentary was broadcast nationally on Citytv in September 2008, then screened at a World Bank Conference, where it was seen by volunteers for another African aid organization, Partners In Health, which prompted CAFAA to expand its work into Kigali. Building on the concept that had worked so effectively in 2006, Ataman hit on the idea of a music enrichment program that partnered Canadian recording artists with Rwandan musicians, and would compliment an existing Partners In Health program aimed at HIV prevention.

In the first of two seminars they’ve run to date in Africa, portable recording rigs were used to enable participants in the Partners In Health program to develop songs about issues surrounding HIV prevention, which are then disseminated into the community. While each seminar involved roughly 35-40 participants, for the second, says Ataman, he wanted to up the ante. “We flew in all the equipment from Toronto and built a studio in Kigali. The process and results are the focus for both the new album and the new documentary, Rwanda Rising Up.”

Directed again by Horn, the film also includes an interview with Canadian Senator Roméo Dallaire, known for his efforts to halt the Rwandan genocide when he was Force Commander of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Rwanda in the early ‘90s.

The work is still just beginning.

“What we’ve found out, on the ground, is that to really see what works and what doesn’t, you just have to try it,” says Ataman.

That is the very core of “Song For Africa,” an approach that has fueled Ataman’s belief that one person can make a difference in the world.

For more information, go to www.songforafrica.com

By Cori Ferguson

Sometimes losing something that means everything can lead to a calling that means so much more. Such is the case for Wendy Huntbatch who in 1993 founded the World Parrot Refuge in Coombs, British Columbia, after four of her parrots were stolen. She now cares for hundreds of these gorgeous tropical birds, all of which are on the Endangered Species List.

“Starting a parrot refuge was something that was never in my realm of thought,” Huntbatch says, but the night her birds were taken changed everything. She and her husband regularly took the birds with them to the office and, she explains, “the only night we didn’t go back to work someone broke in and stole four of the six birds.”

Heartbroken, Huntbatch, an animal welfare advocate, put the word out, hoping someone would be able to help recover their birds. Instead, people started offering her their own parrots, for which they could no longer care. “Within two weeks we had 15 large birds,” she says. They have since recovered one of their stolen parrots, which eventually turned up at the sanctuary, but the other three have yet to resurface (one of the original six, the mate to one of the stolen birds, never recovered from its loss and passed on as well).

Word continued to spread and birds continued to arrive. “In no time at all our house seemed to get full so we bought a 2000 square foot sanctuary for them, with flights on the outside. I moved 75 birds out of my house and we proceeded to collect another 75,” she laughs. In 2004, the Huntbatches sold that facility and moved their then 400 birds to the refuge’s current location on Vancouver Island.

Now North America’s largest sanctuary for unwanted, abandoned and abused parrots, the World Parrot Refuge is currently home to 800 former pet parrots that represent more than 70 different parrot species. Huntbatch estimates they receive an average of 100 to 120 new birds each year.  There are roughly 372 species of psittaciformes (parrots) in the world, and three families: psittacida (true parrots, predominantly green), cacatuidae (cockatoos — mostly white or black) and strigopidae (endangered New Zealand parrots — greys, browns). Sixty-five species are on the Endangered Species List (www.earthsendangered.com).

“All parrots are on the Endangeed Species List, including Budgies and cockatiels,” says Huntbatch.  “However, this list is divided into 3 categories — appendix one, two and three.  Appendix one covers the critically endangered species. We have a large number of them — Hyacinth Macaws, Scarlet Macaws, Military Macaws, Moluccan Cockatoos, Lesser Sulfur Crested  Cockatoos, Citron Crested Cockatoos, Triton Cockatoos, Goffins Cockatoos,  Green Cheeked Amazon Parrots, Double Yellowheaded Amazon Parrots, Yellow Naped Amazon Parrots and Red Lored Amazon Parrots. These are all I can think of right now.

“More species will be added to the critically endangered groups in a very short time,” she adds. “Illegal trapping and trafficking of these birds continues at an alarming rate.  We hope to get the Canadian Government to close its doors to the importation of wild caught birds.”

Huntbatch’s feathered friends find their way to the World Parrot Refuge from across North America for any number of reasons, but often come from owners that have developed health problems, can no longer afford to keep them or have predeceased their pets. “One of the biggest reasons that we see is ‘I have asthma; my child has asthma or my uncle, my mom.’ There’s always somebody in the home with asthma, which is really brought to the forefront by the allergic reaction to the bird dander. We’ve had 10 birds come in in the last two weeks totally because of asthma,” she says.

More often than not, the birds arrive at the World Parrot Refuge in poor health, Huntbatch says. “I would say 40 per cent of the birds come to us in good shape; 60 percent come in really bad shape.” Huntbatch, her staff of 17 and a core group of volunteers nurse the birds back to health before integrating them into their ever-growing flock. Once socialized, the birds are free to fly throughout the 23,000 square foot facility.

When a bird has been surrendered to the World Parrot Refuge it becomes their permanent home; Huntbatch does not provide adoption services. “Other sanctuaries take them in and adopt them out; to me that’s a pet store. We provide a home for life.”

Caring for that many birds is an expensive proposition. In 2008, it cost $330,000 to operate the World Parrot Refuge and although they do have both individual and corporate support Huntbatch acknowledges that their single greatest challenge is raising enough money to keep the sanctuary operating. Funding cuts by the B.C. government left a $100,000 hole in their operating budget in 2009 and they are still working to fill that void.

And while they do not provide traditional pet adoption services as a fundraising tool, the World Parrot Refuge does provide the opportunity for supporters to virtually adopt the birds. “It’s the same as if you virtually adopt a child in Africa and you get a picture and some information,” explains Huntbatch. “It never becomes yours; you just financially support it. It’s the same with a parrot.”

The facility also collects gate receipts from visitors and operates a gift shop on site. Named by Travelocity as one of the Top 25 hidden tourism gems in Canada, the World Parrot Refuge is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day of the year and attracts thousands of visitors annually.

For the price of admission (ranging from $8 to $12 per person) visitors are taken through the facility where they can see the birds flying free and also have the chance to interact with them; if you visit, be prepared to have at least one bird land on you at some point. The only part that isn’t open to the public is the special needs area, where disabled or injured birds are kept.

“We are also an educational facility,” Huntbatch says. “We try to teach people that parrots do not make good pets. It’s not good for you to have a parrot because you can tame a parrot so you can get within a certain distance or you can touch them, but you cannot domesticate them.”

Huntbatch also cautions those wanting a parrot as a pet that keeping a single bird is a “really a cruel thing to do. Would you like to be the only human being at a pig trough? Pigs are highly intelligent and as close to a human in their body as possible, so it’s not that big a distance, but to be the only one? You can’t speak to anyone!”

Parrots are also highly social and live in flocks for protection; while some birds eat, others watch for predators, she explains. “But if you are on your own, in a house, in a cage with your wings clipped — that’s their only form of escape is to fly — so they (owners) clip their wings, put them in a barred cage and then, out of what they feel is a respect for parrots, they put them in the window so they can see outside and watch all the birds. Well, of course, they can also see the predators and then these poor things can’t escape, so it’s a terrifying experience,” Huntbatch says. “At least if there are two of them, the security is there; they have a friend.”

Huntbatch’s free flying brood need not ever worry about feeling trapped again. She is currently building another flight for the budgies and cockatiels that are often just dropped off at their door and is hoping to build a veterinary hospital on site, which will serve as a training facility for future avian veterinary specialists and provide another steady income stream and volunteers for the facility.

When asked what she finds most rewarding about operating the World Parrot Refuge, Huntbatch says it’s “knowing that they are not going to go from home to home to home on the pet adoption go-round. And they’ll never be locked in cages again. And they’ll never have somebody throw something at them or scream at them. And they’ll never have to be covered with a blanket and told to shut up. We hear that from the birds so many times; if one bird screams, another one will say, ‘Shut up! Shut up now!’ so you know what life a bird has lived.

“You know when you see children that have gone from foster home to foster home to foster home and they become the naughtiest kids in the world and end up in jail?” she continues. “Well that’s what happens to parrots. It’s a version of parrot jail, (to be kept) in somebody’s basement with a blanket over them.”

For birds lucky enough to reach the World Parrot Refuge, it’s like receiving a get out of jail free card. “It’s a great place,” Huntbatch states. “They get to have friends; they get to fly; yes, it’s not total freedom. It’ll never be their own little country, but the captivity is probably the best they’ll ever get.”

For more information, visit www.worldparrotrefuge.org.

By Kim Hughes

In 2010, unless your name is Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, it’s unlikely anyone is going to declare you a pioneer. Though she’s not quite as famous, Toronto-based fashion designer Izzy Camilleri is a comparable trailblazer and her innovations are impacting lives, albeit among a smaller constituency.

Camilleri designs and creates a line of clothing for women who use wheelchairs called the IZ Collection of Adaptable Clothing. That may not sound revolutionary until you stop to consider how specialized, varied and numerous the needs of people living in wheelchairs can be and how woefully underserved they are by the mainstream fashion industry.

“Since her line has come out, I even look at T-shirts differently,” her client Barbara Turnbull told Samaritanmag. “Hers feel good on.  She chooses the fabrics very carefully, using ones that are not only comfortable to wear, but are kinder to the skin than a lot of what’s available commercially.”

Camilleri knows the fashion industry well. She went into haute couture right after graduating from fashion school in 1984 and has since dressed such A-listers as Jennifer Lopez, Nicole Kidman, Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, David Bowie, Fergie, Mark Wahlberg and Meryl Streep (in The Devil Wears Prada). But as Camilleri explains from her studio, normal ready-to-wear clothing just doesn’t cut it when you’re strapped to a seat and don’t have independent use of your arms and legs.

Dressing can actually present a safety hazard for disabled women who may fall from their chairs while caregivers struggle to maneuver them into conventional items.

What’s more, women seated in wheelchairs need ordinary amounts of fabric in the front of their coats and suits, but not in the back or at the sides where the excess just pools around their waists. And they need warmth with function — fabrics like satin are too slippery and cold; they need something that offers grip and is super-gentle on the skin.

Camilleri’s functional custom designs — jackets with truncated backs and sides that separate into pieces that are then re-attached by zippers — consider the dressing and wearing needs of wheelchair-bound women in the workplace and beyond, especially younger, fashion-conscious women loathe to surrender style along with their mobility.

The clothing, which can be ordered from the web site, www.izzycamilleri.com, is ingenious, affordable and looks fantastic, and most of the items come in a range of colours. The collection includes elegant, high-end pieces such as a leather jacket ($435), a raincoat ($245) and wool swing coat ($325) to more casual, everyday items, such as a basic short sleeve t-shirt ($24), turtleneck ($39), bathrobe ($85), denim skirt ($105 lined; $75 unlined) and jeans ($132 lined; $99 unlined). She even offers stay-up pantyhose ($9.50) to a catheter cover ($5.95) to conceal tubing, and sleeve guards ($29) for self-wheeling to protect arms from rain and snow.

In terms of price point, Camilleri says her line is actually slightly cheaper than retail. The leather jacket, for instance, would likely sell closer to $1000. That said, she acknowledges that there is a perception of things being more expensive when custom-made, but Adaptable Clothing is unique because of the lack of material in the back and other considerations, something that is welcomed by its wearers.

As is often the case with such things, the idea for the IZ Collection of Adaptable Clothing wasn’t so much something Camilleri went looking for.Rather, it came about coincidentally through encounters with two women suffering from profound spinal cord injuries:  Turnbull, a Toronto Star journalist who, at age 18, was shot during a robbery at the convenience store where she worked, and Carolyn Pioro, a onetime circus aerialist who was seriously injured in a fall.

(L to R) Carolyn Pioro, Izzy Camilleri, Barbara Turnbull

“About six years ago I met Barb through Bernadette Morra, then-fashion editor at the Star. She wanted a shearling cape,” Camilleri recalls. “I had never met anyone in a wheelchair let alone someone like Barb who was quadriplegic. At first I was all thumbs. But I started making stuff for her regularly over the course of about five years.

“A couple of years after I met her I was thinking about designing clothes for women in wheelchairs. Barb put a small focus group together with some other women in wheelchairs and everyone spoke about clothes and wants and needs and desires and problems. My head was just spinning. Everyone had such specific needs that I walked away thinking I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t generalize and come up with something that would be appropriate for the needs of a majority that are seated. So I put the idea away.

“Then last year I met Carolyn. She needed a winter coat. I learned that a lot of people in wheelchairs don’t own winter coats because it’s just too much trouble putting them on and off throughout the day, unlike clothing which goes on in the morning and stays on until night. As for full-length winter coats, forget it because then you get this great big puddle of fabric at the back and at the sides. So I made Carolyn a winter coat, which turned out really attractive, not just about function.

“A few months later, Carolyn was going to celebrate her 30^th birthday and her mom contacted me about making a leather piece for her. We went through the same process of designing it together and after I gave it to her, I was driving home, feeling so excited in knowing that I gave her a lot more than a leather piece. I gave her a sense of dignity and looking good — stuff that most of us just take from granted when we get dressed.

“I had an epiphany. Outerwear! That’s where I can generalize since that’s something everyone has to wear. So that’s where I started. I emailed Carolyn when I got back asking her to suggest websites of places that make adaptive clothing but before she could respond I Googled it myself and everything I found was either geared to seniors or really institutional looking. Carolyn agreed that was her experience as well.

“So from there I thought I could expand it to include basics — jeans, a blazer, a bathrobe, suits, dress pants, simple T-shirts. I mean, you can get a t-shirt anywhere, but when you’re in a wheelchair for a long time, your organs start settling so you get thicker around the waist. My T-shirts are all cut A-line to accommodate that. So every single piece in the line has been thought through.”

Now that she’s conquered the design intricacies, the next big step is marketing.  She has dedicated herself to the line for the past eight months. At the moment, the IZ Collection is available only through the web site, though she has talked to retailers about possible distribution. But she admits, “It’s very hard to gauge the market and to figure out what would be an appropriate amount of stock to have. There’s just no precedent here.”

Moreover, all Camilleri’s pieces are custom designed, “and I think there is a hesitation to have something custom-made, which is why I hope to get some stock items available. Next up will be men’s wear and children’s wear.” There is a need for office-appropriate attire for men and women in the work force, as well as play clothes for children and trendy, statement pieces for teens.

But Camilleri acknowledges the word is getting out, thanks to testimonials from clients like Turnbull. “It’s completely impossible for me to purchase pants, so hers are invaluable.  It also feels good to put on an item of clothing that has Izzy’s style stamped on it.  It was surreal that I was able to try on multiple jackets without having to shift my position to put them on and off.  The scope of her line really took me by surprise — with bath capes, rainwear, button-down shirts.  Every detail is so thoughtful.”

With an estimated 170,000 Canadians using wheelchairs — Camilleri says that globally, there could be up to 100 million people that either use a wheelchair or need to  — adaptive clothing is, sadly, a growth market.

“The web is a huge asset. I have a client right now from Greece. I’ve had one from Australia, from the UK and from the U.S. And one really exciting thing — Oprah’s O Magazine is slated to feature me in the June issue. So I don’t know what to expect. It could explode or continue at a snail’s pace.

“It’s just so inspiring meeting these people and I feel like I can put my talent to really good use. It took someone like myself who has the training with the pattern drafting to come up with this. It was really hard to work out all the logistics. But the personal satisfaction and gratification is huge. I feel like I can do some good with what I know. I mean, I can do other things as well — I don’t have to just do this. But this is so much more meaningful.”

By Kevin Young

Iqaluit hunter Meeka Mike wants to interview Native elders about traditional species management and provide her findings to the Canadian government

Remember that ten spot you found in your coat pocket last week? Chances are you stuffed the bill back into your wallet never thinking that you might be able to make a difference with it. If so, Toronto-based SmallChangeFund.org, launched last month, aims to change your thinking with what it calls “bottom-up investment, grassroots grant-making, place-based funding, micro-philanthropy.”

By tapping into a growing trend of online micro-giving, founder Ruth Richardson hopes to raise money across the country for grassroots initiatives that are sometimes overlooked by larger, more established charities.

“It’s a way of engaging citizen philanthropists, and getting critical seed capital into community organizations, small amounts that can make a real difference and help start something at a community level,” Richardson says.

While the big names in philanthropy do essential work, she explains, there tends to be a gap in funding for grassroots organizations. After nearly 20 years of working for organizations like the Canadian Environmental Grantmakers’ Network, the Laidlaw Foundation’s Children and Environmental Health program, and the Unilever Canada Foundation, Richardson wanted to do something to fill that gap.

It’s bottom-up philanthropy, she says. “Large foundations tend to be very strategic, which often means they provide larger amounts of money to fewer organizations, but there’s a lot of really important work happening at the grassroots level and unless some of that funding hits that level, we’re not going to be able to allow responses to big challenges to become entrenched locally and then move up.”

There are currently 30 projects up for consideration on SmallChangeFund.org, looking for between $1500 and $5000 to fulfill their goals. “We’re focused on micro grants, as are our international partners, the theory being that a small amount of money can go a long way,” says Richardson. “It’s the seed money to help them get started, or to fill a gap, or to allow them to do something discreet that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do.” The focus on small, discreet projects also allows Small Change to keep its administrative costs low.

Although the organization casts a wide net with a relatively simple application process, potential projects are thoroughly vetted via a network of 22 advisors from across Canada — scientists and activists, leaders of small networks and coalitions, teachers, journalists, photographers, and environmentalists. More than just providing an additional layer of accountability, those advisors are integral to building the community Richardson and co-founder Mary McGrath envision. “They’re really our eyes and ears in the communities, a bridge to getting the word out about Small Change Fund, but also a means of drawing ideas and projects from the communities to us,” says Richardson.

Projects range in scope from environmental education initiatives, such as engaging youth in water monitoring in the Humber area, to a group attempting to start a Winnipeg, Manitoba-based environmental film festival, to a female hunter in Iqaluit whose focus is interviewing Native elders about traditional means of species management, with an eye to feeding that information to government organizations responsible for setting hunting quotas in the area.

SmallChangeFund.org co-founder Ruth Richardson

The idea for Small Change Fund had been brewing for some time, says Richardson, inspired by other micro-funders, such as Denver, Colorado’s Global Greengrants Fund. Over the past two years, she and McGrath began to see a unique possibility to do something different. “We said, ‘Look, we’ve got all these great advisors; we’re finding all these incredible projects; why not put them up on our website so that anybody can fund them? ‘We’re the first in our network to impose this model of this whole public, micro-philanthropy site,” says Richardson.

This idea, the democratizing of philanthropy using the web, is extraordinarily compelling, Richardson says, referencing a recent TED talk by Katherine Fulton on the subject. “It’s transforming philanthropy as we watch it.”

While many of the initiatives currently up for consideration have deep environmental undercurrents, their collective reach extends beyond that, Richardson insists. “We define that very, very broadly. When we’re working with international communities, or in the north, social issues, economic issues, environmental issues aren’t really distinct.”

Citizens' Environment Watch members test the Humber River water

Each project is listed on the site for a period of three months. Potential donors viewing the various projects see not only a description of their goals and the amount of money required for meeting them, but the amount raised to date. Their financial targets are so clearly attainable.  It’s a tacit invitation for donors to become personally involved by raising awareness amongst their peers in an effort to ensure their chosen charity’s progress.

“We really wanted this to be about the people and about the organizations,” Richardson says. Unlike some other philanthropic marketplace sites, even if a project doesn’t meet its goal within the time it’s posted, the funds raised still go to where the donors intended. It’s an innovative, if experimental, approach.

“Many of the other online market places hold funds until the group meets their goal. If they don’t, they go back to the donor and say, ‘Redirect your money.’ My board and advisors didn’t like that. They said that if somebody’s chosen to give to a group, their donation should go to that group. We’re talking about small organizations that are so strapped for cash that any amount of money will be useful and helpful.”

Their reach is now limited to initiatives in Canada, but Small Change hopes to one day expand outside the country by partnering with international groups engaged in similar work.

“Take climate change,” Richardson says. “We can talk about it at a global level, then look at strategies for dealing with it through small grants in local communities. We can hook up our advisors so they can learn from each other, connect some of the groups that we’re funding and that they’re funding, so they can learn from each other.  It will be interesting to see how it evolves.”

If you would like to donate or volunteer, go to the web site. “We could use assistance in a lot of areas, “ Richardson says. “Whatever skills people have, we’ll try to match them up with meaningful work.”

By Jim Barber

Tammy treating for tenia versicolor, a skin disease caused by fungus

Tammy Babcock already had a trip planned to Haiti this month in anticipation of her latest humanitarian trip to the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. That was before the 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck, destroying thousands of buildings in the capital region of Port-au-Prince, decimating an already shaky infrastructure and leaving a death toll estimated by the Pan American Health Organization to be more than 200,000.

The founder of the small, grassroots Kingston, Ontario-based organization Help Tammy Help Haiti was looking forward to a ground breaking ceremony to mark the beginning of construction on  a new medical clinic in the massive shantytown Cité Soleil, on the outskirts Port-au-Prince. Instead, on January 26, the 33-year-old will go there to help rebuild in the wake of the devastating January 12 quake.

While Help Tammy Help Haiti is not yet a registered charity, Cari Wolsey, one of the directors, says they have applied for charitable status with Canada Revenue Agency. Babcock has been able to do their good work down there through the support of people who have seen the small projects they have achieved to date, such as the completion of a water tower and plans for the medical clinic.  Now, she needs help more than ever before in the organization’s two-year history.

Tammy (L) and Cari (R) next to water tower built by Help Tammy Help Haiti

Babcock, Wolsey, and a handful of others will be taking as much medical supplies as they can carry, along with their work gloves and steel-toed work boots, prepared for many days of hard labour.  Babcock, who works security at Queen’s University in Kingston, was originally going to Haiti for two weeks. Now, she’s booked off a month, but fully expects to stay longer. “I went to see my boss and, fortunately, he understands,” she says.

“We’re looking for all emergency first-aid supplies, anything that we can get our hands on,” Babcock tells Samaritanmag. “Of course, we’re going to have to be able to look after ourselves when we’re there, so we’re going to need some meal replacements for ourselves. I’m also looking at two things and hoping to get some support. We need a solar pack so we can charge things like cell phones and we’re going to need some flashlights. One important tool is going to be a portable water purifier, where someone can pour contaminated water in and be able to drink it. There’s going to be water around, but it’s going to be contaminated.”

Babcock still hasn’t heard directly from everyone in her “family” as she calls them, the native Haitians who have embraced her and her work; the members of the United Nations forces who sometimes act as her de facto bodyguards; and her partner there, Robinson Remedor, who is fluent in English, Spanish, French and Creole and able to act as a liaison with humanitarian organizations in Cité Soleil. Two days after the 7.0 quake, Babcock heard that Remedor had survived, but his father had been killed.

“They’re not just Robinson and my security staff; they’re my family,” says Babcock. “They’re the only reason why I am alive. They keep me safe there. They’re the ones that love me and protect me. But there’s the people at the guest house I stay at as well; they keep security on me as well, and same with the UN. Oh my goodness, their headquarters, it’s gone. So many people dead and missing, and the Brazilians [UN soldiers], some of them have passed away. The Brazilians are like my guardians as well.”

Cari treating a wounded finger

The Walls International Guest House, where Babcock stays, has been flattened, she learned, and people were trapped inside.  She has formed this bond with many people in Cité Soleil and the surrounding area for her uncommon, fearless, hands-on approach to helping. Babcock doesn’t just raise money; she gets her hands dirty — and in one of the most difficult places on the planet. Cité Soleil is he most impoverished, desolate and dangerous part of Haiti, even more so now due to the disaster and desperation.

“Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with 80 percent of the population living under the poverty line and 54 percent in abject poverty,” according to the statistics on the Central Intelligence Agency’s web site. “Two-thirds of all Haitians depend on the agricultural sector, mainly small-scale subsistence farming, and remain vulnerable to damage from frequent natural disasters, exacerbated by the country’s widespread deforestation.”

Even before the quake, Cité Soleil had no stores, no electricity, no sewer and water service, and most of the nearly 500,000 people estimated to be living there do so in tiny, decrepit, floorless shacks, all crammed together, Babcock recounts. The area has been rife with gang violence for years.

“At times, it gets pretty bad,” she says. “The criminals of the country, when they are wanted, they come and hide in Cité Soleil. So sometimes those communities might be in good standing, considering, but then they are taken over by an outside gang.  If there’s anybody that works in that area and leave to go to the market for the day, when they return home, they’ve being robbed by these people.

“There’s a lot of sickness and disease,” Babcock adds. “It’s so sad because there are no jobs for these people. They moved into Cité Soleil because they believed there was going to be a job for them. And, really, if they can get their hands on weapons, why wouldn’t they use them?”

Resting after a day of tree planting

Babcock’s interest in humanitarian work began after the 2005 tsunami in Thailand. Instead of taking a planned vacation, she spent a number of weeks, on the ground, rebuilding homes.  The Kingston native eventually choose Haiti, specifically Cité Soleil, after hearing stories of how poor the people were from a friend, a Kingston firefighter who had done aid work there. Instead of joining a larger aid organization, in 2008 she decided to start her own.

Help Tammy Help Haiti is run from Babcock’s home. According to the website, www.helptammyhelphaiti.com, “We put all donated money and supplies directly to the front line – in person. Help Tammy Help Haiti is comprised of a volunteer board of directors. We have no staff and no part of your donation will go towards administration, travel or living expenses while in the field – these are paid directly out of the director’s pockets.”

Much of the medical material they take down to perform first-aid is donated by Kingston-area doctors and pharmacies, while donated cash is used to purchase more medicine and other supplies from Haitian pharmacies while they are in the country. Babcock usually takes a team of two to four volunteers, sometimes more, who take as much medical supplies, clothing and other items needed in Haiti, as the airlines allow. They all have basic first-aid medical training. While Babcock does not have any professional development credentials, she does have the ability to build relationships with local Haitians, as well as with other relief organizations, such as Doctors Without Borders and the United Nations.

“I didn’t really want to join a group. I really would prefer to be my own boss, and know that 100 percent of that money is going towards what they promised it to go towards. I know the only way for me to be 100 percent sure of that is if I’m in control of that,” Babcock explains.

She decided upon almost a guerrilla approach to aid, going in alone, building the trust of the locals day by day by her work, not just her words. The locals saw she was she was committed to them, enduring the spectre of possible violence and kidnapping.

“When I was down there for one of my first trips, I got in between gunfire between the United Nations and a local gang, and at that point in time, I thought I was dead. I thought I was going to be killed,” she relays.  “After the situation was over, we were able to continue the work. We were actually distributing water at the time, and it was almost like it was the best day of my life, just because I survived it.

“The children are standing around and they’re looking at me like I am crazy, because I was terrified. I think you could see my heart pounding through my shirt. The children were laughing. It was like this is something normal for them. This happens all the time. They are totally desensitized to it.

“Cari and I were almost kidnapped when we were last down there [in November],” she says, glossing over the statement as if it’s no big deal. “The most important thing, to the people there, is that they see us come back, and they know we care, because we could leave and never come back. We’re terrified sometimes, but we come back the next day because we care so much for them.”

Tammy and Cari treating ringworm

Babcock and her team spend much of their time there not only distributing medical supplies and other needed items, like clothing and personal care items, but actually providing basic first-aid and medical care, sometimes for days on end, seeing thousands and thousands of sick and injured people — all this before the quake. They also raised funds to construct a water tower to help in the collection and distribution of clean water, helping to ease the reliance on the water trucks that come irregularly, and which are often too expensive.

The water tower was completed in July, and there is no word yet if it is still standing. The next item on Babcock and Help Tammy Help Haiti’s agenda was to build a permanent medical clinic, where not only she and her colleagues could work, but where other visiting doctors or local doctors could practice medicine, distribute drugs and other medical paraphernalia in a safe and secure location. That is now on the back burner for obvious reasons.

At this point, without being able to communicate with her friends in Haiti, her plan when she arrives on the 26^th is basic —  show up, figure out a way to get from the airport to Cité Soleil, then go from there.

“I know all the emergency organizations are going to be busy, and I have a feeling that even on Jan. 26, it’s going to be me going down there and assessing things on my own. I am not a stranger to that. That’s what I did two years ago. I went down there and I found myself in the middle of a slum, working on a water tower and then a medical clinic,” Babock says. “I am not afraid of that. I know my way around Port-au-Prince.

“What I am looking at doing is going down, and hoping the people are secure enough so that I can move into the heart of Port-au-Prince, and help in the Kenscoff area, the mountainous region, where there’s buildings built on buildings, built on buildings, that I know have 100 percent collapsed. They’re going to need help for some time to come, and that’s where I know they need extra hands.”

She said much of the media reportage has barely mentioned Cite Soleil, which is why she is so eager to get in touch with her contacts there, and also to see how much damage is in that area.

“I do have faith that Cité Soleil might have fared pretty well considering they have nothing,” Babcock says. “They have tin shacks, and the odds of people losing their lives because their tin shack has fallen down are a lot better than ones living in the areas with concrete buildings, which is the middle class or high class area up in Pétionville. It’s really the only thing that’s keeping me together, the faith that my staff, my friends, and family there in Cité Soleil are okay physically, that hopefully they haven’t been injured. But I don’t know. I just don’t know.”