WINNIPEG – If there is a happy side to poverty in the world, it comes through the response of groups like Associated Country Women of the World.
Women and children were the focus of projects outlined at the ACWW’s Canada area conference, a meeting held every three years. The 80 women’s institute members present heard how their donations and those from others are helping.
From providing a home and education for orphans in India to fixing clubfeet of African children, there is work to be done.
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Members of Canada’s women’s institutes heard that their $7,000 project in India is helping the Dalit caste. Dalits represent 300 million of India’s billion people and are regarded as the lowest in society. They must do the dirty work in the country including cleaning sewers and disposal of dead bodies. In rural villages they must live separately and cannot draw water from the village well with the others. Their literacy rate is 37 percent.
The Canadian project is assisting 648 children who live in orphanages run by a Catholic nuns’ group. The children live in triple-cot-stacked dormitories and make vermicelli and disinfectant to raise money for the orphanages. Another 1,600 who don’t live in the houses are supported with skills training.
Aid not available
ACWW world president Ursula Goh said the project was needed because Dalits were left out of any government aid after the tsunami because they were not fishers but workers for the fishing industry.
Goh said she met three sisters in the project who had almost burned themselves to death because after their mother was killed in the tsunami, their father could not afford to feed them. Only a neighbour’s intervention stopped the suicide. The girls were sent to the Catholic orphanage.
During the Winnipeg meeting Sept. 18-19, the Canadian WI members passed a resolution asking that the ACWW urge the United Nations to increase its involvement toward freeing the women in Darfur from degradation, marginalization and violent sexual exploitation,
That resolution will be presented at the next ACWW world conference to be held in 2010 in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
