Getting to Zero, event organized by the Harvard African Law Association

Tracey Masella and Rolande Hodel
On November 30, the Harvard African Law Association hosted a fundraising event: Getting to Zero, in honor of World Aids Day. The Harvard African Law Association’s mission is to “unite African students and students interested in Africa, and increase awareness of legal, social and economic issues that shape and concern the continent of Africa”.Two nonprofit organizations were invited to present their organizations’ activities: Medical Relief Association (MRA) and AIDSfreeAFRICA.
The evening’s Master of Ceremonies was Sedoo Manu; the moderator, Mr. Nana Okyir; Sia Henry was one of the organizers and main point person. All three are students at Harvard Law.
The audience on November 30
Tracey Masella, Board Chair of MRA, showed us a video of the goat farm recently inaugurated by MRA in Kenya. MRA’s mission is to help families affected by AIDS the means to earn a livelihood and lead healthy lives. To achieve this goal, MRA donates dairy goats to families; the milk is easily digestible by HIV-afflicted people and a goat usually provides more than enough milk for an entire family, so there is enough left over to sell on the market. MRA just inaugurated a goat farm: the Goat Hope Farm.
Dr. Rolande Hodel, after obtaining her PhD in chemistry, rather than return to the corporate world,  founded AIDSfreeAFRICA in 2005. She has been active in Cameroon, mainly in the Anglophone Northwest and Southwest Regions. The organization’s mission is to help produce pharmaceutical drugs locally and to create access to these drugs to rural populations through revolving drug funds. AIDSfreeAFRICA’s work encourages the creation of sustainable jobs, for example by founding a healthcare clinic in the village of Esu. In the past 7 years, AIDSfreeAFRICA has brought manufacturing equipment, medical equipment and supplies, AIDS tests, condoms, vitamins, medicine, and scientific books to Cameroon, amongst other useful items collected by the organization’s volunteers.
At the event, she mentioned that although it was difficult to change the habits of the older generation in the areas she serves, this generation however believes in her mission to eradicate AIDS and wants their children to be educated in protecting themselves, as they do not want to lose the new generation to this disease.
Hicham Alaoui
Special entertainment was brought by Hicham Alaoui, a young Master Percussionist from Casablanca, Morocco, who is also a first year Harvard MBA student. He blends rhythms from many cultures, on a variety of drums, and his performance was entrancing.


Sedoo Manu
Additional photos of the Harvard Law event: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/103109390457637139774/albums/5817419475847127745

WomenCentric article about Dr. Rolande Hodel
Dr. Hodel handing out vitamins

Location: Cambridge, MA, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Please let me know your thoughts and questions. Also, if you feel that anything is incorrect, please let me know.
I need to moderate the comments, as in recent years there has been a spike in spam.

Popular posts from this blog

Bibi Seck, Industrial Designer in New York City

Image
Ayse,  Bibi, and daughters  Bibi Seck is an industrial and product designer of Senegalese and Martiniquais descent,  introduced from afar by Fatimata Ly, a Senegalese ceramics designer I wrote about last year. As a matter of fact, I had been hearing about him and his spouse, Ayse Birsel, for a while already: the New York African design community is not that large, and especially an African married to a fellow Middle Easterner (Turks are Middle Easterners as well as Europeans, with literally a foot in both worlds; and of course we had the Ottoman Empire for six centuries!). Moroso-M'Afrique collection Bibi’s stools, made in Senegal, of recycled plastic, are currently exhibited at the Museum of Art and Design’s Global Africa show. I interviewed him last week to find out what his path had been to this point. Bibi was raised between Europe and Senegal.He had planned on studying architecture at first, but then found his true vocation in Industrial Design at the Ec
Read more

Cameroon food - part 1

Image
Ndolé with fried plantains Food in tropical Africa, as everywhere in the world, is mainly made with local products. Notable exceptions: tomatoes have become a staple, after being imported by the Europeans who had themselves imported them from South America. Tomatoes are not quite as ubiquitous as in southern Italy, but are the go-to item for sauces when a cook is in a crunch. Another import is salt cod, also known in the Americas as Bacalao . Cooked with what else... tomato sauce! Onions are also very popular, and I don’t think they are originally from the African continent. Ndolé plant Food, traditionally, is cooked. Well cooked. Salads used to be an unknown entity, and older people still call it “goat’s food.” Raw, or insufficiently cooked, would have been—and may still be—dangerous, in the hot and humid equatorial climate, where bacteria thrive, as it is never cold. Snow is a completely unknown entity. Even after a third of his life spent in temperate climates, my hus
Read more

2012 Columbia University African Economic Forum: Sanusi Lamido Sanusi's Keynote Speech

Image
On Friday and mostly on Saturday, April 13-14, 2012, Columbia University's School of International Policy held the 9th Annual African Economic Forum.   Nick Tattersall,  Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Business and Economics Journalism at Columbia University, introduced t he first keynote speaker:  Sanusi Lamido Sanusi  , Governor of Nigeria's Central Bank. Mr. Sanusi hails from Northern Nigeria; on Wikipedia , he is called "Mallam" (" learned " or "teacher," from the Arabic language), as he is also an Islamic scholar---probably a rarity in the banking world! He spoke softly (a little too softly for some of us, as the microphones were not working too well on the first day of the Forum) and couched his words carefully; however, his goals for Africa in general, and Nigeria in particular were quite clear: self-sufficiency leading to prosperity, and independence from foreign economic interests. I cannot, of course, provide here the full speech; howev
Read more