By Jerrica Benton
Tanya visited a group home where she met with orphans and played a game of net ball (modified basketball) and checked out a school where one working toilet meant a world of difference to the community. She was especially inspired after meeting a “living testament” to the CARE Campaign. A woman who was once bedridden and near death who had turned her life around and was managing her own garden and livestock.
Other highlights of the trip: visiting a local women’s farming cooperative and being welcomed by a group of Tonga with a song and dance.
“I was preparing myself for the absolute worst, just going by the images I’ve been inundated with in North America. Aside from your stereotypical (although very true) images of babies with distended bellies and flies crawling over their faces, my trip was not as devastating as I thought it was going to be. It was still very heart-wrenching, but these people were very hopeful and happy,” Tanya remembers.
Waking up in the morning to bright sunshine, a pack of beautiful zebras and monkeys stealing treats from breakfast plates and homegrown, freshly picked fruits. It was unlike anything Tanya had experienced before. “It was surreal and simply magnificent.”
It wasn’t until Tanya returned to Toronto and was among familiar sights, sounds and smells that her experience in Africa truly sunk in. “I got home and realized how lucky I am and how universal we are as human beings.”
Her ambassadorship restored her belief that each individual has the power to make a positive change. Tanya urges people not to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation of poverty, malnutrition and lack of basic rights in the developing world. “In the long run, don’t always think globally. It’s as simple as volunteering at the soup kitchen. When you clean out your closet, donate everything to a women’s shelter or volunteer your time at the Humane Society. It’s about the neighbourly things. It’s those little, tiny steps that honestly make a huge difference.”
Join the CARE Canada Facebook Group and visit www.care.ca for a full list on what you can do to help empower women in the developing world.
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