Compassionate response to tsunami
Should flow to crises in Africa
Dears Sisters and Brothers,
The world’s response to the tsunami disaster shows the compassion of ordinary folks the world over.
It seems to take natural disasters that grab the headlines and saturate radio and television to provoke our humanitarianism for the less well-off areas of the world. So far, billions have been donated to the tsunami aid efforts.
I commend the thousands of OPSEU members who contributed to the various organizations engaged in tsunami relief efforts. OPSEU also donated $10,000 to the Canadian Red Cross in aid of the victims.
Here’s wishing this same humanitarian attention could be sustained to the ongoing humanitarian struggles in Africa and in other areas of the world that are taking an even greater human toll.
A civil war and famine in Darfur, Sudan, has claimed 1.5 million lives and left hundreds of thousands homeless. This crisis has not gotten nearly enough attention.
And in many southern African nations, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has become the No. 1 health crisis facing the world: millions of people infected and dying, children left orphaned and homeless.
You’ve only to read Dr. Philip Berger’s heart-wrenching dispatches from Lesotho: Even the barest minimum of medical supplies and drugs are not readily available in African hospitals.
OPSEU members are doing their part. We created our own Live and Let Live Fund, in partnership with the Stephen Lewis Foundation, to aid victims of the HIV here and in Africa. Many OPSEU locals have taken up this cause as their own.
If $800 million worldwide could also be raised for this relief effort, it would go a very long way to providing the needed drugs, education and creating healthful conditions to eradicate the HIV epidemic.
Let’s make it our new year’s resolution: Keep the compassion flowing.
In solidarity
Leah Casselman
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