AIDS ravaging a generation, Lewis tells MEDA convention

Privileged countries are not doing their part in the global fight against HIV/AIDS and the pandemic’s “ferocious assault on the human condition” is “turning countries into cemeteries,” Stephen Lewis, United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, told the annual convention of Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA) Nov. 5 in Whistler, B.C.

The disease, driven by “predatory male behaviour,” is ravaging the continent’s productive generation between the ages of 15 and 49. Grandmothers have become “the heroes of Africa,” Lewis said. “They bury their adult children and then look after their orphaned grandchildren.”

Despite “glimmers of hope” as drugs have become more affordable and testing and treatment more widely available, he said the need keeps rising.

Fitting theme

Stephen Lewis signs his new book, Race Against Time, for Margaret and Bill Fast at the MEDA convention.

The annual convention is the major public event for MEDA, an association of 3,000 business and professional people whose dual aim is to promote faith/work integration and to devise business-oriented solutions to poverty. Some 440 persons attended the Nov. 3–6 gathering.

CEO Allan Sauder said the convention theme of “Create A Better World” was seldom more fitting than in 2005. “A year that began with a growing awareness of the horror of the tsunami, that saw the devastation of hurricanes and earthquakes and that ends with the prospect of a global pandemic of avian flu, is surely a year when we need God’s message of hope and new creation.”

MEDA, he added, had contributed hope through programs of economic development and commercial delivery of healthcare that benefited 1.9 million families last year. These included microcredit for small business, production and marketing help for subsistence farmers, safety and educational ventures for children forced to work in family businesses, and a huge program in Tanzania to prevent malaria with mosquito nets.

MEDA’s programs totalled $11 million last year, and member contributions grew by 19 percent to $1.7 million. This revenue leveraged government funds, contracts and other earnings by a factor of more than five to one and produced a net surplus of $281,000 for the year.

Engine of peace

MEDA is working on longer-term economic development in hurricane-hit Gulf States, Sauder said, and in “tough places” like Angola, Afghanistan and potentially Iraq. “Microfinance can help those who have suffered from years of warfare to recover a sense of community and stability. It is truly a powerful engine of peace building.”

Speaker Barj Dhahan, owner of Vancouver-area coffee and gasoline outlets, picked up on the peacemaking theme by noting that all people carry the seeds of both peace and violence.

“We have the power to destroy or create,” he said. “Daily it is a small yet significant choice that we make: to enhance the quality of life or diminish it; to create a better world or to degrade it.”

Celebrity television chef Graham Kerr (formerly of “Galloping Gourmet” fame) and his wife Treena, gave tips for creating lifestyle habits that increase love for God and neighbour, and former Olympic speed skating champion Catriona Le May Doan shared her story of becoming the world’s fastest woman on ice in the 500 metre competition.

Next year’s MEDA convention will be held Nov. 2–5 in Tampa Bay, Fla.

—Wally Kroeker