Africa is dying. Today you can help.
Mar. 16th, 2007 03:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thatcrazycajunAs my friend wolfette has reminded me, today is Red Nose Day, the nationwide annual effort by Comic Relief UK, Britain's counterpart to our own Comic Relief group here in the States, to call the world's attention to—and raise money to help alleviate—the horrifying plight of the poor in sub-Saharan Africa. Currently and for many years now, an appallingly large proportion of the people on that continent have existed (no one with a functioning conscience and/or a heart could possibly call it "living") in grinding poverty, dying early from rampant and often incurable diseases, famine and its attendant ills, lacking even the most basic services such as indoor plumbing and electricity.
These things are all too close for me personally in the slums of Nairobi, very near where my sweet Songbirdsinging_phoenix toils at CDC's Kenyan office. She describes these conditions in chilling detail in her own journal here; and I got a look at how slum denizens in Kenya live for the first time recently when we watched The Constant Gardener, a film based on the best-selling novel by John LeCarré about intrigue and murder among the Kenyan Brit-expat community and filmed largely on location in and near Kibera.
I've donated $20 and set up an RND page of my own, and hereby challenge all my friends in the SF/fantasy fan community to match my donation. Plus, the CRUK folks get extra money in "Gift Aid" from Her Majesty's government for each donor who clicks the box to approve a claim in their behalf.
That anyone, anywhere on this planet should still be suffering so in the year 2007, with all humanity has achieved in this third millennium of Christendom, is beyond an outrage. I beg of you, I implore you, I beseech you...please help.
wolfette has reminded me, today is Red Nose Day, the nationwide annual effort by Comic Relief UK, Britain's counterpart to our own Comic Relief group here in the States, to call the world's attention to—and raise money to help alleviate—the horrifying plight of the poor in sub-Saharan Africa. Currently and for many years now, an appallingly large proportion of the people on that continent have existed (no one with a functioning conscience and/or a heart could possibly call it "living") in grinding poverty, dying early from rampant and often incurable diseases, famine and its attendant ills, lacking even the most basic services such as indoor plumbing and electricity. These things are all too close for me personally in the slums of Nairobi, very near where my sweet Songbird
singing_phoenix toils at CDC's Kenyan office. She describes these conditions in chilling detail in her own journal here; and I got a look at how slum denizens in Kenya live for the first time recently when we watched The Constant Gardener, a film based on the best-selling novel by John LeCarré about intrigue and murder among the Kenyan Brit-expat community and filmed largely on location in and near Kibera.I've donated $20 and set up an RND page of my own, and hereby challenge all my friends in the SF/fantasy fan community to match my donation. Plus, the CRUK folks get extra money in "Gift Aid" from Her Majesty's government for each donor who clicks the box to approve a claim in their behalf.
That anyone, anywhere on this planet should still be suffering so in the year 2007, with all humanity has achieved in this third millennium of Christendom, is beyond an outrage. I beg of you, I implore you, I beseech you...please help.
