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Grandmothers Embrace: a message of hope

March 21, 2013   ·   0 Comments

A grandmother in Africa reaches out. She may be the only support of a family decimated by the AIDS epidemic, living in poverty, in need of food, clothing, shelter, education, health care: basic necessities. A grandmother in Alliston heeds the call and organizes “Grandmothers Embrace”.  They are unified by a strong care for family that spans the world’s richest and poorest nations.

It was Stephen Lewis, the United Nations special envoy to Africa for AIDS, who realized what was happening and created the Stephen Louis Foundation to support grass roots projects in Africa to ease the pain of AIDS. On International Women’s Day, 2006, the Grandmother to Grandmother campaign challenge was born, encouraging grandmothers in Canada to support their African counterparts where families were in desperate need. Parents were dying, orphaned children left in the care of grandmothers.  Karmela, a woman who was helped through such grass roots projects, mothered 28 children in her family, supporting them by working in a stone quarry seven days a week. They slept in layers. She made 25 cents a day. The Stephen Lewis Foundation, directing 90% of its support directly to the need, now provides funds for community gardens, water purification, schooling, bicycles for transportation, microloans to start self-sufficient businesses, pigs, goats, rabbits and chickens as food or sale.  It addresses the basic needs to sustain family and community life, be they shaped in Alliston or Africa.  As Mary Rintoul, member of “Grandmothers Embrace” explains, “we don’t tell Africans what they need. They decide what they need”.

Organized largely through word of mouth and the Foundation a field worker visits and evaluates the proposed community project that is supported by Grandmothers to Grandmothers. “We count on the foundation to support grandmothers and families”, continued Rintoul, “not only for comfort, but for creating a community in the midst of great losses and needs”. Some African women become home based careworkers, “the backbone of health care in Africa” travelling from village to village to care for the ill and the dying. Communities drawn together by death and disease emerge, says Grandmothers Embrace member Margaret Smallwood, “not as victims, but as survivors. They talk, they sing, they comfort each other”.

In New Tecumseth, Jean Gradwell read of the Stephen Lewis’ work and placed a notice in the local paper for people interested in his Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign and through a core group of approximately thirty women, Grandmothers Embrace was born. The Grandmother to Grandmother campaign which inspired Gradwell was spreading nationally, expanding to the United States, and now numbers 250 Canadian groups that have raised 16.5 million dollars, $96,000 from Grandmothers Embrace. They include not only grandmothers; as the Barrie chapter describes itself, “Grandmothers and Others”. Grandmothers Embrace receives support from individual and community donation: they host a Valentines Day Tea and Bake Sale, offer a May luncheon, arrange concerts, take part in a June “Stride to Turn the Tide” walkathon, set up craft tables at local events, roll coins (over $700 in pennies alone), and inspire individual effort: Samantha Young, now a university student, has created and sold wooden bead bracelets since she was 11 years of age, proceeds slated for Grandmothers Embrace.

Women gather, sharing a strong purpose: new to Alliston, Judy Temple related “I was looking for something to do and saw a photo from the grandmother to grandmother campaign. I realized there’s something I can relate to”.  For Mary Abernethy, it all fell into place. “We all just happened.  There is a roomful of skills, an incredible group of women.  I’ve grown from this experience.”

Groups have grown as well: there are regional workshops, cross country gatherings. At Toronto’s “Granny Gathering” conference, with Canadian donations and contributions of Aeroplan miles, 100 African women met with their Canadian supporters. The African caregivers who often have no right to inheritance in African culture, who can be evicted from the family home when the man dies even when left with his children, found a home in the hearts and efforts of the Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign. With no means of support and no voice, their future was dark, and the light of hope comes from organizations such as Grandmothers Embrace.

The conference emphasized one of the purposes of Grandmothers Embrace Rintoul explained. “We listened, we heard what we can do. They asked Canadian grandmothers to be their voices”.  At meetings which are held at Kingsmere Retirement Homes the fourth Wednesday of each month, Grandmothers Embrace offers videos, speakers and discussion. “We educate ourselves,” explained Margaret Smallwood, and from this education, they promote the cause for grandmothers, for family, for the future of a nation. “We will not rest till you rest” is the message Canadian grandmothers give to their counterparts in Africa through Grandmothers Embrace.

For further information on how to be involved in Grandmothers Embrace, call Patty: 705 434-9222, Sharron: 705 435-0809, or Lyn: 705 435-7897.

By Anne Ritchie

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