Denison students who raise funds for Hope Initiatives Southern Africa (HISA) are making a real difference in their lives. At the end of the 2007-08 academic year, the group donated more than $6,400 to fund the purchase of land and water/sewer pipes at the informal settlement called Kilimanjaro in the Republic of Namibia.

This year, they’re turning sales of jewelry and t-shirts, along with a musical “jam,” into the construction of a teen center in the same settlement, which will take an additional $4,000.

To kick-off their efforts during fall semester, the students sold jewelry made by Namibian women who are involved in a HISA income-generating program. The jewelry sold out in two and a half hours, raising about $100 to seed the construction fund.

A “HISA-jam,” the committee’s major fundraiser, is set for April 1 at Brews in Granville. They also plan to sell T-shirts and a new supply of jewelry, according to Sarah Bender ‘09, who chairs the group.

In addition, Denison’s HISA is preparing an application for a Davis Projects for Peace grant of $10,000. The Davis program’s objective is to encourage today’s motivated youth to tryout their own ideas for building peace, and it supports undergraduate, grassroots projects judged to be the most promising and do-able. Denison is one of 90 schools included in the Davis United World College Scholar institutions. Last year’s Denison winners were Ian Darrow ’10 and Kara Lemarie ’11. Their project took them to post-conflict Ireland. (Link here to read more about their project.)

Fifty percent of Namibia’s population depends on subsistence agriculture, according to U.S. government statistics. HIV/AIDS infects more than 21 percent of adults, and it is estimated that AIDS has left about 108,000 orphans in a country of two million people. “Informal settlements,” like the one HISA is working to support, are a collection of insubstantial dwellings that spring up and have no services such as running water, sewer, or electricity.

Patricia Sola and John Mafukidze, founders of Health Initiatives Southern Africa, run several programs in three different sites. Among its primary programs are a soup kitchen, outreach to HIV-positive women, workshops for people with tuberculosis, and programming for children, many of them HIV/AIDS orphans. Political science professor and department chair Jim Pletcher is adviser to Denison’s group, and he traveled to Namibia this past summer to see the work accomplished by Denison’s students.

“When you go there and walk around, you see how positive and responsive these kids are,” Pletcher says. “They’re struggling against immense difficulties in their lives, and yet they’re still joyful, irrepressible children. They’re fun kids — with desperate need.”

Pletcher says the teen “coffee hut” that Denison’s HISA is now working to fund is intended to help break the cycle of poverty in the settlement by providing a safe, positive space for teens. Until now, most programs have addressed the needs of younger children, leaving those 15 and older at loose ends. The coffee hut will create opportunities to increase “homework groups” for students at a bridging school operated by HISA and to help keep the teens off the streets.

“One of the best things about this program is that we don’t choose the projects. The people who are working there, in the settlement — and best able to determine need — set the priorities,” Pletcher says. “That can be a real problem with some foreign aid agencies — they send help, but maybe they’re not in a position to know if it’s the kind of help that will be most useful.”

The work Denison’s students are doing represents an ongoing relationship with HISA and with this particular settlement. It began when Lauren Kendall ’08 — who is now serving in the Peace Corps in Madagascar — was studying at the Augsburg College’s Center for Global Education in Windhoek, Namibia. While there, she had an internship with HISA in the Kilimanjaro settlement. She came back to campus determined to support the organization’s work, so she founded Denison’s chapter of HISA.

The stream of Denisonians to that country continues, as Augsburg is one of Denison’s study-abroad programs, and now DU students have the first right of refusal for internships in the settlement. “It cements the relationship,” Pletcher says. “It’s a genuine connection. The fun part is that the new teen center will be called the Denison-HISA coffee hut. It’ll even be decorated with Denison T-shirts and posters.”

This fall, junior Melissa Crowley Buck continued the connection as a HISA intern, and she recorded some of her experiences in the blog, “A Rover’s Time in Africa.” Her blog can be found at melissacb.blogspot.com/2008/07/hope-initiatives-southern-africa-hisa.html

“The final site that is part of HISA is possible because of the fundraising done at Denison University and the grace of a private donor from Italy,” she wrote. “Thanks to the money the Denison chapter of HISA raised, HISA was able to purchase land in the third unofficial settlement outside of Windhoek. They were also able to afford fresh water pipes and separate sewage pipes to the site to provide for the future building.” She concluded, “It is a very exciting time to be involved with Hope Initiatives Southern Africa and we only intend to grow more!”

© 2009, Denison University