A CHARITY BRIDGE SOCIAL

Thursday, February 23rd is the big day at Fairview Mountain Golf Course when bridge players gather for some fun, delicious lunch and desserts and door prizes too!  Bridge players can register with a partner or individually.   Pre-registration is necessary by Feb. 20th.   Just call Lynn Popoff (778-476-0609) or Nan Hendrie (250-498-3037)  For only $15 you can gather at 9:45 am for coffee, bridge until noon, lunch and then bridge again until 2:45pm.

The event is sponsored by the Oliver Grandmothers for Africa group and so getting out with friends to enjoy some socializing and some Bridge also serves a very worthwhile cause.   Money raised goes  to the Stephen Lewis Foundation to support Grandmothers in Africa who are holding their extended families together, raising orphaned grandkids and fighting back against the powerful AIDS pandemic threatening their communities.

The Stephen Lewis Foundation is a highly respected grassroots organization that believes the power of people is the greatest resource we have.   It is founded on the principle that positive changes don’t come because we give things to people but because we work together as a community to create them.   Linking grandmothers to grandmothers has proved to be an enormous force for good.

Most development groups have fairly recently come to understand the power of women working together.   In Liberia a simple woman, Leymah Gbowee, now the recipient of a Nobel prize, rose from the horrors of civil war and began to organize the women of her country to demand peace.   Everyone had been alone with her own pain.   Together they could speak truth to power.   Women of different tribes and different religions had one thing in common.  The fighters were their children, their husbands, and it had to stop.  Together they were a massive force for disarmament and for rebuilding because they held the history and knowledge of their communities and were able to understand and bring perpetrators and victims together.   As one village woman said,  “We are hungry and desperate but we are not stupid.   Our voices must be heard.”

The Stephen Lewis Foundation hears the voices of grandmothers in Africa and links those voices with the voices of women in Canada.   Together we are strong and determined to turn back the tide of AIDS.

Article submitted by Marion Boyd