Global Issues Conference at ACS Abu Dhabi, 2012 and the Famine Song

Today I attended opening ceremony of the GLobal Issues Conference at
American Community School. http://acs.sch.ae/globalissues/index.html.

The conference is based on the idea of educating the youth about our global issues, and letting them take roles in workshops over the weekend to put ideas to work, and then to actually take the ideas back home and continue the work in their own school, community, city and even country.

Anne Russell is the community Service Coordinator at ACS and since the first moment I met her years ago I thought how lucky my kids are to have her as a teacher and I soon realized how lucky I am to have her as a teacher. For me a real teacher or mentor is one that makes you believe you CAN. Anne leads the group of student coordinators with care and attention and truly credits them with every breath they put into the Conference.

The conference this year has attracted 19 schools including ACS and New York University Abu Dhabi whose students play a key role in running the small workshops and also Global Village Workshops. There are 250 registered participants and plenty more like me who just come along for the wonderful ride. We have 7 visiting presenters from around the world. Among the speakers are:

Elvis Morris Donko is the Founder and Executive Director of the Alliance for Youth Development http://aydghana.org/ in Asebu, Ghana, and is involved in the Global Opportunity Fund to bring the future into focus for girls and women in Africa. This program fights to protect and serve Ghana’s most defenseless children who, primarily, have become orphans through devastating diseases such as HIV/AIDS. Elvis on right, then Natasha student coordinator and Percy helping the youth group.

Another one of the speakers; Rebecca Kantar is the founding member and CEO of the Minga Group, http://mingagroup.org/, the only nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting the global child-sex trade through harnessing the power of teenagers across the world. She works to spread awareness of her cause by delivering TED Talks presentations and by enabling the youths of Harvard College to promote the fight against child exploitation.

Pippa Biddle is an international youth speaker and activist. She is part of an organization founded by Jane Goodall http://www.rootsandshoots.org/. Pippa is currently a college freshman, she has dedicated her life to spreading awareness about HIV/AIDS and the children that the HIV-virus affects every day. Pippa tells of the story when she told her friends she was going to work at a summer camp with kids with HIV and her friends said she would get AIDS and die. Pippa is a great role model to show kids you can not get HIV from sharing a drink.

Perhaps she should talk to the board of The Milton Hershey School in Pennsylvania which takes students in need and gives them free education — but it rejected one 13-year-old boy in need because he has HIV. Now, the boy and his parents are suing. The Americans With Disabilities Act protects those with HIV from discrimination, but Milton Hershey says that because its students live at the school year-round, this boy, whose name is being withheld because of his age, poses a direct physical threat to other students.

Other lead speaker is Scott Hammell http://www.scotthammell.com/ lives and breathes his life’s philosophy of finding your passion and making it happen. In high school, he knew wanted to incorporate speaking into his existing repertoire of magic, juggling and escape artistry but at the time, he didn’t have a strong message. After a life changing trip with Me To We to Kenya, Scott decided to combine his passions and compassion and move into stunts with a socially responsible message.

While Watching Scott interact with the students in the Cafeteria:

If love were reversible
If courage were spreadable
If cancer were curable
and if I would believe my own purpose in life

Like the young man who inspires souls by hanging upside down
from a hot air balloon in a straight jacket and 50 feet of chains and 4 locks
If inspiration were carried over from breath to breath
I can quite honestly say that this global village today
will indeed touch the global universe tomorrow
Magic in front of one’s eyes

Magic does not have to be finding money in a lemon
Magic is turning the lemon you were handed into lemonade
Magic arrives with every bat of an eye
that can indeed spread love and light
The magical flight of the wish inside to become reality
One child in womb spreading wings and spreading words of peace
Another child in womb not yet aware of his own wings at all
Flight of a soul in a straight jacket can only Entertain and Inspire

As Anne Russell says, it is global and it is happening here!
As one of the activities that the kids were exposed to, we went on a “bus raid”.
The idea is to show up at workers sites as they are getting onto the bus going home
to the worker’s camps to provide them with a meal, a smile
and a small but essential human interaction.

Along with the bus raid, students also sorted clothes to be given to the labor camps.
Awareness is a wonderful feeling, especially when emotions are at work.
So back to the opening ceremony. My daughter is part of the school advanced choir and she was going to be singing as the conference was about to start. Before the speakers and all the credits to every single student and member of the community involved. Proud Martha Miller Music teacher lead her advanced Choir in singing a song called “Famine Song”, the music was just simply the voice of the youth. The song is Written by a quartet of women named VIDA and inspired by the stories of Sudanese basket weavers who expressed the pain and hope experienced by those in the famine of the 1980s. There is a beautiful tone of hope throughout the song that to me sounded more like a prayer. Praying for rain on the sands of Africa.

As I was listening to the beautiful voices I wrote:

The choir starts to sing weaving note after note of melody
into what may become one day a basket to hold rains of blessings from the sky
With every breath the prayer for rain is rippled through the air
Will it be heard
Weave my mother
Weave my child
Weave a basket of light carrying hope and no drought

I wonder if billions of billions of people sing this song together
that it would rain in drought and famine would be a word abolished from our tongues
But then we must remember what we pray for
for too much rain will cause catastrophe and more death than drought

The prayer we pray must be balanced with
thoughtfulness
consciousness
and the hearts to understand the meaning of rain
Drop by Drop
Magical rain weave happiness into our lives

With the last words i felt a rain drop on my eyelash and it has stayed there all day long.

Here is a link incase you want to hear the song. Famine Song by Vida  . It comes closest to the wonderful angelic voices I have in my ears and in my heart all day long. Thank you Martha Miller for the wonderful training of our young voices. May their voices carry on and on until there is no famine and no HIV positive in the world and Light shines through and through the basket weaved of love.

Thank you to Anne Russell and each and every coordinator and each and every speaker and each and every person who cooked to feed our guests. May these children go out and set the net of light onto the world to educate and help heal wounds and put smiles not only on lips but in hearts.

Here is a picture of the Entire Core GIN group in front of the mural done by students during the weekend

The names are Back Row: Percy Quaicoe, Justin Bedard, Youssef Ibrahim, Varun Dhaon, Nii Sowa Doku, Wren Howell, Lucy Mierzejewska, Daniel Nwodi, Scott Hammell, Tasha Krell, Middle Row: Pippa Biddle, Elvis Donkoh, Anne Russell, Front Row: Natalie Barcicki, Juman Kekhia, Frankie Leech, Rebecca Kantar, and Natasha Topolski