2006.12.14: December 14, 2006: Headlines: COS - Togo: Greece Post: In the small village of Akaba, Jeff Locke is helping educate the community as part of his Peace Corps work in Togo
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2006.12.14: December 14, 2006: Headlines: COS - Togo: Greece Post: In the small village of Akaba, Jeff Locke is helping educate the community as part of his Peace Corps work in Togo
In the small village of Akaba, Jeff Locke is helping educate the community as part of his Peace Corps work in Togo
Locke is working to improve the villagers' health through educational programs. "He actually reports to a local nurse and works for him in the village's infirmary," Locke said. For World AIDS day, he helped with a presentation in the village. Locke is part of the Peace Corps Partnership Program, through which volunteers head up a project. His is to build latrines to reduce cut illness and boost sanitation. The program requires locals to kick in some materials and labor, and the Peace Corps contributes some money. "The volunteer is expected to raise some funds if he can through whatever contacts he has," Locke said.
In the small village of Akaba, Jeff Locke is helping educate the community as part of his Peace Corps work in Togo
A long way from home
By COLLEEN M. FARRELL
Messenger Post Staff
Posted: Dec 14, 07:30 AM EST
A Greece Athena grad gets help from his former school to support his Peace Corps work.
Caption: Greece Athena graduate Jeff Locke, right, with a technician shows off a latrine he is helping to build in Africa as part of his Peace Corps work. Athena is having a concert Dec. 21 to raise money for Locke's work.
GREECE – Though Jeff Locke is far from home, he has a piece of Greece with him in Togo, thousands of miles away.
The Greece native has called the West African country home for more than a year. In the small village of Akaba, he's helping educate the community as part of his Peace Corps work.
His efforts haven't gone unnoticed at Greece Athena, from where he graduated in 2001. The school is using its holiday concert at 7 p.m. Dec. 21 to raise money for Locke's latest project in Togo, to build latrines. The show is free, but the organizers will take up a donation during the performance.
It will be held at the Athena Performing Arts Center, 800 Long Pond Road.
Jeff's parents, Jim and Noreen Locke, are "touched that Athena is trying to give back to our son and this village and make their lives better," Jim Locke said.
Jeff Locke, 23, is expected to arrive in New York City this week and make the concert, where he'll talk about his trip, and perhaps even sing. Jeff Locke's sister, Amy, an Athena senior, will perform, too. Locke was a student of Athena band director Gary Samulski.
"We're trying to celebrate what Jeff is doing," Samulski said. "We're trying to help in whatever way because, let's face it, a dollar here is different than a dollar in Africa and we want to try to support him in whatever way we can."
Jeff Locke graduated with a political science degree in May 2005 from the State University of New York at Albany. There, his dad said, he watched a presentation about the Peace Corps and was impressed. He joined after graduation and was sent to Togo. He's taught current events at the local middle school and managed the soccer team.
"Most of the country is without electricity or running water in a lot of cases," Jim Locke said. "Now I understand there's a rolling blackout."
He sends packages to his son every week or so. Sometimes, they don't get there.
"People don't have a lot of possessions and things there but the villagers are very honest people," he said. "They like Jeff and they know that he's helping. Sometimes it's difficult to move things along and (they're) not where we are in this country, where there's more money available and more resources available."
His son is working to improve the villagers' health through educational programs.
"He actually reports to a local nurse and works for him in the village's infirmary," Locke said. For World AIDS day, he helped with a presentation in the village.
Locke is part of the Peace Corps Partnership Program, through which volunteers head up a project. His is to build latrines to reduce cut illness and boost sanitation. The program requires locals to kick in some materials and labor, and the Peace Corps contributes some money.
"The volunteer is expected to raise some funds if he can through whatever contacts he has," Locke said.
That's where Greece Athena comes in with the concert. The community has helped in other ways, too. Besides educating villagers about health care, Jeff Locke also gotten some sporting supplies for the kids on his soccer team in Togo.
That started in the Daniel King Style hair salon on Ling Road. King's brother, Doug, is Jeff and Noreen's stylist. One day, he was cutting Noreen Locke's hair and asked about Jeff's Peace Corps work. She told him that her son was looking for athletic equipment for the kids.
King told customer Don Brown, a retired Greece Central coach. He also was Jeff's middle school basketball coach.
"So Brownie said, 'I'll take care of ya,'" King recalled. It became, he said, a mission.
Brown, who still coaches some Greece teams, went to a couple of high schools and asked for soccer balls and uniforms. Everyone he asked gave something, he said.
Before, the kids in Togo only had some wood for a crude net, but Brown got real ones for them. Another of King's customers paid the shipping costs. Two packages have been sent, with another probably going out in January.
Jeff Locke's efforts in Togo don't surprise Brown, who remembers a kid who played point guard with focus and drive.
"He made flip cards so that as you flipped the pages over, it would show the patterns of the offense," Brown said. "It's the only time I've ever seen that done with a kid who's in seventh or eighth grade."
Besides health care, Jeff Locke is also trying to teach the children about gender equality. When he gave out soccer uniforms to the girls, the boys started showing up at the door for them, Jim Locke said. Some villagers believe men are superior to women.
While the Lockes were hesitant about their son going to a country they knew little about, they're proud of him, Jim Locke said. He finishes in the Peace Corps until fall 2007, after which he hopes to work in public health policy.
"You can read all the books you'd like on what it is to live in a rural, poor village, but before you see the different myriad of problems that most of the rest of the 6 billion people in the world face, it's hard to actually visualize it," Jeff Locke said in an e-mail. "That said, the Togolese who I have befriended and who have welcomed me with open arms into their village have been among the most generous people ... that I've ever met."
He has written about his journey in his blog at http://jrltogo.tripod.com.
"From basketball coaches to hair stylists, former school principals and my fourth grade
teacher, I'm truly humbled to watch persons who have already given me so much in the way of life lessons, to now be coming together to give to a cause that I'm working on," he said.
Links to Related Topics (Tags):
Headlines: December, 2006; Peace Corps Togo; Directory of Togo RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Togo RPCVs
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Story Source: Greece Post
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