2008.01.10: January 10, 2008: Headlines: COS - Ethiopia: Service: Return to our Country of Service - Ethiopia: News Leader: RPCV Brenda Commandeur on mission to aid school in Ethiopia
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2008.01.10: January 10, 2008: Headlines: COS - Ethiopia: Service: Return to our Country of Service - Ethiopia: News Leader: RPCV Brenda Commandeur on mission to aid school in Ethiopia
RPCV Brenda Commandeur on mission to aid school in Ethiopia
While living in Bonga in the '60s, she helped "haul water from the river," followed by boiling it. The town had electricity for two hours at night. There was no television. Upon her return to the town, located near Kenya's northern border, she found that "poverty is much worse" than 40 years ago. The destitute, including orphaned children, have very few resources, she said. "All the leading economists say this is something within our reach," to eliminate "the kind of poverty that kills people," Commandeur said. "The most urgent need is classroom space." Currently, there is not adequate space for the 1,400 children who attend. In Ethiopia education is not mandatory, she said, explaining that a student might begin first grade at age 16 with no stigma. The literacy rate in Bonga is 35 percent, she said. About 57 percent of all people there attend elementary school, with about 43 percent who never attend. And in the past, many families did not send their children to school, she said. "Now everyone wants their child to go to school" because "enough people have gotten educated."
RPCV Brenda Commandeur on mission to aid school in Ethiopia
It's not charity - it's justice' ~~ Yulee teacher's mission to aid school in Ethiopia
By Glenda S. Jenkins, News-Leader
Caption: renda Commandeur, a former Peace Corps volunteer who served in Bonga from 1965-67, returned to the East African town in 2007 to initiate plans to rehabilitate the school where she taught. A Bonga teacher gives instruction, below. Photos courtesy of Brenda Commandeur
"These children in Ethiopia would give anything to have your seat," Brenda Commandeur told Yulee High School students recently.
The mud buildings where she taught math and English are in "deplorable condition," she said. The school buildings are falling down and "in terrible disrepair."
Visiting the country to give assistance "is a much better investment than buying a car," she said. "It will change your life."
Commandeur's life changed when she left the U.S. to travel to east Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer from 1965-67. "I'm kind of an adventurer," she said. "I loved it. I never was homesick."
After returning to America, she became "very conscious of how much people talked about what they were buying." That was "never a topic of conversation in Bonga," she said.
Commandeur returned to Bonga, Ethiopia, last year and is raising funds for the school there and raising consciousness here.
Raised "in the segregated South," with a strong "sense of social justice," Commandeur "always believed everyone is the same," she said. She also "believed in the mission of the Peace Corps" and wanted to see another part of the world, Commandeur said.
A Jacksonville native, she retired from Stanton College Preparatory School. She lives in Fernandina Beach where her church, friends, family and the community have contributed to the project to refurbish the school in Bonga.
"It's not charity. It's justice," she told the students as a speaker for the recent "Healing Our World" information forum at YHS.
"Every human being has a right to a decent life. That's justice," she said.
"To be born in a society that educates" its citizens is "our good fortune. Other countries don't. That's just not fair."
While living in Bonga in the '60s, she helped "haul water from the river," followed by boiling it. The town had electricity for two hours at night. There was no television.
Upon her return to the town, located near Kenya's northern border, she found that "poverty is much worse" than 40 years ago. The destitute, including orphaned children, have very few resources, she said.
"All the leading economists say this is something within our reach," to eliminate "the kind of poverty that kills people," Commandeur said.
"The most urgent need is classroom space." Currently, there is not adequate space for the 1,400 children who attend.
In Ethiopia education is not mandatory, she said, explaining that a student might begin first grade at age 16 with no stigma.
The literacy rate in Bonga is 35 percent, she said. About 57 percent of all people there attend elementary school, with about 43 percent who never attend.
And in the past, many families did not send their children to school, she said. "Now everyone wants their child to go to school" because "enough people have gotten educated."
Also, "They want their girls in school." Primarily boys attended school in the past. Today there are "big signs that say, 'Send your girls to school,'" she said.
In a place where "everything spreads by word of mouth," the people have realized "if they educate themselves, they can bring themselves out of poverty," Commandeur said.
The students in Bonga are "very bright and very motivated."
The people there "will do without a lot of things" to have an education, Commandeur said.
"You can never uplift society, you can never have a democracy, unless people are educated," she said.
Donations to the project can be made through the St. Peter's Episcopal Church special Ethiopian Missions fund. For information, call 261-4293.
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Headlines: January, 2008; Peace Corps Ethiopia; Directory of Ethiopia RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Ethiopia RPCVs; Service; Return to our Country of Service - Ethiopia
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