16089: Re: Mapollon 16077: (Craig) What's to celebrate? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Marlène Apollon <mrapollon@hotmail.com>


Having just spent 12 days in Haiti as a volunteer with medical team, I want to
celebrate the generosity of that young man (and thousands like him) whose
livilyhood was selling necklaces, yet gave me one of them as a gift simply
because, when he told me that he had never been to school, I showed him how to
write his name.  I want to celebrate the fighting spirit of the Haitian people
that I met and of others like them who work so hard to make a living and their
survival against so many odds.

There are many ways to MARK 2004--if the term celebrate offends you.  You can
help teach 2004 people to read and write, arrange to pay the salaries of 2004
teachers, nurses or other needed professionals, give 2004 books and other
school supplies to schools that need them, plant 2004 fruit trees in areas
where they are badly needed, give 2004 bags of concrete to build cisterns where
people don't have running water, etc., etc.  If you believe that there is
nothing to celebrate, get together with some friends, Haitians and non
Haitians, and start doing something concrete and positive x 2004 right now for
the Haitian people.  Then we will all have at least all those achievements to
celebrate in 2004.