Some organizations really understand the meaning of patience, perseverance and creativity.
The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) is one of them. UMCOR, a charity with a 70-year history of relief and recovery work around the world, went into Haiti following the earthquake of January 12, 2010. That quake left 300,000 dead, 300,000 injured and 1.3 million homeless.
According to the August 22 Washington Post, most of those Haitians rendered homeless by the earthquake still live in tents or under leaky tarps. Much earthquake rubble remains in place, as depicted in the Sacramento Bee’s photo blog of August 17.
Today I received a power point photo presentation in an email from one of my relatives. Please use the link below to view the photos taken during the Pakistan relief effort. Then please, please, please, donate to the Pakistan flood-relief agency/organization of your choice.
Heroes Arise, guys! It’s time to make a difference by helping those in need.
Eeeek, a Rat! Oh, it's only a HeroRAT. He must have seen the title of my novel, "Heroes Arise."
I’ve been receiving lots of positive feedback on my recent opinion piece published by AOL News on August 17, 2010. I’m happy to report, “Support your Local Hero Rat” is a success.
So why did I choose to write about APOPO HeroRATs? How did I even learn HeroRATs existed?
Things started with a discussion between some members of my church. We had heard about the horrendous number of buried, unexploded landmines in Angola, and the resulting unavailability of otherwise good land to cultivate crops. Angola had a problem with self-sufficiency. Farmland was vital to their economy. All methods to detect and deactivate landmines were time-intensive, money-intensive, or both. Might there be better methods awaiting discovery? Might people discover such methods if they were aware of the magnitude of the landmine problem–a problem often neglected by the U.S. media?
I did some online research about demining and contacted some experts in the field. I found out about HeroRATS on a google search. At first, I wondered if HeroRATs were for real. After all, landmine experts I had communicated with via email had mentioned nothing about the critters. So I went to the APOPO website and read their 2009 annual report. As weeks progressed, HeroRATs were mentioned a number of times in various blog entries, YouTube videos and online news reports.
I decided HeroRATs were for real and started writing an article. Gina Misiroglu at Red Room suggested pitching my essay to AOL.
The HeroRAT website now links to “Support your Local Hero Rat.” What an honor! I hope a lot of people read the piece and start thinking about more low-tech solutions to a big problem.
And I’m really delighted over the plans to bring HeroRATS to Angola.
Giant pouched African rats have a nose for success.
APOPO, a registered charity in Belgium and based in Tanzania, has trained these long-whiskered critters to sniff out unexploded land mines and save human lives. Working for rewards of banana slices and peanuts, “Hero Rats” schooled in Tanzania have become amazingly proficient at smelling TNT on the job in Mozambique.
The problem is, APOPO’s rats need the support of more humans. Even heroes need heroes.
And while you are reading, keep the following in mind. Seventy countries have buried, unexploded land mines–deadly remnants of war. Six million land mines lie buried in Angola, alone. In 2008, land mines claimed 5,200 casualties worldwide. To add to the toll, the presence or suspected presence of land mines in agricultural fields has removed significant acreage of fertile soil from use in affected countries, reducing the ability of vulnerable communities to provide for themselves.
By the way,Gina Misirogluof Red Room put me in touch with the AOL editorial staff, which is one of the wonderful ways she is bringing traffic to Red Room and getting attention for Red Room’s authors. Thank you, Gina!
In case you were wondering, this blog entry isn’t about my heroic, eight-foot-tall lizard person on the planet Thard. No, today “Gundack the kren” makes room for some real-life heroes with four legs: HeroRATs. HeroRATs are African giant pouched rats trained to sniff out buried, unexploded landmines and cases of tuberculosis (TB).
Also, the communications coordinator at Apopo HeroRATs provided me with some updated information over the weekend. The HeroRATs cumulative total for TB detection (cases missed by human screeners at some local hospitals in Tanzania) is now 964 patients. This means that HeroRATs have increased TB detection rates at those hospitals by 44%, effectively preventing 14,460 additional people from catching the deadly disease.
Warning to Earthlink “Free Email Service” Users: Your email service can be cut off at any time and Earthlink does not have to have a good reason for doing so.
Adapting Sideways is the brainchild of Charlotte Cook, publisher and story editor, and Jon James Miller, award-winning screenwriter and novelist. They have adapted screenplays to novels and brought novelists to the level of polish needed to find agents and publishers. Adapting Sideways focuses on bringing to committed writers comprehensive strategies that take writers with stories to publishable novels.
Are you a fan of the ocean? Does your significant other share your love of the sea? If so, please listen to my free ten-minute podcast, “My Ocean Companion.” Thank you, Laurel Anne Hill (Author of “Heroes Arise”)
Boiling fish heads to prepare soup stock has to be one of my least favorite culinary tasks. A flotilla of eyeballs staring back at me when I lift the cover off my cook pot is gross. This story tells how I almost became the chef of “hit-and-run extra eyeball chowder.”
