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Click on photos to enlarge and see captions. The first picture is a link to a video.
Children from Woodside Elementary School on Feb. 17 helped load a 40-foot-long ocean container, parked at the school, with medical supplies, clothing, toys and school supplies for children suffering from HIV AIDS in Zimbabwe.
Diane Eskenazi of Woodside and her Woodside-based nonprofit Peace Builders Inc. organized the effort.
Goods valued in excess of $500,000 included 100,000 pieces of new children’s clothes and shoes, donated by Gymboree, which operates children’s apparel stores; medical supplies from Medshare and the Oakland Children’s Hospital; and 3,600 backpacks filled with school supplies from Office Depot via Samaritan’s Purse, an international relief organization, Ms. Eskenazi said.
The shipment, which is going to the Harare Children’s Hospital in Zimbabwe, also had 200 colorful friendship heart letters, created by Woodside schoolchildren, with messages of “love and caring” for the sick children in Zimbabwe, Ms. Eskenazi said.
AIDS affects more than 40 percent of the population of Zimbabwe, she said.
Peace Builders, Ms. Eskenazi’s organization, has shipped more than $65 million in medical and other aid to orphans and for disaster relief around the world, she said.
Go to buildpeace.com for more information.
Thanks Diane for organizing, thanks Gymboree, Matt and others for the donations, and thanks to all the students and parents who donated their time to help make this a success. Many hands make the work light.
Bravo to Ms. Eskenazi for the work she is doing in Zimbabwe which was one of the most devastated and where thousands of women were raped and killed and where AIDS is killing more than the printed figures of children and their mothers every day.
We were visiting friends who lost their spectacular ranch and where they helped the locals of Harare, and because his wife was killed and their three children in imminent danger, he took his practice to Pretoria when conditions got unimaginable.That was eight years ago, and he has returned to Harare often with aid of the Dutch govt. and he wrote of the endless hostilities. I praise your work.