American Jewish World Service regularly gives grants to grassroots organizations in Liberia.
But when the Ebola crisis hit Liberia and other West African countries this year, those organizations struggled to continue their regular work, such as fighting for land rights and empowering women and girls. Interruptions of business, school and travel put a major dent in their efforts.
Still, as connected community members, the leaders of those organizations were perfectly placed and ready to help educate people about Ebola and stem the spread of the epidemic.
“The grassroots organizations said, ‘We are terrified, we can’t do our [regular] work, so we would love to use resources you’ve given us to do community health outreach,’ ” said Ruth Messinger, president of AJWS.
Messinger was in the Bay Area recently to meet with local AJWS staff and talk about what AJWS is doing to fight poverty and improve human rights in 19 countries.
At the Osher Marin JCC, she hosted a screening of “Girl Rising,” a film about challenges faced by girls in the developing world. In San Francisco, she attended the commencement ceremony for a group of Bay Area residents who had just completed a one-year fellowship that included one week of study in Uganda.
And on Dec. 8, she held a public discussion about the work AJWS has done in regard to Ebola.
Speaking at the AJWS office in San Francisco, Messinger noted that AJWS launched a fundraising campaign in August for community health education in Liberia. Donors responded, she added, as AJWS quickly raised $180,000, surpassing its original $50,000 goal, and has now raised $1 million and disbursed $800,000.
AJWS launches campaigns only when it knows it can bring valuable resources to a problem, Messinger said. That’s why the New York–based agency’s Ebola efforts are focused on Liberia, where the organization had previous relationships with grantee organizations, and not in other West African countries.
It can be challenging to get people in West Africa to take Ebola-prevention measures Messinger said, because such action requires changing deep-rooted cultural practices. When someone dies in Liberia, for example, it is customary to have an open-casket visitation where mourners touch the body. But the Ebola virus is highly contagious from corpses in the days immediately following death. That’s why community-based education is so important, Messinger said.
“Imagine in America someone in your family gets sick [and dies]. Your community engages in the ritual of washing the body. And all of a sudden people in protective suits and masks arrive as agents of the government and tell you that you cannot do this,” Messinger said. “People [in West Africa] need their friends and neighbors to be telling them about the virus, to be telling them that it’s real, to be telling them methods of prevention, methods of care.”
A blog on the AJWS website has details on what some of the agency’s grantees are doing in terms of Ebola education.
Grassroots Agency for Social Services, for example, organized an education workshop and has given its trainees megaphones, hand sanitizers and chlorination materials to bring back to their communities. And the Mano River Women Peace Network Liberia is using its community radio program to raise public awareness about the disease.
Infrastructure is crucial to getting ahead of Ebola in West Africa, Messinger said, and it’s not just a matter of building health centers, but also having the medical staff to fill them and the transportation to get patients there.
And as for the media hype about Ebola taking off within our borders, Messinger said that if Americans are concerned about threats to their personal health, they should turn their attention to other culprits.
“My advice to you is get a flu shot,” she said.
AJWS Emergency Response Fund information can be found at www.ajws.org/where_we_work/emergency_relief/ebola.