Ali Hewson: Edun regained

They live in a mass slum; she lives in luxury. But Ali Hewson – perhaps better known as Mrs Bono – is determined to bring a little bit of paradise to these African lives;and in so doing, she is breathing life back into her ethical-fashion company

By Craig McLean


In 2005, Hewson visited Lesotho, to check out the factories which Edun, her and Bono's ethical fashion company, had established in the southern African kingdom

As schools go in Africa's second-biggest slum, the children of Bidii Nursery are lucky. They're in class from 8am to 3pm and are fed basic meals. There are 90 of them, aged one to seven; 35 are orphans. The school roll, written in a jotter, includes kids who don't seem to even have a second name: Robert, Dennis, Brian.


The children have to share five teachers and one room of approximately 20ft by 20ft. The walls are bright with posters featuring lists of English words. The floor is hard-packed earth. The toilet is a flyblown hut out back. Neighbouring jerry-built developments are encroaching on the school's modest footage. And some of those children who have parents are leaving Bidii. Mum and dad can't afford the monthly school fees of 200 shillings – the equivalent of £2.

This is Kibera, a jam-packed mass of corrugated iron roofs, mud walls, twisty alleyways, 1.5 million people and no running water. It is a city within a city – Kibera billows out from the edge of Nairobi, capital of Kenya. Some westerners might know it from The Constant Gardener, the 2005 film about the corrupt practices of first-world pharmaceutical companies.

That's how I "knew" Kibera. But obviously I didn't really know it. The smell, the smoke, the crunch and squelch underfoot of rubbish and gnawed cornhusks, the swampily faecal pools, scrubby patches of Brussels sprouts, people crammed everywhere. The shop-shacks selling buckets of coal, handfuls of potatoes, grooming, surgery: Ongare Success Shop; Humble Beginnings Salon and Beauty Shop; Bongo Vibes Pub; Family Planning & Circumcision. It is a lot to take in.

Ali Hewson had no direct experience of the poverty in Kenya either. In 1985, shortly after U2's career-making performance at Live Aid, she and her husband Bono went to Ethiopia. In 2005, she visited Lesotho, to check out the factories which Edun, her and Bono's ethical fashion company, had established in the southern African kingdom. I was with her on that trip. Lesotho, a small mountain state decimated by Aids and unemployment, was overwhelming too.

But Kenya is new to her. She is here to visit Made, a fair-trade jewellery and accessories company established in London in 2005 by Bristol-born Gerson Barnett and his Italian wife, the designer Cristina Cisilino. Made wanted to use African skills and African raw materials – many of them reclaimed and repurposed (glass from beer bottles, rubber from flip-flops) – to create hand-made products for western boutiques and chainstores. And to create jobs for African people.

In 2007, Cisilino and Barnett took their principles and, along with their son, moved to Nairobi. Now they employ 65 local people to make necklaces, earrings, bracelets and bags that are sold in Whistles, Topshop and John Lewis. They play to the strengths of their Kenyan craftspeople: the Luo tribe are adept at metalwork, the Masai know how to work beads. And they work with visiting collaborators, such as the Dutch jewellery designer Natalie Dissel and Livia Firth, the wife of Colin Firth and co-owner of Eco boutique in London, using locally sourced and recycled raw materials.

Hewson wants to see how Made does things: how it runs as a business, how it turns the profits back to the local people; in 2008, Cisilino and Barnett founded a non-profit organisation, Made Africa, to promote and support educational and training projects. It sponsors Bidii school.

"They're very forward-thinking," Hewson says approvingly after a morning touring Made's airy, light-filled workshops a 10-minute drive from Karen, the Nairobi suburb named after Karen Out Of Africa Blixen, on whose former farmland the western outskirts of the Kenyan capital are situated. "They have developed new ways of designing and putting jewellery together. We can really work with that."

Hewson is impressed with "how they make everything here on the ground, from the bone beads to casting their own little parts for necklaces and bags. That's very exciting – we can send our creative director here and she can work with them."

Hewson is also in Africa to kick-start the relaunch, five years after its inception, of Edun. Despite the deep pockets which she, Bono and his brother Norman Hewson used to launch the company; despite the input of the well-regarded New York designer Rogan Gregory; despite the clout of the world's biggest rock star, it wasn't enough to make Edun the trailblazing profitable, ethical, desirable fashion brand Hewson wanted it to be. In 2007, the three shareholders had to pour money into the company, and in 2008, Edun parted company with Gregory. The company slipped off the fashion radar.

Then, last year, the luxury-goods conglomerate Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) bought a 49 per cent stake in Edun. A new creative director was hired: the Paris-based, Northern Irish designer Sharon Wauchob. And a new chief executive was appointed: Janice Sullivan, a no-nonsense fashion pro with stints at Calvin Klein and Donna Karan on her CV, came in to oversee Edun's New York headquarters.

Now it's all systems go again. Earlier this year, Edun, via Made, gave the pupils at Bidii box of crayons and asked them to draw pictures that could feature on a range of T-shirts. In the schoolroom, Hewson meets Fidel, four, who drew flowers and trees, and Kelvin, six, who drew footballers. They are two of the designs Edun has used on the T-shirts, part of a capsule collection showcasing the new, improved, better-funded, better-marketed Edun. They'll be in select shops – including Liberty in London and Brown Thomas in Dublin – next month, in time for the start of the World Cup in South Africa.

"If you were to ask any fashionista, she'd say, 'World Cup what?'" admits Sullivan, but, insists Hewson, "It's an opportunity." Edun's first full collection under the new regime, for spring/summer 2011, won't be unveiled until New York fashion week in September. But, given that news of the LVMH deal was announced last May, "we wanted not to go dark" in the interim. Hence the capsule collection, a kind of taster.

"It's an incredible thing that Africa is being trusted with the World Cup," says Hewson. "We wanted to be part of that celebration, and to celebrate the relationship with LVMH."

Which is nice. But not as nice as the $32,000 that the wholesale sales of the T-shirts – 100 per cent of the profits – have sent back to Bidii. "Maybe," says Hewson, "that will build their toilet and secure their garden so they have somewhere to play."


Edun has come a long way since its beginnings. In early 2005, I met Hewson, now 49, and Bono, now 50, who she started dating at school in Dublin 35 years ago. We spent an afternoon on the Luggala estate, 5,000 acres of County Wicklow wilderness owned by a member of the Guinness family. It was a short drive from the couple's home outside Dublin. They were launching Edun with a photoshoot for Vogue. Edun was Hewson's initiative, but Bono (no surprise) was doing the talking. '

"Having been involved in political processes," he told me, "you start to realise that revolution isn't going to happen with a big gang of people storming the Bastille any more. Change comes in tiny steps before it makes a big jump. And those tiny steps are people deciding where they spend their money. Shopping is becoming a political act. People are seeing that with their dollar or their pound, they can change a lot. They can close down giant petroleum companies by not putting their petrol in their tank. They can close down food companies – McDonald's is on its knees because people basically felt maybe they don't believe in what it stands for any more."

The fast-food giant wasn't really on its knees, but you could see what he was getting at. As well as Edun-branded items aimed at the purses of fashion-forward women in New York, Paris and London, there would be Edun Live, a diffusion line making African-sourced T-shirts. These bulk items would target the concert-merchandise business; U2 (of course) and Coldplay were lined up as early customers.

"We're just trying to do the right thing, and effect some change, without throwing a few bricks through a few windows," added Hewson. For all her previous campaigning experience – against the radioactivity that drifted across the Irish Sea from Sellafield, in support of the Belarus children poisoned by Chernobyl – and certainly compared with her rabble-rousing hubbie, the mother-of-four was a quiet, and quietly stylish, presence. She said that she didn't want her four children wearing clothes "that they don't know where they came from. We're offering a choice: these clothes are made with respect for the people who made them."

So Edun would be sourcing organic cotton in Peru, making denim in Tunisia, and machining clothes in Lesotho. Hence my trip with Hewson to the latter country a couple of months later. The Clothing Zone factory in the small border town of Butha-Buthe was housed in a former brewery. It employed dozens of local women on a fair wage in a well-ventilated environment. It was no sweatshop. At the town's Qalo high school, $10 from every Edun Live T-shirt sold would help build a water well. Butha-Buthe and Clothing Zone were a model for how Edun, on a macro level, might start changing the way the fashion industry operates.

Except it didn't work out that way. Sometime after a subsequent visit Hewson and Bono made to Butha-Buthe in May 2006, Clothing Zone closed. Why?

"There was some..." begins Hewson as we sit down to talk in her quiet Nairobi hotel at the end of a hectic day. She sips herbal tea throughout our interview and juggles phone calls from one (or more) of her children. "We were the only people in there giving orders in the end. And it was slowly being wound down." She believes that the South African owner, for motives she professes not to know, "was basically not paying attention to it". There were further factory problems at another site in Lesotho, in Uganda and in Madagascar.

Hewson also concedes that the Edun "mission" overshadowed the product. What does that mean? "We had a very pure idea that we wanted to work in Africa. So we brought our designers here [to Africa] and said, 'This is what you have to work with – they can do that stitch, they can use this material, and you can't have that button because we can't get it from here to there in time...' So we really limited the designers."

Edun hadn't quite reverted to the outmoded cliché of overly worthy, ethically groovy clothes – dungarees woven from hemp, hairshirts made of guilt – but "we just didn't pay enough attention to the aesthetic. It's important that we have beautiful clothes, and the mission part is secondary to that."

The net result was that in late 2007, it was reported that Edun had $3.6m in outstanding bank loans while the three shareholders were owed $7.9m. Not an issue, insists Hewson, and not just because she and Bono can well afford it. (U2's 360° tour was the highest-grossing tour in the world last year, taking $311m from 44 concerts; they'll have more than doubled that by the tour's end this coming October – should Bono's back get better, that is.) Edun is a "very strong business, a very ambitious business", she says. "The first five years of the company is about putting money in and building the trade. So of course we had to support it. We're still here supporting it now, because we believe in it. But yeah," she says in the smiley, even way she says everything, "it hasn't made money – it hasn't made a profit yet. But it's growing. It's growing."

It's growing with the help of LVMH, the luxury-goods house responsible for, its titular brands aside, Krug Champagne, Glenmorangie whisky, TAG Heuer watches, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, Dior and several other top-flight fashion labels. Ali Hewson and Bono first met LVMH's all-powerful chief executive Bernard Arnault in mid-2007. The Paris-based fashion mogul came "with other friends of ours" to "our house" for lunch – probably the Hewsons' villa in the south of France, where the family spend time every summer. "He understood that there's a coming demand for ethically responsible clothing. So he was very interested in what we were doing, and wanted to know more. We met a couple of times after that, and it just took a while to sign the papers."

Over two years, in fact. But Hewson knew it was worth the long haul. "We knew we needed LVMH's muscle, its business know-how. Because what we were trying to do was really too pioneering. We weren't able to produce or deliver on time."

Did they really need its cash as well?

"Absolutely," Hewson fires back. Edun had to "reinforce" its staff, shake up its organisation, step up its game. Now it has an operation in China – a global manufacturing powerhouse, but one known for its questionable labour practices. So has Edun sold out its ethical principles? No, she insists. The "single biggest negotiation" between Hewson and Bono's lawyer and LVMH's legal team was over a compliance manual: a set of rules codifying certain standards that must be upheld by Edun: "The ability to come and go within the facility [ie: no locked doors], you can't take workers' passports..."

The Edun team was convinced that LVMH would follow through on the smaller company's founding principles. "And we always felt that they are honourable people – and the company is, completely. It's run in such a tight, ethical way. It's been an amazing company to be part of. Really supportive."


So Edun has come a long way. And so, since the weekend, has Hewson. She started off on a family holiday in "the Caribbean" – pressed, she concedes it was the millionaires' playground St Barts (she knew how that would sound) – then flew to New York, where the family has been living in an Upper West Side apartment since last September. There, she rendezvoused with Janice Sullivan and they flew together to London, before catching a connection to Nairobi.

Manhattan is a useful base for the family. Hewson and Bono's eldest children, daughters Jordan, 21, and Eve, 18, are studying at Columbia and NYU; U2's touring schedule made the east coast of America a good hub; and Hewson has been able to keep in close contact with the Edun base in the funky Tribeca neighbourhood, monitoring the post-LVMH overhaul. "I've been seeing how the operation was being upgraded on a daily, weekly basis. It's been amazing to see how far it has come in six months. I couldn't have done that if I was in Dublin, as I'd have to keep going backwards and forwards."

Not everyone is happy with the arrangement. Mum might be enjoying the daily walks across Central Park with her sons to their "really rigorous" Jewish school on the Upper East Side. But Elijah, 10, and John, nine, are missing their friends. They want to go home to Ireland, "fast". Unfortunately for them, the next leg of U2's tour is due to start in the US (and a planned trip back for Glastonbury is off thanks to their dad's bad back).

Bono, agit-rocker extraordinaire, is well used to the snarky comments of those turned off by his grandstanding. "He's always been sanguine about it," says Hewson. "He's always known, if you wanna get anything done you've got to stand in the firing line sometimes. He doesn't do it for the warm fuzzy feelings. He does it to actually bring some change about, and highlight issues that were being pushed under the carpet. And he does it very effectively. But," she adds, they both understand public fatigue at celebrity charity agitators. "Bono will say to you, 'I'm sick of Bono, and I am Bono.'"

Five years ago, Hewson told me she was uncomfortable with being a spokeswoman for Edun; with using her celebrity currency, such as it was. How does she feel now? "I suppose I'm more comfortable with it," she replies slowly, not sounding that comfortable. "But I still just want the clothes to stand for themselves." She wants to make a statement with fashion, but not in the way one might expect from the stereotype of a Rock Star Wife. "I've always wanted this company to be about the clothes and what it's doing. And not really about me. I much prefer to be in the background on everything."

Yet she is savvy enough to know that's impossible. From a PR point of view, she is one of Edun's greatest assets. But she'll keep putting her boots on the ground, inspecting the supply chain: after Kenya, she's off to a remote corner of Uganda to oversee an Edun fashion shoot, and to meet with representatives of a cotton farmers' collective that the label is supporting. Her and Bono's founding vision to help Africa help itself – business not charity, trade not aid, the fishing rod not the fish – drives her on. And then, as soon as possible, she'll be on a plane back to her kids in New York.

So, in five years, what has Ali Hewson learnt about fashion? "How tough it is!' she laughs. "I had no idea. It's a business you have to be passionate about. Or you just won't be able to stick it."

The stakes are high. If Edun doesn't work this time, Ali Hewson and Bono will have lost a few million from their huge fortune. But people in Kenya and Uganda will have lost a lot more. "They don't have an income. That's what's heartbreaking about factories that we've worked with closing. Hopefully, as Edun continues to grow, we can rectify some of that. Because it's people's lives. It's people's lives," Hewson repeats. "You see it in those kids today in that school. Made is doing an incredible thing supporting that school. Those are the things that do change people's lives forever."


To see and buy the Edun range, visit edunonline.com


independent

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Kids told U2 can set fashion trend
By Patricia McDonagh


Saturday May 29 2010

POP legend Bono and his wife Ali Hewson are gearing up to take the shops by storm this Christmas -- with a limited edition T-shirt depicting a child's vision of Dublin.

The U2 frontman and Ms Hewson are teaming up with Brown Thomas to launch the T-shirt, which will be exclusive to the store's adult fashion range, in November.

Brown Thomas launched a competition yesterday in a bid to find the winning picture that will eventually be placed on the garment.

They have asked 34 children, aged five and six years and in Junior and Senior Infants at St Edna's National School, in Whitefriar Street, in Dublin, to draw pictures inspired by their local community.

These resulting masterpieces will be showcased in an exhibition on Level 2 in Brown Thomas, Dublin, until Monday, June 14.

Customers will have a chance to vote for their favourite and the winning design will be styled by EDUN into a T-shirt and sold at Brown Thomas.

The fashion label, which was launched in 2005 by Ali and Bono, was founded on the premise that trade for aid is a way to create jobs and alleviate poverty. All proceeds from the T-shirt sales will go to St Enda's National School.

- Patricia McDonagh

Irish Independent

independent

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Vote For Your Favourite



EDUN, the ethical fashion company founded by Ali Hewson and her husband Bono, is a socially conscious fashion brand whose mission is to help build trade with Africa by supporting community-based projects.

EDUN’s pre fall womenswear collection is launching exclusively at Brown Thomas.

Students aged 4 & 5 of St. Enda’s National School, Dublin 8 have been invited to design their own t-shirts, taking inspiration from what they love about where they live.

All 34 designs will be displayed in Brown Thomas Dublin, Level 2 and we are asking you to come instore and vote for your favourite design.

The winner will be announced on June 14th. T design will then be taken by Edun’s creative team and stylised to create an adult T-Shirt that will be sold in Brown Thomas in November.

All proceeds from the Limited Edition T-Shirt will go directly to St Enda’s with a small percentage to the Bidii School.




brownthomas.com

Bono discharged from hospital & expected to make full recovery
25 May 2010



U2 have however been forced to cancel their Glastonbury headliner & postpone 16 US dates.

The U2 camp have confirmed that Bono has been discharged from hospital in Munich where he underwent emergency surgery last week following a back injury.

In order to fully recover, he’ll have to undergo eight weeks of recuperation, which has forced the band to postpone 16 U2360° Tour dates in America.

“Bono suffered severe compression of the sciatic nerve,” says the attendant physician Dr. Muller Wohlfahrt who also looks after the Bayern Munich football team. “On review of his MRI scan, I realised there was a serious tear in the ligament and a herniated disc, and that conservative treatment would not suffice. I recommended Bono have emergency spine surgery with Professor Tonn at Munich’s LMU University Hospital on Friday.

“We’re treating Bono as we would treat any of our athletes and while the surgery has gone very well, the coming weeks are crucial for a return to full health. In the next days, he will start a light rehabilitation programme, with increasing intensity over the next eight weeks. In our experience, this is the minimum time.”

Revealing the severity of the injury, Professor Tonn says: “Bono was referred to me by Dr. Muller Wohlfahrt late last week with a sudden onset disease. He was already in severe pain with partial paralysis in the lower leg. The ligament surrounding the disc had an eight mm tear and during surgery we discovered fragments of the disc had traveled into the spinal canal. This surgery was the only course of treatment for full recovery and to avoid further paralysis. Bono is now much better, with complete recovery of his motor deficit. The prognosis is excellent but to obtain a sustainable result, he must now enter a period of rehabilitation.”

As for those postponed dates, manager Paul McGuinness rues that: "Our biggest and I believe best tour has been interrupted and we’re all devastated. For a performer who lives to be on stage, this is more than a blow. He feels robbed of the chance to do what he does best and feels like he has badly let down the band and their audience. Which is of course nonsense. His concerns about more than a million ticket buyers whose plans have been turned upside down, we all share, but the most important thing right now is that Bono make a full recovery. We’re working as fast as we can with Live Nation to reschedule these dates.”

Bono’s injury also means that U2 will have to cancel their Friday night headliner at Glastonbury on June 25. The singer called Michael Eavis personally to break the news.

“It was obvious from our conversation that U2 are hugely disappointed,” the Glasto boss proffers. “Clearly, they were looking forward to playing the Pyramid Stage as much as we were looking forward to watching them. At this point, we have no comment to make about possible replacements for U2's Friday night slot. Instead, we would simply like to send Bono our very best wishes for a full and speedy recovery.”

hotpress

Edge's daughter invents mutating little 'green' men

By Katherine Donnelly


Thursday May 20 2010

HER dad has been at the cutting edge of rock music for over 30 years.

Now Dubliner Arran Evans is bringing her own brand of creativity to biodegradable children's toys.

The 24-year-old from Monkstown, daughter of U2 guitarist The Edge, is about to introduce the world to 'Mulch Men', toys that eventually disintegrate into garden compost.

The two-inch figurines are made from a biodegradable plastic derived from potato starch which, when children tire of them, can be safely buried in damp soil.

Arran, a final year design student of Product and Furniture Design at Kingston University in south-west London, has already made a name for herself with a designer cotton handbag, Baile Bag.

With her latest project, Arran said she wanted to design something for boys aged between eight and 12.

Her imaginative "green" idea was inspired by a concern that "a lot of toys contain a whole variety of chemicals and there's no way parents can find out what's in them."

She said she hoped that children would fall for her 25 figurines. She has also designed a "landscape" for the 'Mulch Men' to live in.

Once the novelty has worn off, children can bury their 'Mulch Men' in damp soil and, within two weeks, their appearance changes and after about six weeks they disappear.

"The spaceman turns into an alien, the soldier becomes a zombie and the mad scientist mutates into a goblin" said Arran.

Finally, rather than disappearing into a box in the attic, the 'Mulch Men' can simply be thrown on the compost heap.

Course leader Simon Maidment said the brief given to students was to identify a worldwide problem and then try to design a creative and meaningful solution to it.

Smile

"Our dependence on oil-based plastics is clearly a serious issue, but Arran's solution is one that will make a lot of people smile," he said. Arran's designs will be launched at Kingston University's degree show from June 6-11, an event that traditionally attracts top industry players.

Before going to Kingston, where she has won a competition for creating the college's corporate gift, Arran studied at Dublin Institute of Technology and the Art Centre, Los Angeles.

Her design talent is combined with a strong sense of social justice and her Baile tote bags are certified Fair Trade and Fair Labour, and support Kiva.org, the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, which empowers individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.

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- Katherine Donnelly

Irish Independent

independent

The African Century
Bono and Bob Geldof to guest edit a special Globe Africa edition


The Monday May 10th edition of The Globe and Mail will be focused on the future of Africa and its importance not just for the more than 1 billion people living on that continent, but for Canadians and the rest of the West.

Globe and Mail Update
Published on Tuesday, May. 04, 2010 2:20PM EDT


In a first for the newspaper, The Globe and Mail will be edited on May 10 by two guest editors – anti-poverty activists Bono and Bob Geldof – who will produce a special issue focused on the future of Africa and its importance not just for the more than 1 billion people living on that continent, but for Canadians and the rest of the West as well.

The Globe is partnering with Bono, Geldof, and their organization ONE to explore these issues in advance of Canada hosting two critically important summits of world leaders in June – the G8 and the G20. The crisis of extreme poverty in developing countries, particularly in Africa, will be a focus at both meetings. This will be the first time the Globe has invited guest-editors into the newsroom, and the first time Bono and Geldof have guest-edited a North American newspaper.

Bolstering the online and new media component of this project, The Globe and Mail has asked celebrated Kenyan activist and blogger Ory Okolloh to join the team as guest digital editor of globeandmail.com on May 10. Okolloh will also oversee four weeks of additional content from and about Africa which will run through early June and the G8/G20 meetings.

“As the only Canadian newspaper with an African bureau, The Globe has dedicated resources and reporters to deliver in-depth and ground-breaking news as it relates to Africa, its people and the issues that matter most,” said Globe and Mail publisher Phillip Crawley. “Bono and Sir Bob have valuable insights and knowledge on the future of Africa, and The Globe is delighted to collaborate with them to bring a new perspective to Canada.”

The Globe’s Africa correspondent Geoffrey York, who regularly reports on evolving issues, and news from the continent, is exploring several bellwether stories for the May 10 edition.

“I’m a huge fan of great journalism – I can’t wait to show up for work at The Globe. Our aim in this special edition is to crack down on a few stereotypes and showcase the opportunities surrounding the African continent, not just the problems,” said Bono.

“The world will be coming to and looking at Canada this June. The older and the emerging economies will be once again be struggling to learn the new 21st century dance of cooperation and possibly even compromise, and this time under Canada’s leadership. The Globe and Mail, one of the world’s great papers of record, has, in a mad rush of blood to the head, agreed to let two Irish pop-singers edit their august journal for one special day, one special edition," said Mr. Geldof.

"It will be dedicated to that huge, emerging resource continent of Africa and the global necessity of coming to terms with its opportunities and obstacles. I’ve gone from being an old editor of the Vancouver Georgia Straight to the new editor of The Globe and Mail and it’s only taken 36 years! Now that’s a career trajectory,” he added.

The special edition will feature content and comment contributions from African political leaders, thinkers and grassroots activists; it will also include contributions from other well-known international political leaders and advocates.

“It will be a pleasure to hand over the editor’s chair to people who have given decades of their lives to the cause of bringing world attention to Africa, a place that is now a very different, and more aspiring, continent than we’ve ever known it to be,” added John Stackhouse, editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail. “I know Bono and Geldof will bring startling and stimulating conversations to the newspaper, and Ory to our website. It’s an honour to share the newsroom with such an esteemed team, and I’m delighted to extend this experience to our readers.”



Africa: It’s time
As part of this initiative, Bono and Geldof have agreed to answer video questions submitted by Globe readers about Africa. Follow this link to watch a promotional video and see how you can participate.


theglobeandmail

Silence Is Violence Music Clinics Get a Boost From Music Rising
In New Orleans, there is a community program called Silence Is Violence, which focuses on countering the city’s violence to achieve a safe New Orleans. One of the group’s longest-standing programs is the Music Clinics, an after-school youth empowerment program offering students a positive activity and an introduction to music performance.

A couple of years ago, Music Rising gave a grant to the Music Clinics in support of the venture, and we are pleased to find that we, along with other supporters such as the Threadheads organization, have made a huge different in the lives of these students. Below, read what Youth Outreach Coordinator Allison Padilla-Goodman has to say about the success of the Clinics!




The youth all rush into the empty space near the Sound Café, grab an instrument off the rack, and set up their chairs and music stands, eager to get started. Every Tuesday, trumpet virtuoso Shamarr Allen and his band teach a large group of students from across the community to play trumpet, saxophone, clarinet, guitar, drums, and piano. Thanks to Music Rising, these students who normally would not get to take music lessons are able to learn how to play on real instruments with recognizable music teachers who serve as important role models in their lives.

The students come from different neighborhoods and schools from all over the city, and are from a variety of racial and class backgrounds. The Tuesday night SilenceisViolence Music Clinics is one of the few events in New Orleans that is a true celebration of diversity and collaboration. Friendships are formed across differences, and music brings them all together. And it’s not just important for the students, as parents Sonia Gomez and Hope Jones exemplify: their students are in the same class at the same school, but they had never met before the Music Clinics brought them together. Now they are friends and enjoy celebrating together in the positive changes they’ve seen in their children’s lives.

The parents attest that the Music Clinics have provided a very important shift in their children’s behaviors. The students are so enthused by learning to play that they practice, very diligently, every day at home. This has made them sharpen their time management skills, as they learn to balance their homework and music, and complete their homework efficiently so that they can satisfy their urge to play. Hope’s daughter, Rumor (age 8), loves learning to play the guitar and has become a much more disciplined student. On Tuesdays, she rushes home from school, gets her homework done right away, and gets her mom organized to get to Music Lessons on time.

Sonia’s son, Joaquin, who is learning to play the drums, has even taken to focusing on the drummers when he listens to music at home. He insists that his family partake in the local music scene and go to hear live music whenever they can—like during all of the city’s many music festivals—where he watches the drummers and learns what they do.

Hope’s son, Roddrick (age 5), is one of the youngest musicians there, but also one of the quickest learners. He is able to keep up with the older students around him, and loves learning to play the trumpet. As his father is a trumpet-player, it is especially meaningful to him to get to follow in his father’s footsteps and continue an important New Orleans musical tradition.



Be sure to check out a video clip from the Spring 2010 Clinics' finale performance in the "Media" section above!

Click here for more information on the Silence Is Violence campaign and the Music Clinics.

musicrisisng.org/news

Fish in Haiti Are Almost as Rare as Trees

May 3, 2010

Joseph B. Treaster Editor, 1H2O.org, Knight Center for International Media, University of Miami

MIAMI--As a boy in Haiti, Jean Wiener liked to poke around the coral reefs just offshore. The coral was thick and wild and splashed with bursts of orange and purple. Swarms of Yellow Tail Snappers and Nassau Groupers cruised past undulating sea fans and nibbled at rich, green sea grass. Sometimes young Mr. Wiener would catch a fish and grill it on the beach.

Now, several decades later, most of the fish are gone. "If you see anything at all," Mr. Wiener told me the other day, "it's almost never longer than six inches. You see little baby fish."

Haiti has been seriously fished out. As the impoverished country's population has risen to more than 10 million, more and more people have turned to the sea for food. It is against the law in Haiti to take under-size fish. But no one is enforcing the law and many Haitians are hungry.

Mr. Wiener grew up to be a marine biologist and one of the few specialists with an enduring interest in the coastal waters of Haiti. Now that the earthquake in January has people thinking of ways of helping Haiti, he is hoping some of them will recognize that the coastal waters could become a tremendous source of food. Tourists might also enjoy the beaches and reefs as he did as a boy.

For now, the reefs and coastal waters are as barren as most of Haiti's land. The overworked fields of Haiti yield a tiny fraction of the produce of most other countries and in a world where overfishing is epidemic, the waters off Haiti are a model of how bad it can get.

With high unemployment, Mr. Wiener said, lots of people have become part-time fishermen. The newcomers and the experienced fishermen go at the fish relentlessly. The idea of fishing seasons is ignored and anything that gets caught stays caught. "Nothing is thrown back," Mr. Wiener said.

To gain perspective, Mr. Wiener talked with an 80-year-old fisherman. "We used to let the sea rest during the months of January, February, March and April," the old fisherman said. "Now there are more traps, more boats, more fishermen, more types of fishing methods. They are laying out nets all the time, everywhere."

It's not just pressure from hungry fishermen. The offshore waters have become a miserable place for fish. Fish thrive on healthy coral reefs. In Haiti, you don't have that. Mr. Wiener, the founder of FoProBiM, the Fondation pour la Protection de la Biodiversite Marine of Haiti, estimates that perhaps 80 percent of the reefs along Haiti's 1,100-mile coastline have suffered some degree of damage, some of it very heavy.

Little fish, that in the right conditions grow up to be big fish, like to nestle in sea grass beds and the tangled branches of mangroves at the edge of the shore. But maybe a third of Haiti's sea grass has been smothered by silt that gushes off the land every time it rains because most of the country's trees have been chopped down for firewood. Mangrove branches also make fine firewood and much of Haiti's mangroves are also gone.

Mr. Wiener has some ideas. He is getting a little help. But he and the coasts of Haiti could use a lot more. The coasts are being included in a restoration project -- mainly on land -- by the United Nations Environment Program and Columbia University's Earth Institute. The Reef Check Foundation, a marine conservation and research organization in Los Angeles, is looking for grants to finance work in Haiti's coastal waters.

One idea is to begin creating Marine Protected Areas -- places where no fishing is allowed and where reefs and grasses are cultivated. Fish get a chance to recover. As they become more abundant, some of them leave the protected areas. The coastal waters begin to recover. Reef Check has a project like this in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, and, true to script, more fish are being seen.

There is a lot more to do in Haiti. But this would be a start. "Haiti is the only country in the Caribbean without a Marine Protected Area," said Dr. Gregor Hodgson, the founder and executive director of the Reef Check Foundation.



Follow Joseph B. Treaster on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JosephBTreaster

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Haiti's Son Provides Source of Hope for Homeland
Indianapolis Wide Receiver Pierre Garcon Distributes Free Food, Helps Rural Orphanage Provide Children Home
By Jeff Glor

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, May 1, 2010


Indianapolis Colt Pierre Garcon gives out food in Haiti

After Pierre Garcon caught the winning touchdown pass in January's AFC championship game, he hoisted the Haitian flag, a powerful signal of hope for a devastated country.

People in Haiti know they'll be cleaning up a natural disaster for years if not decades. Garcon, a wide receiver for the Indianapolis Colts, has been one source of hope for the country following January's earthquake, CBS News Correspondent Jeff Glor reports.

Haiti: The Road to Recovery

Now that hope becomes help for his country and for his family.

"Right now it's the first time back since the earthquake," said Garcon. "We are going to Leogan, where my family is from."

Three months after the earthquake, it's a shock to find some relatives still living in tents outside his family's home. They fear another earthquake.

To see it all together outside of television, it hits a little deeper and harder and makes you want to work a lot harder for them.

Garcon may be a football star in the United States, but in Haiti he's a lifeline.

"This is very important," Garcon said, referring to bags of food he was giving out. "Anytime you get a chance to eat, you take advantage of it."

His group served 750,000 meals on one trip, a stark contrast to the chaotic scenes in the days immediately following the earthquake.

"We are serving 200 to 300 kids today," Garcon said.

For the 2 million Haitians displaced in the disaster, there is never enough.

"Since the earthquake happened, I eat less than I'm used to," Reina, a 12-year-old displaced Haitian, said through a translator.

Garcon's sister Gina Garcon is stunned and saddened at the changes.

"I'm never used to seeing people begging for food so much," Gina Garcon said. "Just to get through the day, they'll do anything - 'We're not beggars. We didn't used to beg like this.'"

People in Haiti hope Garcon will be their voice.

"If are very far from Port-au-Prince, so you so they forget you," Lucson Desrosiers, a missionworker, said through a translator.

"We're trying to help the whole country, not just a certain part," said Garcon. "Everybody is in need. It's the hunger, it's the poverty, it's not just, you know, the earthquake."

Garcon partnered with the Northwest Haiti Christian Mission from St. Louie du Nord - a hundred miles from Port-au-Prince - a place where there are no paved roads and only limited electricity.

The mission's orphanage was already overflowing. Now it's taking in children from Port-au-Prince who've been abandoned. Unbelievably, a 5-year-old boy named Peterson weighed just 9 pounds when he arrived.

"Haiti is actually getting worse and worse on a daily basis," Gina Garcon said.

She thinks it's time to focus on developing rural areas.

"It's going to take a long time, a whole century to get Port-au-Prince rebuilt," said Gina Garcon. "What about investing in the countryside, teach them how to do things rather then constantly sending food over here."

The Garcons are stressing education, helping to get one school reopened.

"I like going to school," Roseme, a student, said through a translator. "I like learning and reading. It will change my life eventually."

Garcon focuses on helping Haitians to help themselves and to move on.

"You've got to move on, you've got to look forward to the next day," said Garcon. "You can't look back, and it's done and over, and so we gotta keep moving on with what we can."

This week, Congressional leaders in Washington reached a bipartisan agreement on a measure to help Haiti's economy by allowing more imports of Haitian clothing and textiles.

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