MTS ALLSTREAM LUMINARIES — NOMINEE INFORMATION

Sheila Van Damme volunteered for a program called Students Without Borders, Afrique 2007, made up of students, Parent Core, parent support, teachers and friends of the project.  The students partnered themselves with the community of M'Bour, Senegal in Western Africa and worked on a variety of programs related to the three pillars of the project: health, education and micro-economy.

Sheila was an active member of the Parent Core group that worked closely with the students and teachers in planning and achieving goals.  The Parent core provided guidance and emotional support to the students during this humanitarian journey. Sheila has spent hours (400+ hours) of volunteer time over the course of this 4 year project by attending group meetings, organizing, planning, brain storming, researching, learning the African culture, training by attending a refugee camp or wilderness survival camp, selling at fundraisers, and promoting and seeking sponsorship.

While in Africa, Sheila assisted a nurse at a free medical and eye clinic held at the newly built community centre named after College Jeanne Sauvé.  With the assistance of a private physician, eye doctor, and a nurse from a medical clinic, they saw over 150 patients plus a countless number of parents and children with various ailments. The public hospitals are under funded and the financial stress placed on a family to see a doctor results in difficulty in accessing proper medical care.  Sheila also assisted in setting up a temporary pharmacy for a one day clinic using only 8 boxes of medical supplies that were brought with them to Africa.

Sheila helped clear the grounds on the land where the community center was built, braking down concrete structures by hand and hammer, hauling debris, digging over 100 holes for the planting of 100 trees, watering the plants by hauling numerous buckets of water - all in temperatures of 30 degree Celsius.

This journey was only the beginning for a new organization called Reaching Across Borders, Beyond Afrique 2007.  Though they are a small group, they continue to support the community in Senegal by fulfilling common projects in areas of education and healthcare, exchanging ideas in areas that are sustainable, supporting future adult literacy and sending children to school.

Together the group has raised over $300,000 in fundraising efforts in both cash and collection of donations and rallied community support and awareness to a country widespread with AIDS and vast poverty.  They fulfilled the dream of building a community center in Warang, improved health care, aided the development of a women's small business enterprise, established teacher education classes to train local rural residents as teachers, sponsored more than 135 young students who are attending school for the very first time, and sponsored adult literacy programs.

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