No, the resolution has nothing to do with Sir Bob Geldof’s Live 8 concerts. But last Wednesday, Portland City Council passed a resolution declaring July measles and malaria awareness month. The point of the resolution–and a month-long fundraiser by the local Red Cross chapter–is to raise awareness and funds to inoculate children in Africa; in particular, the southeastern country of Mozambique.
Although a disease like measles may seem irrelevant in America today, in African nations it is still very much a threat, killing about 400,000 children each year. What’s most frustrating about measles is that–unlike AIDS–it’s completely curable and preventable. An inoculation costs less than a dollar.
Two years ago, the city of Corvallis undertook a similar global effort when the mayor there declared October to be “landmine awareness month,” where residents chipped in enough money–about $75,000–to sweep a field in Afghanistan. No, it didn’t remedy decades of war, but it did make one corner of the world safer.
This past January, bearing this effort in mind, I began asking myself, “What can the average Portlander do to make one small part of the world a better place?” Clearly Portland residents are compassionate about suffering in faraway countries; what problem could we help fight? I decided to spearhead a local effort to raise funds to inoculate children in Mozambique. As a city, I figure, we can raise enough money to inoculate at least 10,000 children–enough people to fill PGE Park!
In the past, city council has waded into international issues, like denouncing the Reagan administration’s destabilizing measures in Central America and, more recently, introducing a resolution against the war in Iraq. Those measures have largely been symbolic. But this is an opportunity to directly save lives. In some way, it is a chance to counterbalance the devastation that Americans have committed in other corners of the world–and a chance to express how you would rather American foreign policy manifest itself: as a helping hand rather than a battering ram.
Please (and here’s where I sound like Sally Struthers)–for only one dollar, you can save a kid’s life. Check out www.redcross-pdx.org.