Group educates in Kenya

While most students his age were spending the waning May afternoons lounging in the sun, junior Kunal Desai was boarding a plane to Jambo, Kenya, preparing to spend a summer in which he'd forget himself to better help others. \nWhile his contemporaries face the world around 11 a.m., Desai wakes daily at 7 a.m. to begin teaching at a tiny Kenyan preschool. For three hours a day, his patience is tested, his spirit tried. Yet for Desai, it's all worth it as his students serenade him with traditional Swahili songs.\nDesai is part of Outreach Kenya Development Volunteers, an assembly of students and faculty dedicated to assisting Inter-Community Development Involvement, a grassroots Kenyan non-governmental organization. Volunteers arrive in Africa in mid-May and work closely with residents of the Western Province of Kenya to implement community development projects throughout the summer.\nThe group is the brainchild of IU alum Hank Selke, who realized the need to organize a group that could work closely with a non-governmental organization in Kenya after spending a summer there as part of an HIV/AIDS education program. But the road to creating such a group proved rocky indeed: due to limited funds, interested students were unable to afford the expensive start-up fees associated with existing as an independent nonprofit organization. \nWith the help of fellow IU student Philip Roesselar, Selke's dreams finally achieved fruition in late 1999 when Outreach Kenya was founded as an IU student organization.\nBut that status places restrictions on the sort of work Outreach Kenya is able to perform. Operating with it what directors Beth Messersmith and Martine Miller termed a "shoe-string budget" renders Outreach Kenya incapable of raising funds necessary to implement new programs. But financial setbacks have not deterred OKDV's diligent volunteer efforts, which begin annually in September with fundraising and member education sessions and conclude with the actual field experience the following summer.\nThrough firsthand experiences in Kenya, group volunteers witness the "corruption and greed that can inhibit progress," according to the group's Web site. Because of these circumstances, OKDV assumes a markedly different stance: working not from the top, but working with and educating the "common people," -- those not usually reached.\nThat's where Desai's interest was piqued. A biochemistry major with his sights on medical school, Desai claims he's had a longtime interest in AIDS education. He found his niche within OKDV in the HIV/AIDS education program.\nMale-dominated politics and a struggling health care system characterize the Western Province, which remains largely uneducated concerning sexually transmitted diseases and the AIDS epidemic. Desai, who is currently in Kenya and communicates to family and friends via satellite computer, said the general population believes AIDS can be transmitted through mosquitoes and that an infected individual can rid himself of the virus by passing it to as many people as possible. Additionally, he said, doctors in Kenyan hospitals do not identify the virus as HIV or AIDS; instead, the disease is attributed to witchcraft or sorcery.\nOKDV and ICODEI teams aim to eradicate such ignorance by presenting educational programs in schools, churches, community centers, bars, night clubs, and women's groups. Volunteers also lead discussions on STDs and AIDS, including its origin, transmission and prevention, and offer question and answer sessions.\nThe group also sponsors programs designed to introduce modern agricultural practices and overturn the use of chemicals in food preparation. The group is now building a library in the Western Province and also sponsors a nursery school. \nAdditional programs include trash clean-up days and micro-enterprise development efforts to encourage economic independence for women. Money-management courses are also offered.\nThe group's efforts extend far beyond the African continent, as well. Outreach Kenya has, and continues to, impact students and administrators alike on the IU campus. \n"I have found the activities of the Outreach Kenya Development Volunteers to be quite extraordinary," said outgoing Chancellor Kenneth Gros Louis. "The two leaders of the volunteer group are deeply committed to helping the people of Western Kenya and have demonstrated that by spending summers there, collecting books for Kenyans, and sending materials as they have collected them from a variety of organizations in the community."\nThe group so deeply impacted Gros Louis, that he alluded to its achievements in his 1999 Commencement address. He also obtained a laptop computer for them to use in Kenya. \n"In brief, anyone who speaks to the leaders of this organization could not help but be positively moved by what it is they are attempting to do," he said.