Auction to aid hungering nation

Author: Mike Murali

On Saturday, March 4, a silent auction will take place in the Grand Salon of Le Chateau to raise money for charities responding to food shortages in the African nation of Malawi. Items will be donated by local Vermont businesses and artists, and all proceeds will benefit the World Food Program's (WFP) efforts in the impoverished nation.

The initiative for a silent auction was started when Leah Bevis '09, whose high school frequently fundraised through auctions, thought that the idea of an auction was "feasible and would work." In addition to local Vermont businesses, donations will come from faculty and students at Middlebury. Items for auction include $15 to $50 gift certificates for local businesses, pancake mixes and maple syrup, sweatshirts, an African music CD collection, sculptures, paintings and hand-crafted jewelry. Cook Commons will concurrently sponsor an optional donation coffee shop and provide a guest speaker, Ndesanjo Marcha.

Bevis described Marcha as a "Tanzanian guy. He's a journalist, activist, blogger…and I wanted a speaker as a draw for people in the community to add a more interesting element to the silent auction. I wanted to get a journalist because we had a whole bunch of African-related speakers at the Robert A. Jones house, but we never had a journalist."

After sending out an e-mail to various websites connecting African journalists, Bevis obtained the information for Marcha and invited him to speak at Middlebury. "He writes about foreign aid, he writes about Africa, and he's really into the use of technology," said Bevis. "If you send people into Africa who have a laptop and are able to blog, they have a communication that can reach the rest of the world."

Bevis said her interest in the issues facing African nations began when she was a young child and has increased with firsthand experience. Last year, during a trip to Malawi, she saw the effects of malnutrition and poverty. That spring there was a drought in southern Africa that affected several nations, including Zimbabwe and Zambia. Any crops grown were consumed almost immediately, with the market values being too high for the average citizen to afford food. The problem grew worse this winter when the region experienced heavy rains, which flooded crops and displaced many people, further worsening the problem. The WFP says that "flash flooding in southern Malawi in the last week of December displaced or made homeless more than 40,000 people, damaged roads and bridges, and washed away newly planted crops."

Bevis said the WFP will be responsible for putting the money raised from the auction to proper use. "I talked to the people I knew in Malawi, the people I was volunteering with last year, and they said that it was the most effective organization," said Bevis.

According to the organization's website, few Malawians eat more than one meal per day, and children comprise an increasing bulk of sufferers. HIV/AIDS is a large problem as well, with 14.2 percent of the adults in Malawi afflicted, causing 84,000 deaths related to the disease in 2003.

Bevis said that ineffective government has stood in the way of a proper response to the crisis, making outside funding, such as that which will come from her silent auction all the more important. "People think the government might have reacted faster and better if they hadn't been bickering," said Bevis.