On March 20, 2008, I flew to Uganda on assignment for NPR “Weekend Edition Saturday.” Much of my two week visit was spent with Dr. Jessie Stone, volunteers, and local educators visiting villages in rural eastern Uganda to teach residents about malaria prevention. The clinic and malaria outreach program are run by Jessie Stone, a medical doctor from Westchester, NY and professional whitewater kayaker for Jackson Kayaks.
Soft Power Health clinic, a solar-poweredfunded by Soft Power, in Bugajali opened in January 2008, but four years earlier Jessie started an anti-Malaria program. She and her colleagues offer Malaria treatment, research, education and teach prevention; while selling subsidized nets. They have educuated over 100,000 people and sold more than 25,000 nets since April 2007. www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=soft+power+uganda
Jessie also runs a kayaking outreach program in America that is part of “Right to Play,” an organization focusing on health education, prevention, and child development through sports and game playing throughout the world. Splitting her time between Uganda and America, for the past six summers Jessie has run a kayaking program for inner city kids from Harlem, NY. Last fall, some of the U.S. kids visited Uganda. Jessie said, “It was really incredible to have the kids in Uganda in the villages helping with the education and follow ups - and of cours, we took them rafting on the Nile.”
My trip will wrap up by driving 15 hours on rutted roads to the Bwindi area to trek to view the Mountain Gorillas. On our way back to the clinic, we will visit Pigmy villages that Jessie treats.
You can hear my profile of Jessie and all the cool things she does on NPR "Weekend Edition Saturday." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92705089. Mweraba!
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