KRISTIN GREEN
Peace Corps Volunteer Adopts Ghanaian Village

About seventy percent of the earth is made up of water, so maybe that's why it is hard to believe that in some parts of the world, thirsty children eat mud to extract this lifegiving fluid. Today thousands of native Ghanian inhabitants are working to establish a more reliable water supply, thanks to the efforts of Coronado native Kristin Green.

Green, a Coronado High School alum, graduated from San Francisco State University with degrees in art and archaeology. She joined the Peace Corps in 2002 and was assigned to a watsand - short for water and sanitation - in Ghana, Africa.

Her major Peace Corps project was the building of a 16-seat public toilet, toward which the local community donated land and labor. Green secured funding for the project through friends and contacts, including many Coronadans.

At the end of her Peace Corps term Green elected to stay in Ghana, choosing to live in the upper east region of the country, near the city of Bolgatanga. Along with former Corps volunteer, Linda Atwater, Green began producing and exporting West African handicrafts, particularly jewelry. They also trained local Ghanaians in bracelet weaving. Green donates 10 percent of her earnings to the Gheogo School for the Deaf in her host country, but her humanitarian work continues beyond this customary donation. Green has established a Community Based Organization (CBO), a legally recognized entity of the local Ghana government to be the beneficiary of international foundation grants. She was thrilled to learn that the CBO will receive $12,000 from Rotary International in early 2006 for two water projects she conceived and designed - building a new well and dredging and expanding two holding ponds, thereby creating a year-round water supply for the community.

Green says she receives satisfaction from her efforts. "You live somewhere and you see a need and know you have an ability to meet that need," she said. But she feels that she has received far more than she has given the people of Ghana.

It's a completely different culture, where people have a different outlook on life, she says. "There's a generosity of spirit like I've never seen. People give, even though they have nothing. It's a warm, free and open, hospitable society. If I see a baby, I can pick it up and hug it, I can give a kid a piece of food. I don't see homeless people in our community because people take care of each other. People call me sister and I feel welcomed and loved.

"Ancient traditions are still intact. They?ve held onto their culture. There are Christians and Muslims as well as traditional religions too. Their culture is reflected by their artisans who make baskets, do kente cloth weaving and gold-smithing.

"I live in a mud house," Green says, proudly noting that she had it built to house three Coronado students who came to stay with her in the summer of 2004 through Amnesty International. The three-bedroom abode with kitchen, bath and garden is clean and well swept. The mud is hard and waterproof, she says. Surrounded by 17 acres of rolling hillsides, Green says Ghana has taught her that it's not where you are but who you are.

Next year, Green will be leaving Ghana for graduate school to pursue advanced studies in international development. The where is still up in the air.

MIKO PELED
Wheelchairs for the Holy Land

Thousands of innocent children are maimed each year by violence in the Middle East and will never walk again. Wheelchairs to the Holy Land is a program set up to help these children and is sponsored in part by local Rotary clubs. The initiative was conceived by two Rotarians, Miko Peled of Coronado, an Israeli Jew born in Jerusalem, and Nader Elbanna of Escondido, a Palestinian Muslim born in Nazareth. They became friends after meeting in the U.S., their adopted home, and have dedicated themselves to the cause of peace in the Middle East.

"For $75 we take a child that has to crawl, and can't play or go to school and has to be taken care of 24 hours a day, and suddenly give him the ability to be independent," says Peled. "Our goal is to raise money to purchase a thousand wheelchairs and divide them equally, 500 to each side. By doing so we send a message that Israelis and Palestinians can work together."

Peled's father was an Israeli general who later devoted his life for peace. His niece was killed by a terrorist bomb in 1997. Elbanna was a captain in the Jordanian army whose closest friend died in his arms during the al-Karama battle against Israel in 1967.

"We chose to be friends," says Elbanna, "but not to just sit in an air-conditioned room with a cup of coffee and talk about peace. We want to take action. These wheelchairs are not just plastic and stainless steel. They are a thousand ambassadors, and we are sending them from the United States to the Holy Land with a flame of hope."

MARSHALL SAUNDERS
Micro Credit for the Poorest of the Poor

Can you conceive of a day when abject poverty is wiped off the face of the planet? Marshall Saunders can. And he's putting his energy where his heart is: on the front lines in some of the poorest nations of the world.

One key to ending the cycle of poverty is micro-credit banking; in other words, tiny loans. Loans that traditional banking institutions could never be bothered with. And loans for which Saunders' typical clients could never hope to qualify.

He's working on a number of fronts. In San Diego County, and now the state of Colorado, he's active with RESULTS, a non-profit grassroots advocacy group dedicated to creating the political will to end hunger and the worst aspects of poverty throughout the world. In addition to micro-credit banking, RESULTS' initiatives include global health, with primary targets being eradicating TB, AIDS and malaria, and providing free education for the world's children. Saunders has successfully lobbied members of Congress as well as the media to advocate for all three causes.

In 2004, RESULTS made 66 million micro-loans and, at press time, Saunders believed their goal of 100 million loans was feasible for 2005.

And then there's Grameen de la Frontera, the non-profit organization that Saunders founded and now directs. It has made more than 5,000 small loans, typically of $100, to women in the northwest territories of Mexico. The organization is expanding its reach this year into neighborhoods that are riddled with drugs and violence. "We'll have to be careful there," he notes. He and his wife, Pam, have also personally funded a micro-credit program through a bank in Haiti with a goal to make micro-credit loans to 2,000 women there. "Haiti is the poorest, most desperate country in the Western Hemisphere," Saunders said. "I went there decades ago with the Navy. Its images still haunt me."

Women are the willing recipients of the loans because "they're the ones left with children," he says. "Frankly, the men spend it on liquor and other women." The loans allow the women to begin a business, experience independence, often for the first time in their lives, and break the cycle of poverty.

Saunders finds that it works. "They make tortillas or cheese, run general stores called 'abarotes,' raise goats, make textiles, you name it. But, in the end, it isn't about the money," he explains. "These women recognize they have the chance to make a dignified living, not only for themselves, but for their families. The loans help them learn basic responsibility, trust, and the value of saving for the future and emergencies. They have to show up every two weeks to make the loan payment and through that basic exercise alone, they learn personal discipline."

STEVE WAMPLER
Summer Camps for Disabled Kids

Steve Wampler has cerebral palsy. He also has a loving wife, two super kids and a passion to let all kids know that a physical disability does not need to hold them back from pursuing their dreams. He figured that out years ago, when, as a teenager, he attended an Easter Seals wilderness camp north of Lake Tahoe. Even though he was confined to a wheelchair and had a full-time camp aide at his side, Wampler learned that he could indeed do all the things fully ablebodied children do at camp - learn survival activities, make art crafts, go swimming, perform skits and dances, and join other campers in sing-a-longs. It was a life-changing experience.

Easter Seals closed the facility in 1992, but Wampler still found ways to visit the campground over the years. And gradually a dream and vision emerged: he would establish an organization and re-open the facility.

Camp Wamp has been operating for two summers, with Wampler serving as its executive director and chief fundraiser. His grant requests have pulled in major funding from the Christopher Reeves Foundation, Boys and Girls Club of San Diego, Stickle Christian Foundation and Century Club of Los Angeles.

And his vision has grown beyond the Northern California campground. Now Camp Wamp funds camperships to other sites hosting disabled kids, teens and young adults throughout the state, including Camp Able on the Silver Strand in Coronado.

Wampler is now striving to establish an endowment of $20 million that will see the camp live in perpetuity. "That's my 10-year goal," he says. "And I'd like to see us host 500 campers by 2010.

Maybe if I can get on Oprah's show, it can happen sooner..."

ANGELA NAPLES
A Club Celebrating Drug and Alcohol-Free Living

Angela Naples remembers when she was in fifth grade and Coronado High School students from the Trading Card Club visited her class and passed out their trading cards. "We went crazy for those cards and looked up to the high schoolers as role models," she said. "We'd ask them questions like how much homework they had to do." The program influenced her to stay drug free, and Angela decided to enroll in the card club throughout her high school years. The club, sponsored by the Coronado SAFE program, is now the largest on the CHS campus. Members of the Trading Card Club pledge to live drug and alcohol free. Each card has a picture of the high school student, a list of their activities, and their motto for choosing to live drug and alcohol free.

Today, Naples, a senior, is one of those role models to the younger set. In addition to her busy schedule of homework, lacrosse, school government and serving as a Youth Group leader at her church, Naples is now president of the Trading Card Club. She speaks to elementary and middle school students, and also to adult service clubs.

This year the card club has expanded to include an after-school tutoring program so high school students who don't have other extra-curricular activities can do something more for themselves as well as for the elementary school kids.

"I've seen first hand how drugs can mess up someone's life. It ruins relationships," Naples says. "When you're under the influence, you change who you are and I don't want to be someone I'm not." Naples has to be herself on the lacrosse field, especially because all team members count upon one another. "It's the fastest game on two feet," she says. Naples is a mean defender, which may be why she stands her ground as a drug-free student whose motto reads, Live excellently; Love endlessly.

DANI CORTI
Teacher's Summer Working with African Orphans

Dani Corti, 24, is a second-grade teacher at Village Elementary School. It's her third year teaching, her second in Coronado.

This past summer the graduate of Point Loma Nazarene University received the education of a lifetime as she worked in four village orphanages in Malawi, Africa with a group of 12 from her church (Flood Church, near San Diego State). Not only did Corti volunteer her time, she also raised $3,900 to pay for her transportation and supplies through the supervising non-profit, Children of the Nations program. In addition to teaching Vacation Bible School, Corti assisted each orphanage's house parents by hand-washing and folding endless laundry and preparing meals for residents and orphans who live in surrounding villages. Their main food, cima, is the consistency of mashed potatoes and very bland. It's made with flour, to which they'll add vegetables and if they're lucky some chicken or meat, she says.

Located in the middle of the east side of the continent, Malawi is currently experiencing a famine. Corti found running water and electricity were minimal and sporadic. "We provided the house parents with wind-up non-battery flashlights," Corti said. "Most of the orphanage's children lost their parents to AIDS; the majority of the kids have AIDS, too. We had to be careful and assume each child was HIV positive," she said. "That meant not touching our eyes or mouths until we had washed our hands. We were constantly using antibacterial wipes and gels."

Although the orphanage's residents are provided medicine to control HIV, those who live outside are not so fortunate. They may have never seen a doctor; Corti learned that there is only one doctor who makes annual rounds, seeing hundreds of children on his stops.

But what touched Corti's heart was how content these children were. "They are proud for what they have, and what they have is next to nothing," she said. She recalls the kids showing off a dirt ditch where they ran up and down the sides, sort of like skateboarding without skateboards. "They were so jazzed over it. And they were so very thankful; they'd say bedtime prayers and thank the Lord for sending them our team and they'd thank the families we left behind for allowing us to come."