Pulitzer Prize Winner and New York Times Journalist Nicholas D. Kristof To Speak at MHS

Kids For World Health (KFWH), a not-for-profit student organization working to help eliminate “the world’s most neglected diseases,” is hosting its fourth community event, “An Evening for Understanding,” on Mar. 14 at 7 p.m. at Mamaroneck High School’s (MHS) McLain Auditorium.

The evening will begin with an update of the impact that KFWH students have had on villages in Africa and around the world. The keynote speaker is two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times journalist and op-ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof.

Kristof will speak on “Combating Poverty and Global Health Issues: The Impact of Youth Involvement and Community Activism.” His most recent book, co-authored with his wife, journalist Sheryl WuDunn, is titled, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. He will be signing books after the program.

Writes Eli Russ, a MHS sophomore, in an email, “Nicholas Kristof is an acclaimed and accomplished journalist who knows first-hand the importance of helping others, especially in the realm of global poverty.” Eli, 16, is co-president, with Jenna Doherty, of the MHS chapter of KFWH.

Kristof is known for his illumination of human rights abuses in Africa and Asia, writing on conditions such as human trafficking and the Darfur conflict. He and WuDunn won a Pulitzer Prize for journalism in 1990 for reporting on the pro-democracy movement that led to Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. WuDunn was the first Asian-American to win the prize and Kristof and WuDunn were the first married couple to do so.

In 2006, Kristoff won his second Pulitzer for work that judges described as,"his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world."

KFWH’s immediate goal for 2011 is to provide aid for the Lwala Hospital in Lwala, Uganda. The group has been working since February, 2010 in a partnership with Project Care: When KFWH raises $23,000, Project Care will contribute $400,000 worth of donated diagnostic hospital equipment to the Lwala Hospital.

“We’ve raised $20,000 since February 2010,” said Kay Kobbe, “founding teacher” of KFWH and president of the board of directors. The group is working to raise the remaining $3,000.

Kobbe, who taught third grade at Chatsworth Elementary School from 1973 to 2007, founded the local chapter of KFWH in 2001 with the third-graders.  The KFWH mission statement states that its purpose, “is to raise awareness of the world’s most neglected diseases and to contribute to the efforts to eliminate them.” 

Kobbe, a Mamaroneck resident, says the group was “founded based on the compassionate response to the voices of my students who found it intolerable that people were dying of diseases for which the western world held a cure, but for the world’s poor were unattainable.”  Initial efforts were in reaction to, “the thousands of people who die each year from Sleeping Sickness,” the KFWH mission statement explains.

KFWH contacted Kristof, she says, because, “He has offered much to our world with his perceptions and world studies of the oppression of women, global health issues, and global poverty.”

Kobbe says that KFWH “is serving potentially one million villagers,” and has just completed its fifth clinic.

KFWH built their fist clinic in Yei, Sudan; their second in Duk County, Sudan; the third in Kaliua, Tanzania; and a fourth in Lwala, Uganda.  Says Kobbe, “We’re completing our fifth clinic in Bodo, Chad.”

When KFWH began, the students were eight years old. “Those founding students are now in college,” says Kobbe.

Suggested donations at the event are $3 for students and $10 for adults, with proceeds going toward the Lwala hospital fund.

Purchases of Kristof’s softcover book will be $16.

Katherine Ann Samon is a Patch reporter and columnist, and author of four books including Ranch House Style and Dates From Hell. Contact her at kathsam@aol.com, or visit www.katherineannsamon.com.