Big hearts, stronger minds

by Connie Midey - Jan. 27, 2011
The Arizona Republic

They've been to Kenya and Uganda, Cambodia and Nepal. They serve on a board that helps Valley families escaping homelessness and domestic violence.

They're on the phone three or four times a week, sometimes just to chat, often to consult on their next project (although "adventure" might better describe what they undertake).

So when Eileen Rogers and Debbie Hill faced big birthdays, their choice for a celebration probably surprised few of the family members, friends and work associates invited to participate.

Rogers, of Scottsdale, was going to turn 50, and Hill, a Phoenix resident, would be 55. As the dates approached, they considered the possibilities.

"First, I was going to do a parachuting party, but that idea didn't catch on," says Rogers, owner of Allegra Marketing & Print. "Then I thought of a fabulous trip somewhere, but I've been fortunate to be able to do that."

Together and separately, the women had journeyed several times to Africa - through Carefree-based TurtleWill, a non-profit that helps people in Ethiopia, Mali and Niger, and the Foundation for Global Leadership, a Phoenix organization that encourages partnerships and philanthropy in emerging democracies.

"We both were aware of the real needs (in Africa)," says Hill, a lawyer and the mother of two grown daughters.

So they decided to help. In 2009, they created the Big Birthday Wish, asking for gifts in the form of money, advice or simply spreading the word - not for themselves but for the construction of a school in Mali, a nation in West Africa.

Rogers had volunteered for a TurtleWill medical mission in Mali just months earlier.

"I've seen extreme poverty," she says. "But in Mali, it's also so incredibly remote. People die because they don't have access to very simple things. Imagine having no medicine, not even having clean water to wash (wounds)."

Village in Mali selected

Rogers and Hill, friends for 20 years, focused their efforts on Tourari, a Malian village about 10 miles from Tombouctou (Timbuktu). The 100 families living there lacked many resources, but a school for their children was their top priority.

"You see how little they have there," Rogers says, "Often just blackboards and chalk."

The women mailed and e-mailed letters to everyone they knew, inviting them to mark the upcoming birthdays "in a sustainable and memorable way." They attached a map and information about the country, along with a detailed list of the village's needs and the costs.

Then they waited.

People receiving the invitations learned that two simple, brick-and-concrete classrooms for 90 students would cost $13,000 to construct.

In Malian villages that are fortunate enough to have schools, the facilities are cobbled together with old straw mats, "with children sitting in the sand, prey to respiratory infections, snakes and scorpions," Rogers and Hill wrote. "We want to build a permanent structure and create a healthy learning environment for these (Tourari) kids."

Thirty desks, each seating three students, would cost an additional $3,000, and uniforms, at $10 each, would add $900 to the proposed budget.

The wish list also included books and other class supplies, salaries for two teachers, meals for students, improvements to a well, a school vegetable garden, a goat herd, a latrine and millet grinders.

All together, the project would total $43,800.

"Our money can go so far over there," Rogers says. "We can accomplish so much with what, in an American environment, would be very little money."

Hill never doubted that she and Rogers would reach their goal. Friends had dug into their pockets in the past, asking the women to donate $50 or $100 on their behalf wherever they saw a need during their travels. The two would return with snapshots to show their friends where the money had gone.

Latrine covered

Donations to the Big Birthday Wish began to arrive in June 2009, the year of the friends' big birthdays. The mail would bring $10 one day, $40 another, and the money arrived early enough for villagers in Tourari to begin making bricks while waiting for the summer rains to end.

One man picked up the entire $8,000 cost of a four-seat latrine. Access to a latrine's toilets and sinks improves sanitation and reduces rates of dysentery, among the top three killers of African children. It also keeps maturing girls in school by enabling them to maintain their modesty, Rogers explains.

Other donors sent in smaller amounts: $10 to pay for one student's books and other supplies, $80 for a year's worth of meals for two students, $85 for one millet grinder. Family responsibilities also cause girls to drop out of school, a problem the birthday project addressed with the purchase of 20 grain grinders for the community.

"Five families could share one grinder, grind their millet quickly, and then the girls would have time to do their homework," Rogers says.

Within three months, the women had reached their goal. But the checks kept trickling in past the official fundraising deadline of September 2009.

Construction of the school began that October. As donations continued to arrive, other work in Tourari got under way, small project by small project.

After the school was completed in December 2009, desks and other supplies were purchased and transported to the site. But additional improvements lay ahead.

By February 2010, more than 300 people had contributed about $78,000 to the Big Birthday Wish, and their money had been put to work.

Hill wasn't surprised that the project drew almost double the figure on the original wish list.

"People are quite generous if they know the money is going where you said it's going (and) if they know it will be well spent," she says.

More money, more goats

The extra money allowed the Tourari school to tack on three more classrooms and install solar lights so adults could attend literacy classes at night.

Today, with more than 270 kids enrolled in the school and the night classes a hit with their parents, "we are serving more people than we ever imagined when we started the project," Rogers says.

Villagers also were able to build a school library and pharmacy and buy a second herd of 30 goats. The goats sustain students with fresh milk and generate occasional income for the school.

There was enough money to repair Tourari's existing well, as planned, and almost enough to build a second one. TurtleWill made up the difference for the extra well, and it agreed to fund the ongoing operation of the new school.

Not everyone can contribute on the scale of the latrine donor, and not everyone can manage a project as ambitious as the Big Birthday Wish. But people working toward smaller goals - collecting supplies for a single class in their neighborhood, for example - can make a difference, Hill says. Just as enough people pitching in a few spare dollars made it possible for the Big Birthday Wish to grow even bigger.

The women celebrated the project's completion with a party for donors. Rogers and Hill had to postpone two trips to see the results in person because travel in Mali was risky. But they shared photos and progress reports from Tourari that told the story of the accomplishments more vividly than their financial accounting.

Party guests saw photos, taken by a local man with a donated digital camera, of the school under construction and completed, of students tending their garden and feeding their goats. They heard stories about moms and dads thrilled that they could now make a living and that their kids finally were getting an education.

Carol Rogers, Eileen's mother, was seriously ill when the Big Birthday Wish began, and she died, at age 76, a week before the party. She had followed the project's progress with great interest.

"She was in the hospital most of that time," Rogers says, "and we'd go to see her and share details. She would have loved seeing the school. As soon as I can, I want to take her ashes there and a plaque with her name for the school."

People who made Rogers' and Hill's birthday wish - and the dreams of 100 Tourari families - come true wear a thank-you gift from the women: a circle bracelet inspired by a legend that says, "If you give a circle of friends to a person you care for, your bonds of friendship will endure forever."