Grandmothers on the move tomorrow
June 12, 2010
The Delta Optimist, by Jessica Kerr
A group of local grandmothers will be walking in Vancouver tomorrow in support of African grandmothers and more than 13 million orphaned children.
Members of the South Fraser Gogos are adding their voices to their African sisters on the issue of affordable life-saving HIV/AIDS medicine for children and adults in sub-Saharan Africa.
The local grandmas will join others from the Lower Mainland at Canada Place on Sunday. The group of grandmothers and "grandothers" will walk from there to the Vancouver Art Gallery for a rally at 2 p.m.
The South Fraser Gogos are one of more than 200 grandmother groups across Canada that have been formed to support the work of the Stephen Lewis Foundation and his Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign. The campaign is aimed at helping the growing number of grandmothers in Africa who are now raising their grandchildren orphaned due to AIDS.
There are 13 million African children whose parents died of AIDS; many of them are now being raised by their grandparents.
The grandmothers are lobbying the Canadian government to pass a bill that will amend Canada's Access to Medicines Regime and make it easier for generic drug companies to make and send anti-retroviral drugs to HIV and AIDS patients in sub-Saharan Africa.
The group is meeting at Canada Place at 1:15 p.m. on Sunday.
For more information, visit www.grandmotherscampaign.org or call 604-464-1852.