Betty Williams

Today Tuesday May 1, 2012 the AWOD is Betty Williams a Nobel laureate born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on May 22, 1942. She was baptized a Roman Catholic, despite the fact that 3 of her 4 grandparents were not Catholic (two were Protestant and one was Jewish). When Betty was only 13 years old, her mother suffered a massive stroke. Betty dropped out of school to take on the role of caring for her mother and raising her younger sister.

Like many families in Northern Ireland, Betty’s family was touched by violence. Her Protestant grandfather, a riveter in a Belfast shipyard, was thrown down the hold of a ship that was under construction simply because his son was marrying a Catholic woman. Her cousin Daniel, a pre-med student, was killed at the age of 18, when Protestant extremists shot him as he stood at the front door of his house. Another cousin was killed when a booby-trapped car abandoned by members of the IRA exploded as he was driving past it. In Betty’s words, “The Protestants killed one of my cousins, and the Catholics killed the other.”

Betty joined the Irish Republican Army in 1972, but “didn't remain a member long.” After witnessing a British soldier shot in front of her in 1973, she knelt and prayed beside him. She was criticized by Catholic neighbors for showing sympathy for “the enemy.”

On August 10, 1976, a runaway car driven by an IRA member, Danny Lennon, crashed into a family of four who were out for a walk. (Lennon had been fatally shot while fleeing from British soldiers.) All three children, Joanne, John, and Andrew, were killed. Their mother, Anne Maguire, was critically injured and later committed suicide in 1980. Betty Williams had been driving home from visiting her mother, heard the crash, and was the first to arrive on the scene.

Betty immediately began to circulate petitions against the violence and, in less than forty-eight hours, had over six thousand signatures. When Mairead Corrigan, the children's aunt, heard what Betty Williams had done, she invited her to the children's funeral. On August 13, 1976, the day of the Maguire children's funeral, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan met with journalist Ciaran McKeown, who joined the two women in co-founding the Peace People, an organization dedicated to nonviolence in Northern Ireland and throughout the world.

Betty and Mairead organized a peace march to the graves of the children, which was attended by 10,000 Protestant and Catholic women. The peaceful march was disrupted by members of the Irish Republican Army, who accused them of being influenced by the British. The following week, 35,000 people marched with Williams and Corrigan to show their support for ending the violence in their country.

In recognition of their extraordinary action to end the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, and for their dedication to building a foundation for a peaceful future, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976.

In her acceptance speech, Betty said, “That first week will always be remembered of course for something else besides the birth of the Peace People. For those most closely involved, the most powerful memory of that week was the death of a young republican and the deaths of three children struck by the dead man's car. A deep sense of frustration at the mindless stupidity of the continuing violence was already evident before the tragic events of that sunny afternoon of August 10, 1976. But the deaths of those four young people in one terrible moment of violence caused that frustration to explode, and create the possibility of a real peace movement... As far as we are concerned, every single death in the last eight years, and every death in every war that was ever fought represents life needlessly wasted, a mother's labor spurned." She also said that, “The Nobel Peace Prize is not awarded for what one has done, but hopefully what one will do.”

True to those words, since receiving the Nobel Prize, she has traveled the world, working tirelessly with fellow Nobel Laureates wherever peace, and especially the safety and well-being of children, is at risk.

William's vision is to save the world's children by creating safe havens where they will be fed, sheltered, nurtured, and encouraged to grow to their fullest potential. This vision is becoming manifest through the work of World Centers of Compassion for Children, a non-profit organization she founded in 1997.

Betty Williams currently serves as the president of World Centers of Compassion for Children, whose mission is to provide a strong political voice for children in areas afflicted by war, hunger, social, economic or political upheaval. The aim of the centers will be to respond to their material and emotional needs by creating safe and nurturing environments. The focus of the WCCC's is to take the first substantial steps toward the creation of a program which will provide a strong political voice for children. In her travels over the past twenty years and more, Williams has often heard the testimonies of children who are clever, articulate and courageous in expressing their own needs and concerns. It is WCCC's intent to enable children to address the United Nations General Assembly on a regular basis, and to establish a system within the United Nations Court of Human Rights whereby children will have their own voices heard alongside those of their adult counterparts.

The WCCC has recently announced that they will be building their first “City of Compassion” in southern Italy. This city will be a safe haven for children who are most at risk to the horrors of war, hunger, disease and abuse. In it they will find homes, food, education, health care, love and compassion. This city is meant to serve as a model for others that can provide health and healing to suffering children throughout the world.

“We have to create a world in which there are no unknown, hostile aliens at the other end of any missiles, and that is going to take a tremendous amount of sheer hard work. The only force which can break down those barriers is the force of love, the force of truth, soul-force...” --Betty Williams

Edra Mbatha

The AWOD for this Sunday March 4 is EDRA MBATHA of Nairobi, Kenya, who has dreamed up an innovative way to protect children from widespread sexual abuse and neglect. After she completed her O levels, Mbatha moved from her rural hometown -- as do so many young adults with no resources in Kenya -- to a slum in Nairobi in hopes of finding employment and making a life for herself.

But soon after arriving and seeing the terrible conditions in which people were living, and noticing how so many women had "given up" and just stood around all day gossiping, Mbathe began working as a volunteer with a grassroots women's group. Close to two decades later, Mbatha is still working within the Mathare community.

In 2008 during preelection violence she noticed that children were at high risk. "It was a chaotic time for children," she remembers. "In the slums, the myth that having sex with minors could cure people living with HIV was rife and children were defiled in large numbers." While the women's organization was providing some services to the children, Mbatha saw the clear need for early intervention to prevent victimization from happening at all.

She realized that sexual predators would strike during those hours when working parents left their children alone. So she started Mathare Early Childhood Development Centre, which began as a daytime "safe house" collectively funded by parents of the children, and has become a school that also provides nutrition and counseling for 30 children.

Beyond the powerful support and direct aid being provided to the students and their parents, Mbatha has a broad vision in which the Centre will produce politically aware adults and long-term changes in Kenyan society. "It’s lack of education that sees Kenyans manipulated by politicians to take arms against their neighbours."


(source: http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/sports/InsidePage.php?id=2000048503&cid=620)

Anne Geddes

Today’s WOD is world famous Photographer Anne Geddes, She is known for her stylized depictions of babies and motherhood. Typical images show babies or young children dressed as fairies and fairytale creatures, flowers, or small animals. She has described herself as "a baby freak.”

Anne was born in Queensland, Australia, on September 13, 1956, the third daughter in the family. Anne was raised on a vast 26,000-acre beef cattle property in North Queensland, Australia with her four sisters.

Growing up, she pored over magazines such as National Geographic and Life (her favorite), with their high values placed on the strength and quality of their photography. She loved images of people and remembers being fascinated by the concept of a single still image capturing an exact moment in time that could never be repeated.

When Anne was 17 she worked for a chain of hotels in New Zealand which enabled her to travel oversees for the first time. She documented her adventures with hundreds of photos; she was honing her skills and learning to appreciate the different qualities of natural light. When she was 22 she took a job at a local TV Station in Brisbane where she met her future husband Kel Geddes, the station’s program director. They married in Hong Kong in 1983.

She started a portrait business in Hong Kong and when they moved back to Sydney, Australia two years later, they welcomed their first daughter in 1984. Anne started doing portraits from their home and eventually she opened her own studio.

In 1988, Anne’s image of Gemma, a little girl standing in a tutu, taken previously in her studio in Melbourne, became her first published photograph, appearing in a local magazine in Auckland. The magazine feature on Anne and her photography and this image of Gemma created an interest in what was at the time a very different style of portraiture. After a short (“harrowing” in her words) experience as a wedding photographer, Anne decided to specialize in children’s portraiture, working out of her tiny new studio, Especially Kids, in Auckland.

Anne’s portraiture business was thriving, and in 1990, she decided to take one day a month to explore her inspirations and create an image purely for herself. The first and second images from these personal shoots were “Joshua” and “Rhys and Grant,” twins who became known as her “Cabbage Kids”—one of her most recognized photographs around the world.

In 1992, Annes husband Kel left his highly successful career as Network President of Programming for Australia’s Channel 10 and became Anne’s business partner, and the first Anne Geddes card collection was introduced in New Zealand, becoming an instant success. Anne placed 1st in two sections at the AGFA Photokina in Germany, among other awards and accolades. It was this level of professional recognition, coupled with a request to help raise money for the prevention of child abuse, and the success of Anne’s greeting cards that led to thoughts of producing a calendar.

It was ten years between the time Anne first photographed friends’ babies in Hong Kong and the publication of the first Anne Geddes calendar, released in New Zealand in 1992. When she was approached about increasing awareness of the prevention of child abuse, Anne recalled the shadow of her own emotionally barren childhood; this first opportunity to reach a wider audience with her images went hand-in-hand with her desire to help others and support children, the most vulnerable in our society. Anne and Kel were unable to attract a publisher and distributor, so they sold the calendar door-to-door from the back of their car and in camera store outlets, collecting more than US $20,000 to help prevent child abuse and neglect. Their charitable giving formed the basis for what later became the nonprofit Geddes Philanthropic Trust.

Her artistry continued to develop and Anne explored new expressions of her deeply held belief that we must protect, nurture, and love all children. In 1998, she and Kel formally founded the Geddes Philanthropic Trust and inaugurated the first Geddes Fellowship, a program to fund a dedicated primary physician concentrating in the identification, treatment, and research of child abuse and neglect—in this instance at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Sydney, Australia.

Continuing their charitable giving, more than $83,400 from the Geddes Philanthropic Trust was donated in 2005 to the UNICEF South Asia Tsunami Relief Effort. Following Hurricane Katrina in the U.S., Anne and Kel provided more than 20,000 items of Anne Geddes Baby clothing to benefit the babies affected.

In May 2011, the Geddes Philanthropic Trust was presented with the prestigious Award of Founder by the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children to honor the significant impact the Trust continues to have on the lives of children with serious illnesses, and for donations to the Westmead Children’s Hospital through the Geddes Fellowship Program started in 1999. Anne and Kel are now adding to the Trust's scope by assisting in maternal welfare in the many countries where childbirth is still a major issue regarding the health and wellbeing of both mother and child.

Today, Anne's award-winning images have been published in 83 countries spanning North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, South America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Her books have sold more than 18 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 24 languages.

Annes work is beautiful and just simply makes you smile but the fact that she has a passion for helping babies and mothers only makes her more awesome.