Comments from Heather Wood Ion

Comments from Heather Wood Ion

I hope we will all be inspired by the redwoods to think in the long term. Iraq is the current drama and the current challenge for all positive thinkers, but it is only one of the areas I hope our dreams and desires will include. There are many patterns of resilience and uplift to contribute wisdom to other communities. For instance:

	USAID says there will be over 44 million orphans world wide by the end of this decade.[1]
	In the time since the Iraq war began on March 19, approximately 675,000 have died of infectious disease.
	Three thousand children per day die of malaria.
	Many households now are headed by children.
	In the past, orphans have lost families due to war or a short-term famine or epidemic. Now with the global pandemics of HIV/AIDS, and drug-resistant malaria and tuberculosis, we have instead a chronic and cross-generational issue.
	Many people are describing the infectious disease epidemics—300 million illnesses and more than 5 million deaths each year—in terms of GDP and economic loss, not in terms of potential human loss.
	Many policy makers are discussing the infectious disease epidemics in terms of the costs of intervention, prevention, treatment and cure, not in terms of people.
	All of these epidemics can be prevented or treated for between $.05 and $10 per person

May we therefore dedicate our time to dreams and designs of systemic uplift and the resilience we need to support no matter what the issue. How can we help orphans, or survivors of war, to dream for themselves? How can we understand the strengths these children and their communities have shared as they have learned to survive? What is the best way to show our reverence of the potential we do not want to see unnecessarily lost? How can we use what we dream, what we imagine, to build an infrastructure in areas of need so that people there can dream or imagine a better world for themselves?

We are able to live in a country with freedoms from and freedoms for, because of the strengths of refugees and immigrants and pioneers. What are the truths we can share from this rich experience with other refugees and those who are now pioneering in other countries? How can our electronic tools and connectivity contribute to the long-term, sustainable and humane destiny we are trying to imagine?

Thanks for your attention.

[1] Report to Durban International AIDS Conference “Children on the Brink”, 2002