REACH LA NEWS

REACH LA Executive Director Martha Chono-Helsley returned from a unique multi-country exchange program called Global XChange, sponsored by the British Council and Volunteer Services Overseas. Martha and REACH LA was selected to be one of four organizations representing Los Angeles who focus on youth development. In total, 25 individuals from Los Angeles, Rwanda, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Paris and Belfast participated in work placement and best practice sharing opportunities in Durban, South Africa and Belfast, Northern Ireland over two three-week stays. “The opportunity to meet and share our work with so many diverse people was amazing. We shared life stories - our Rwandan teammates had lost entire families to genocide, the Sierra Leone team live in the aftermath of tribal disputes and uncertain economic future and our South African and Belfast teammates shared their experiences with huge cultural shifts like apartheid and “the Troubles” - the experience really showed me how insular we are here in America,” said Chono-Helsley, “but we have common elements as well. There was a sense of hopelessness among the young people - no jobs, limited or no education, and poverty were common among each community. As a learning experience, the exchange of shared practice and personal experience gave our GX team a global perspective about social issues effecting youth but it didn’t provide the time to brainstorm together about how to overcome these globally. We needed more time for deeper conversations.” During the Global XChange placement, participants lived with host families and worked for local programs, organizations and agencies. Martha worked for INK (Inanda, Ntuzuma and KwaMashu Townships), an agency of the Municipality of Durban that works on urban renewal. She spent a week conducting assessments of INK funded projects throughout the townships of Inanda and KwaMashu where she visited an AIDS Hospice/Orphanage, an arts/media program site that ran it’s own radio station, a cottage industry project, a local health clinic, a youth peer-led sexual health education program and neighborhood AIDS resource support team. “The amount of resources and support needed in these communities is immense. Especially in the area of HIV/AIDS and care. The medications are available however people lack the resources to even feed themselves.” While on placement in Belfast, Martha worked with The Rainbow Project, the only gay/bisexual men’s resource center in Northern Ireland. The organization serves all of Northern Ireland and provides LGBT awareness training, mental health counseling services, crisis hotline, hate crime advocacy and HIV/AIDS prevention outreach. She helped develop the LGBT - Northern Ireland Resource on-line network during her brief tenure. Although the schedule was intense, there was time to take a 1-day trip to a game reserve outside of Durban, swim in the Indian Ocean, hit the local pubs in Belfast and take in an Belfast/African jam session along the way. “The best part was making these great friends along the way” said Chono-Helsley. Martha was accompanied by Los Angeles team members Andres Rivera (Street Poets), Jill Gurr (Create Now) and Mary Agulian (LA’s Best).