Return to story

Teacher's organization to fight against malaria

June 2, 2006 4:50 am

By MELISSA NIX

Eleven years after being helped out of poverty, Darius Coulibaly hasn't stopped thinking about how to help others.

Coulibaly, a special education teacher at Chancellor High School, founded his own nonprofit organization, Empowering the Poor, a year ago.

For Coulibaly, everything is connected.

"I grew up poor," the Ivory Coast native said. "At times we had one or two meals a day--not always three."

Tomorrow, he hopes local residents and businesses will turn out en masse for his Race/Walk Against Malaria. The Loriella Park event will raise funds to fight the disease in sub-Saharan Africa.

"Every 30 seconds, a child dies from malaria in Africa. Three thousand children are dying each and every day," Coulibaly writes on the Empowering the Poor Web site. "We are blessed to live in a country where malaria has been eradicated centuries ago, and healthcare resources are readily available."

Coulibaly looks forward to tomorrow's race and encourages businesses to participate.

While he's grateful for individual participation, businesses often have more leverage, he explained in a phone interview Tuesday.

His goal is to raise $5,000 to help Thon, a small village of 1,000 people in the Ivory Coast. The people of Thon are subsistence farmers who cannot afford resources to fight malaria.

According to the World Health Organization, malaria is an infection caused by a parasite. It is carried from person to person by mosquitoes. It kills more than 1 million people--most of them young children living in Africa--each year.

In July, with the money raised from the race, Coulibaly and a volunteer team will bring treated bed nets and doses of ACT, an antimalarial drug, to Thon.

Bed nets cost $5.

"The villagers live on under $1 a day--some people less than that. They cannot afford it," Coulibaly said.

He and his team will provide the first set of bed nets for free.

However, Coulibaly said he doesn't believe in giving things away for free continuously.

It's better to empower the poor, women especially.

Women who attend 80 percent of an Empowering the Poor program of literacy and health-care classes will be eligible for a microfinance loan, he said.

The World Bank defines microfinance loans as small loans that help poor people start or expand small businesses. Microfinance candidates often cannot get regular banks to lend to them.

With their earnings, Thon's women will be able to purchase bed nets. The price will be affordable, around 5 cents, Coulibaly posed.

He began his anti-malaria strategy a few months ago. In April, two doctors and African ETP staff members visited Thon to assess residents' needs. Coulibaly paid for the assessment with his own money--around $1,500.

He described a village without running water or electricity and a population that cannot read. The visiting doctors provided a free checkup--the first time many in Thon had received any medical care.

People must travel miles by foot to reach a hospital, sometimes walking all day.

This first step in helping the people of Thon will be part of a continuum, Coulibaly explained.

"ETP is not only focused on the Cote D'Ivoire," he said, "but rather, all across Africa."

Next summer, he hopes to visit Zimbabwe to assess HIV and AIDS' impact on rural communities there.

Coulibaly, who is 28, left the Ivory Coast when he was 17.

"The number of dead--every day was a funeral. It's still in the back of my head," he said. "There was always a war, schools were closed."

As a teenager, he decided to try for a future.

Coulibaly researched four Roman Catholic High Schools in the United States and wrote each one a letter asking for help.

Before he sent each letter, he would go to church to pray.

"I put the letter at Jesus' feet," he said, and asked for God's help. "I just want to have a chance to have a future and one day help those who are struggling.

"Somehow God worked a miracle and I ended up in America out of the blue."

St. John's in Frederick, Md., welcomed him, free of charge.

He later won a scholarship to Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. Coulibaly earned a bachelor's degree in human organizational development and a master's in economic development, both from Vanderbilt.

He tells his Chancellor High School students, many of whom struggle emotionally and academically, to "take advantage of what's before you, turn around and bless someone else. That's what life is about."

To reach MELISSA NIX: 540/374-5418
Email: mnix@freelancestar.com