Lori Pappas and the Global Team for Local Initiative
Our Program on Tuesday, June 6th was Rotarian Lori Pappas who spoke to us about the GTLI – Global Team for Local Initiative. Lori explained that after retirement she got restless and in her travels she came across the Hamar people and children in the extreme SW corner of Ethiopia. She witnessed wide spread famine, unsafe water supplies, tribal wars and conflicts due to loss of grazing land because of government and corporate oil exploitation. She knew she had to do something that would help these people to survive and adjust to their changing existence. Thus she started GTLI which has as its motto “Outer behavior follows the path of the inner mind” results in a change in human behavior. In other words, what could she do to help these people survive and for those acts to be self-sustaining. With the help of some major companies and a dozen Rotary Clubs all over the World the GTLI has made a great impact in the past three years. They have enabled 302 community members to be trained to become future leaders. Now 21,000 people have access to clean water wells that are locally maintained and self-sustained. Healthy hygiene and proper sanitation are being taught and local people (41%) have gone from open field defecation to pit latrine use; and now 4,000 people have a local rural trading center rather than a two day walk to market. The training of women has been the key to getting things moving in Hamar and GTLI has founded an orphanage to train these children to have a written language that will enable them to become the future leaders of their people.