December 13, 2009 - VIK KIRSCH

GUELPH — A group of Guelph students is trying to make a difference in the lives of citizens of a small south African nation, and the public can help.

They are working on a youth-focused documentary and hope to receive funding from Aviva Canada’s recently launched $500,000 community fund. A variety of community projects are vying in a competition for proposals and anyone can vote through the insurance firm’s contest website: www.avivacommunityfund.org. [You can vote for Reach Lesotho's idea by clicking here!]

“We have a responsibility here to help others elsewhere,” Abid Virani, co-founder and director of Student Reach International, said Sunday.

Simply called Hopeful Documentary, the video is intended to inspire students across Canada to raise $25 million to combat HIV and AIDS in Lesotho, an effort called Reach Lesotho.

It taps students both in Canada and the African nation through a common cause.

“Youth are making a difference,” said Virani, a Guelphite currently studying international development at McGill University in Montreal.

Reach Lesotho will raise awareness through the video documentary highlighting Guelph-based Dr. Anne-Marie Zajdlik’s Bracelet of Hope campaign, which to date has raised more than $1 million for AIDS relief in Lesotho from sale of the bracelets.

Student Reach International is teaching an initial dozen Guelph high school students to take leadership roles in humanitarian and development projects here and in the developing world. At the end of the year-long program, they will travel to Lesotho in 2011 to participate with youths there in development projects, essentially serving as ambassadors for the Bracelet of Hope campaign.

With the help of the documentary to be created in the months ahead, for which preliminary work has begun, they will return to Canada to urge as many as five million students across the country to wear Bracelets of Hope, which are handmade by women in Africa.

While in Lesotho, the dozen Guelph students from Centennial, Guelph and John F. Ross collegiates will be working with counterpart secondary school students there on a variety of projects such as tree planting, said Virani, a Centennial Collegiate graduate whose family lives in Guelph.

Virani said the video won’t have a negative tone, lamenting the harsh reality of life in Lesotho, but will accent the positive change that development work is doing there. It will show how lives can be changed for the better. Continue reading...

Reach Lesotho applicants took some time after an Amazing Race on Saturday, November 21st, to participate in the filming of a short promotional video for the Box of Hope Campaign. The script was written by Co-Founder Abid Virani and the film was Directed by Prionnsias James Murphy, "It's Hope" aims at showing that students can inspire hope!

Reach Lesotho is an academic program designed by Student Reach International. The purpose of the program is to take twelve students from the City of Guelph, provide them to opportunity to learn about global issues and then take them to Lesotho to work side-by-side with their youth counterparts. Throughout their experience, a video documentary is being created to be used as an inspirational tool to put five million Bracelets of Hope on students across Canada.

Reach Lesotho has applied for a grant to fund the documentary through the AVIVA Community Fund. To be considered with other applications, we first must rank top twenty in a round of voting. You can vote once per day, per email address starting now. Please take a quick moment to VOTE!! Remember to bookmark the page and vote everyday for the next twelve days!

To view television coverage of the Reach Lesotho launch event, click here!
To see pictures from high ropes training, click here!
To read the blogs of our applicants, click here!

Please join our facebook group and invite your friends to vote by clicking here!.