by Brooke Bunch

The third benefit dinner and raffle for the Kenyan Children’s Fund will take place 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 13, in 199 Irvine Hall. The Kenyan Children’s Fund is a group of students and faculty organizations dedicated to supporting children orphaned by the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Kenya.

The funds raised at the benefit dinner — as well as through the sale of green rubber-band bracelets with the slogan, “One Band, One Love, One Chance” — will be used to purchase school books for 600 orphaned children, according to Gillian Ice, Ph.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of social medicine.

“Students are required to purchase textbooks to go to school,” Ice says. “The books generally cost between $5 and $25. These orphans have few family members left to support them and those family members that they do have — generally grandparents — have very few resources, most make less than $12 a month.”

Proceeds will also go toward the purchase of school uniforms for roughly 150 children who were recently orphaned.

“Rather than just handing the money over to someone else, we will purchase the uniforms and books and deliver them ourselves,” Ice says. “I take the money and purchase the items and individually hand them to the children.”

The dinner will feature a video, produced by Ohio University’s Global Learning Community students, which highlights interviews with Ice and OU-COM medical students on the importance of the Kenyan Children’s Fund. A dance will be performed by Sankofa.

A raffle will top off the evening, complete with donations from 23 area businesses, as well as Music City in Nashville and the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, and prizes ranging from pizza to weekend stays at various hotels. Raffle prizes are provided by local businesses.

Last year the benefit dinner raised nearly $4,000, allowing the purchase of 450 school uniforms for orphans in the western Kenyan area. Ice says they are aiming to raise $6,000 to purchase textbooks for 600 children and school uniforms for 100 children who did not receive the uniforms last year.

“Uniforms are required for attendance,” Ice says. “Last year, many students were able to re-enroll in school after we provided them with uniforms.”

Suggested donations for the dinner are $5 for students and $10 for faculty, staff and community members. Tickets for the dinner and the raffle can be purchased in advance by contacting Ice at (740) 593-2128, or from Cheri McFee, 304 Grosvenor Hall. The “One Love” bracelets can be purchased in campus dining halls at $2 each, or three for $5.

Kenya is one of the nine countries most affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and World Health Organization (UNAIDS/WHO). A report by UNAIDS/WHO in 2000 estimated there were 2.1 million Kenyans infected and that more than one-half million children had been orphaned as a result of deaths from AIDS.

The dinner and raffle are cosponsored by the fund, National Osteopathic Women Physicians Association, Student Osteopathic Medical Association, International Medicine Club, Department of Social Medicine, Pediatrics Club and the Institute for the African Child.