{"id":32988,"date":"2023-04-27T19:54:56","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T23:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=32988"},"modified":"2023-04-27T19:54:58","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T23:54:58","slug":"granaurora-wont-rest-until-grandmothers-in-africa-can-do-the-same","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/granaurora-wont-rest-until-grandmothers-in-africa-can-do-the-same\/","title":{"rendered":"GranAurora won\u2019t rest until grandmothers in Africa can do the same"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cWe will not rest until they can rest,\u201d has been the motto for a group of local grandmothers for decades as they work tirelessly to lend financial aid and a helping hand to grandmothers in Africa caring for their grandchildren orphaned by HIV\/AIDS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That has been the mission of GranAurora since its inception as the local chapter of Grandmothers to Grandmothers, an initiative of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, and it\u2019s a mission that will be renewed post-COVID through song next month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On May 28, GranAurora will host the Toronto Welsh Male Voice Choir at Newmarket\u2019s Bethel Community Church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The event will be not just a concert, but an opportunity to continue their outreach within the community to help support women abroad support their grandkids through donations and also create lasting social capital through start-up funds for women-owned businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHIV-AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is really under the radar now when it was quite a top story,\u201d says Grandmother Cathy Gross. \u201cAbout 7,000 young girls between the ages of 15 and 24 [are] infected with HIV\/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa every week. It is still a really, really difficult problem. 11 million children since the AIDS pandemic began have lost at least one parent. Our motto since the beginning is we will not rest until they can rest \u2013 and we can\u2019t rest. That\u2019s the over-arching theme we want people to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She describes the Grandmothers to Grandmothers movement as \u201csenior women holding hands\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grandmother Catherine Whittingham says the money they raise goes to the Stephen Lewis Foundation which has specific targets to meet to support grandmothers and bolster education for the kids. This can include funding to build a new school, money directly to the people to purchase HIV medications and treatments, and grants directly to the grandmothers so they can lay the foundation for sustainable businesses of their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey can become self-sufficient and down the road they may not require our funding,\u201d says Grandmother Lenore Pressley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But funding is still very much needed and the May 28 concert will help them towards their annual goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, the concert itself was initially planned for early 2020 but the global pandemic forced those plans onto the backburner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the intervening three years, the group has kept momentum going over Zoom and has continued to flourish when some other groups with similar missions lost steam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThroughout COVID, our members who are craftswomen continued to make amazing things and we had sales, we continued to raise money which, to my mind, was incredible,\u201d says Catherine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adds Grandmother Moira O\u2019Bryan: \u201cIt was quite interesting during the pandemic because we did have some craft sales out in my backyard, weather permitting, and then we brought it in when it was safe to do so, and we even had to have people arrive to a schedule because we couldn\u2019t have more than a couple of people in the house at one time. It was quite an undertaking, actually, but did we make it work? We did it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a testament to the Grandmothers\u2019 determination but they know they can\u2019t keep doing it on their own. As the concert date approaches, they\u2019re working hard to underscore the work they do and to bring new members into the fold. One doesn\u2019t have to be a grandmother to be a member; it can be any woman of any age. Men looking to be a part of the cause have their own titles \u2013 Gran-\u201cothers\u201d \u2013 and are very much rowing in the same direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re an aging population in GranAurora and we\u2019re looking to have new members, so if anyone in the audience is thinking of joining a group like ours, we would welcome them to come forward and contact us,\u201d says O\u2019Bryan. \u201cWe\u2019re really looking for new members and some fresh ideas for fundraising and all members are welcome to join and support us grandmothers supporting grandmothers in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the things we would like people to take with them [after the concert] is we\u2019re all struggling right now with inflation, the cost of everything, and we have families who are struggling to feed their children and things like that; that is happening even more so in places like Africa. If we could only imagine what those mothers are going through, not only to nurture these children \u2013 and some of them from babies, and some of them are born HIV-positive \u2013 they have to make sure they have a way to get these children to clinics, wherever they might be. They have to make sure they have the money to get these children the medications, as well as feeding and clothing them. For all that we\u2019re struggling with here, it\u2019s tenfold in places like sub-Saharan Africa. It\u2019s the idea that we\u2019re coming together and enjoying this wonderful music, taking away the thought that maybe we can help a little bit \u2013 today by getting a ticket, attending a concert, we have helped a grandmother raise her grandchild.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information on GranAurora, visit granaurora.ca. For tickets, email info@granaurora.ca.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe will not rest until they can rest,\u201d has been the motto for a group of local grandmothers for decades as they work tirelessly to lend financial aid and a helping hand to grandmothers in Africa caring for their grandchildren orphaned by HIV\/AIDS. That has been the mission of GranAurora since its inception as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":32989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/2023-04-27-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8A4","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 06:30:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}