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Healing African Povertyby Michelle Martin
This is exactly what happened to 21-year-old Dorothy after she met Yvonne Poulin, a massage therapist from Victoria travelling in Kenya. Dorothy is not the first person whose life has been touched by Poulin. And Poulin contends she won't be the last. "Now that I know that I can do it, I want to change 30 lives," she said. Poulin strives to reduce poverty and empower youth, women, and disabled persons through African Touch, the community organization she founded in Kenya and recently registered as a non-profit society in Canada. This project first emerged in 2002 after Poulin came to two revelations after experiencing the tragedy of 9/11 and the untimely deaths of her mother and best friend. "Life is short and the world is crazy," she said. "I know I had to do something." She sold her Victoria-based massage therapy clinic and bought an around-the-world plane ticket. After working with the handicapped in Mexico, Poulin found that "something" in a rural village off the coast of Tanzania. A former teacher at the West Coast College of Massage Therapy in Victoria, Poulin trained five woman who made their living giving therapeutic massages to tourists on the beach. After the women completed the program, she made them certificates and they were immediately able to charge a client twice as much for a massage. "They felt so good about themselves," she said. "I realized I could take them from barely surviving to supporting themselves. I had my own little epiphany. I had found it." Poulin continued on her journey to Kenya with a clear vision. She set up a massage clinic in Nairobi and conducted a pilot massage therapy training project with four students. One of those students was Dorothy. Poulin trained the students from her apartment in Nairobi and apprenticed them at her clinic. Two of the four graducated. When it came time for Poulin to return to Victoria, she handed over her Nairobi business to Dorothy. The pilot project proved a market for therapeutic massage (distinctive from the prevalent relaxation massage that can border on prostitution) in Nairobi does, in fact, exist. Now that Poulin is back in Canada, working at Back in Line Chiropractic and Massage in the Munro Centre, she is starting to get the Massage Academy Project organized from here. She plans to train 30 students - selected from among members of the blind community in Nairobi and the residential slum of Kibera - in therapeutic massage, life skills and HIV/AIDS awareness. But she doesn't want to stop there. Once those 30 students are established, she plans to implement the successful template throughout Africa, constantly moving so as not to flood the market with massage therapists. "These are the kinds of projects that really make a difference," she said. Some other training programs only provide the skills for a life at the poverty level, but with this, she said, "the sustainability and ripple effect is greater." For now, she is looking for support from the local community, both with funding and with in-kind help. For more information, visit www.africantouch.org or call Yvonne at 472-6633.
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You are a young unemployed woman living in poverty in a slum in Kenya. One day, a Canadian changes the course of your life forever by teaching you a skill that earns you not only enough to survive but enough to thrive. Within months, you're earning four times the poverty level. You own a small apartment and are engaged, happy and running a massage therapy business.