Women Helping Women
Lansdowne mother-daughter team raising funds for mission to help Sudanese women and children.
By Mike DiCicco
February 20, 2008

Jessica Edivan, a Radford University student from Lansdowne, was only looking for someplace to volunteer on Christmas day when she stumbled on the Sudan-Reach Women's Foundation Web site. The organization, sponsored by the nonprofit International Humanities Center, is in its fourth year but was launching its first volunteer mission, in which a handful of American women would be brought into Sudan to work with refugee women and children for two weeks this May.

  
Sudan was the country that Edivan, 21, had recently chosen to study for her history class. She wasn’t sure how her parents would react when she proposed that she volunteer for the trip. "I was expecting them to be like, ‘I don’t know, isn’t that dangerous?’" said Edivan. Instead, her mother asked to come along.

  
"I didn’t hesitate. I just said, ‘Can I go?’ like we were going to the mall," said Dori Edivan. "I’ve always wanted to go to Africa." Her father, a former White House photographer, had visited the continent many times and brought back exciting stories. She said she had been concerned that she might be stepping on her daughter’s toes, but Jessica Edivan welcomed the idea.
  
While in Sudan, the group of about eight to 10 female volunteers will travel with Sudan-Reach personnel to visit schools, orphanages, camps of refugees from Darfur and a women’s clinic in and around the capital city of Khartoum, said Sudan-Reach founder and director Loloa Ibrahim. The work, she said, will range from teaching to making repairs, to medical assistance and playing with children. Depending on the trip’s success, a second mission will likely be scheduled in January.

 
Jessica Edivan, who is majoring in early childhood education, said she hopes to do some work with young children, while her mother, a former emergency medical technician volunteer, plans to put her skills to work at the clinic.

  
"We’re taking people from all backgrounds, but we’re going to try to match people’s interests as closely as we can," said Ibrahim.

 
She said Sudan-Reach decided to start bringing volunteers into the country not only to provide assistance, but also to create an understanding of Sudan’s culture and the difficulties its citizens face. "Sudan is one of those places that just has remained mysterious to the outside world," she said.

 
Among the most daunting problems facing Sudanese women in particular is a lack of education, said Ibrahim, noting that poorer families tend to pull daughters from school if they cannot afford to send all their children. They also frequently marry off their daughters at a young age in order to lighten the burden on the household, she said. As a result, many of the women who have fled the massacres in Darfur are young and have several children but lack the education to support them.
"They’re going through a period of war where rape is used as a weapon," Jessica Edivan pointed out. "So we’re going to be dealing with some issues that are very sensitive."

BEFORE LEAVING for Radford, Jessica Edivan took care of a boy in her Lansdowne neighborhood who has diabetes and for the last few years, she has staged annual fund-raisers in her yard for organizations that combat juvenile diabetes. She said she hoped the friends and neighbors who had supported her previous fund-raisers would contribute to her mission in Sudan. However, the former Northern Virginia Community College student said her relocation to southern Virginia had made it harder to solicit donations among her neighbors. "Normally, I’m home and babysitting and working with the neighborhood kids," she said.
Her mother said she had sought corporate sponsorship from a couple of companies that are run by women, but she had not yet received any responses. Dori Edivan also said contributions of summer clothing for women and children would be as important as monetary donations, as clothes are sorely needed by Darfurian refugees. "A lot of them left their village with whatever they had on their backs," she said.

  
Of the four suitcases the mother and daughter are allowed to bring on the plane, they hope to pack three with clothing and other donations, reserving just one for their own belongings, said Dori Edivan.

  
The trip to Sudan will be the first international flight either woman has taken. "I was on a plane for the first time like two summers ago," said Jessica Edivan.

 
Her mother said she planned to keep a detailed photo journal during their stay, so that those who contribute to the Edivans’ mission can see the work that was done and perhaps even Sudanese beneficiaries wearing the clothes they donated.

  
"I really feel like we’re going to come out a lot different," said Jessica Edivan.
Her mother agreed. "We will help them and they will help us. Without even realizing it, they’ll open our eyes to a whole new world."