By Mark Dreger
Despite the snow and cold, men and women came out to participate in Âé¶čAVâs annual Walk In Her Shoes event in Mission Creek Park to celebrate International Womenâs Day on Sunday.
âWhat weâre doing here today is weâre walking 10,000 steps and itâs to walk in solidarity with women and girls around the worldâmostly in developing countriesâthat have to walk 10,000 stepsâor 6 to 7 kilometresâa day just to get the basics, so firewood, water, and food,â said Wendy Wright, the Volunteer Event Chair for Walk In Her Shoes. âWalk In Her Shoes is doing events not just here in Âé¶čAV, but (Sunday) they were also in Vancouver and Calgary, and later on in the week theyâre in Edmonton.â
Participants also had the opportunity to wear weighted baskets on their heads to get a taste of what it feels like to carry water during the long walk.
âOne of the things that we want to do is promote awareness,â Wright said. âItâs not just about fundraisingâI mean obviously we want to be raising funds to help these women and girlsâbut itâs not just about that. Itâs raising awareness of what continues to occur in our global community, and if we can help and raise one woman out of poverty itâs said that she takes four other people with her.â
Renye Lebel and Paul Maarschalk, who both took a trip to a mud hut village in Zimbabwe, got a firsthand look at the troubles families go through carrying water long distances to and from their homes.
â[Young women] were sitting beside this table, this plastic table with all these huge buckets, like five gallon drum buckets,â Lebel recollected, âand I asked the woman, âwhat are all those buckets for?â and she said âwell thatâs where we get our water. Thatâs what us women do: We put it on our heads and go to the well and bring back the water.â So I say, âyou got to haul all these heavy, big jugs? How far is it?â And 6 kilometres they had to walk. And thatâs just to get your water. They were obviously very clean and conscientious and I just thought, âwow, thatâs going to take a lot of water.â So itâs just stuck with me.â
According to the United Nations, Zimbabwe ranks 154th in the world on the Human Development Index with Canada ranked 10th.
âI asked her why they didnât have running water,â Maarschalk said, âbecause there is a pipe that runs not very far from them that they would be able to connect up to, but I think it was going to cost them something like $12,000 to get connected up to the water. Thatâs a lot of money there.â
Walk In Her Shoes is sponsored by Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) that operates in 94 countries on six continents fighting global poverty to improve basic health and education, and increase access to clean water to name a few. Funds raised from Walk In Her Shoes will be directed to support CAREâs efforts to improve the nutrition of women and children in Southern Africa.
âWouldnât it be a beautiful thing if everyone in this world had access to clean running water that they didnât have to spend half their day getting?â Lebel said. âTo me itâs just a basic entitlement that we all need to survive. Youâd like to see these families be able to live an easier life, right?â
According to the World Bank, Zimbabweâs GDP per capita was $590US in 2008, but rose to $908US in 2016.
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