Rotorua woman helping make a difference

Rotorua-born and bred Shona Jennings gave up her life as a magazine editor to run programmes to help those in Third World countries. She talks to reporter Abigail Hartevelt about her role as programmes manager for ChildFund New Zealand and her recent time in Kenya.

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After many years in the media industry, Rotorua-born and bred Shona Jennings had satisfied her desire to work in a creative field.

She decided she wanted a job which built on her values. Shona has just returned from a two week stint in Kenya in her role as programmes manager for ChildFund New Zealand.

So how did the former Mamaku Primary School pupil and Western Heights High School head girl change from a career in magazines to helping Third World countries?

Go back to the 1990s and Shona was at the helm of the then MORE magazine and MORE Fashion and also did a stint as associate editor for Fashion Quarterly.

''Putting togetheramagazine each month really satisfied my urge to work in something creative. But after some years, I realised I had a stronger compulsion-to find a job that built upon my values.''

The tipping point for her, she says, was a story they ran in MORE about young girls in Thailand who were being sold into prostitution. Shona says she went to Thailand to see for herself what level of desperation would drive parents to sell their daughters.

On her return to New Zealand she studied a post graduate diploma followed by a Masters in Development Studies.

While studying she lived in Papua New Guinea, where she also did tourism consultancy work for World Wildlife Fund.

''I remember taking my 2-year-old daughter way up river into the bush and suddenly realising how naive I was. It dawned on me that if anything should happen to her there was no way I could get help-and the risks were many for a small child in such a crocodile and mosquito-infested place. I kept remembering the statistic: that every 30 seconds a child dies from malaria. That's daily life for the people who live there and in many other parts of the world.''

Shona says her experiences in Thailand and Papua New Guinea made her appreciate the issues facing children living in poverty.

Between 2008 and 2010 Shona also spent time with her husband Stephen Knight-Lenihan and daughter Annie in

South Africa, where she worked for the Eastern Cape NGO Coalition-a kind of umbrella organisation that has a role to build capacity for about 160 smaller organisations working in everything from HIV and Aids to land issues, and gardening to small income generating projects.

Last November she became the programmes manager for ChildFund New Zealand and recently returned from Kenya where the organisation has been working since 2006. She was in Emali, about two hours south-east of Nairobi.

Emali, along with other parts of Kenya and what's known as the Horn of Africa, has just been through one of the worst droughts in 60 years.

''It was devastating to see that while the emergency aid sent by New Zealanders and others in 2011 has been immensely helpful in curbing the urgency of this situation and has saved lives, the communities are still struggling

and face another dry season ahead.''

Already this year's rains are proving insufficient and they re bracing for another drought and the domino effect this will have on access to food.

Shona says as they drove into the area, she could see red-earth fields on either side of the road. They looked like

they were maize fields that had just been harvested with a few dry stalks remaining here and there.

''It was pretty shocking to realise that it was the dead remains of spindly crops that had grown only so high, and then shrivelled because of lack of rain. So obviously there'd been no harvest for people that year-and that meant no food.''

She says Emali is an interesting place.

''On one side of the road you have the Akamba people who grow crops, on the other side the Maasai who rear cows and goats. Both suffered. The crops died through lack of rain and the animals died from lack of food and accessible water.

''One woman I spoke to started with a herd of 30 cows before the drought; now her family was down to just six.''

She says there is a constant fear and struggle to keep children healthy and fed.

''Some families had to walk 14km every day to get water. We really can't fathom what it's like to be in that situation-having to draw water for our family fromamuddy spring that's used by animals, that we've had to trek several hours to reach.''

Children often fetch the water and so they miss out on school because their priority is getting water to survive. She says she saw children, weighed down with heavy water containers, lugging them for miles back to their homes.

''It really is a sight that confirms why I am in this job and why I believe in what ChildFund is doing.''

ChildFund's main focus in Emali is two-fold: education and establishing more water points offering safe and clean water for people and their animals as this is what people in the community have identified as their most important needs.

Part of the reason she was there was to officially open pre-schools and some of the water points ChildFund has already established.

ChildFund is working with the local authorities to dig wells, build small sand dams and install pipes to divert water from far away to villages.

Mostly, the digging work and labour is done by the people in the community because they also want to contribute to the solution.

This infrastructure is a vital next step to enable these communities to become more resilient and survive in the face of a worsening climatic change.

Once in place, these communities will be better equipped to weather dry spells and able to free up children from water duties and instead send them to school, Shona says.

As a start to solving the problem, the organisation's goal for the next six months is to build one bore hole, two wells, two dams and install 7km of piping to provide thousands of people with clean water. This will require about $139,000 of support from New Zealand.

Shona says her Kenya trip was a moving experience.

''The thing that really brought home to me the impact of the drought on children was watching them eat the maize-meal porridge that ChildFund provides to children through the schools.

''The children ate with a care and intensity that I'd never witnessed before. You could tell that this food was precious. Eating was a serious business.''

Shona says it is important people understand that through sponsorship Kiwis not only commit to supporting a particular child but that child's community.

''When I was in Kenya recently, I asked some mothers what they thought about sponsorship. They said they liked the fact that someone in New Zealand was thinking about their child, and could write to them and make them feel

valued.''

She says it is important for sponsors to write letters to children.

''In every community where we work, there's a team of volunteers earnestly walking or cycling to every child to deliver those notes from New Zealand sponsors.''

She says being a representative from New Zealand was humbling as people there do attribute the changes that have been made to New Zealand.

Shona talks of one place where a someone spoke of how grateful they were for New Zealand's assistance.

The speaker said: ''When you go back to New Zealand, tell the people there and show the pictures. Tell them how much this community appreciate them. I can recall that you had a disaster recently [the Canterbury earthquake] and, despite our problems, we were even thinking about how we could help you.

We were surprised when the people of New Zealand added even more support.''

As for Shona's future travel plan with ChildFund, she is planning to head to Sri Lanka where the organisation's

focus is helping a community that is recovering from several years of civil war, the 2004 tsunami and, more recently, floods.

''Seriously, we don't know how lucky we are.''

? You can donate to ChildFund's Water for Life appeal at childfund.org.nz or by phoning 0800 808 822. Every drop

counts.