November 2009

By Karen Bliss

Dreamyz Loungewear sells some snazzy looking pajamas for men and women that will ensure you sleep well in more ways than one. Purchasers can rest easy that the online retailer is helping former Rwandan war victims in the village of Kimironko.

The Canadian company’s main objective, according to its web site, is “to help create a sustainable and compassionate work environment for the widows and orphans that survived the Rwanda Genocide of 1994.”  The civil war claimed the lives of an estimated 800,000 native Tutsis at the hands of the Hutus in just 100 days.

“I started this project first with the intent to help these women find a way out of poverty,” co-founder Johanne St. Louis tells Samaritanmag. “Before the community centre came into their lives, many of them were forced to beg and worse, just to feed their children. Now, they have all the services of the centre and so much more. They have community.”

The products — mainly organic cotton pajamas, but the site also lists handbags, jewelry, boxers and dresses — are hand-made exclusively in Kimironko. St. Louis runs the business out of a small Canadian town called Canningtonin, northeast of Toronto, in partnership with Ubuntu Edmonton, the charity which funds Centre César, the community centre where the women work.

By Kevin Shea

Sportsnet.ca describes Andrew Ference of the Boston Bruins as “Fearless. Displays terrific hockey sense. Can log a ton of icetime. Loves to hit.” He is a leader who takes care of his own end and looks out for his teammates. Off the ice, he extends that same leadership role to his fellow members in the National Hockey League Players’ Association (NHLPA) by making them aware of their environmental responsibility.

“As a hockey player, we travel to other cities to play other teams, and that adds up to a lot of air travel, and air travel is a huge emitter of carbon dioxide,” Ference, an Edmonton native, tells Samaritanmag. “Stuff you do to ‘go green’ is something I view as a responsibility, something you should do every day and make part of your life. I try to live my life responsibly and do the right things and the environment is always high on my priority list on how I make decisions about what I’m eating and what I’m buying.”

Ference’s awareness of the adverse relationship between professional sports and the health of the planet began when he joined the Calgary Flames in 2003 and had ongoing conversations with well-known environmental activist Dr. David Suzuki.

By Cori Ferguson

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton has helped change the lives of hundreds of millions since leaving office in January, 2001. Through his William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, he’s responsible for bringing affordable AIDS medication to 70 countries, supporting zero-emission residential, commercial and mixed-use developments around the world, building hospitals in Malawi, stemming childhood obesity in America, among other crucial initiatives.

During a speaking engagement at Toronto’s BMO Field late summer, the 42nd President of the United States not only outlined what his Foundation is doing and the problems it is facing, but how we as individuals can make a difference as well.

Samaritanmag.com’s Cori Ferguson was there to capture his thoughts.

CLIMATE CHANGE:
“The world that we live in is unsustainable because global warming is real. You may get a few years advantage out of a northwest passage when the ice around the North Pole falls, but if, in the end, we keep warming the planet the way we are, it’s going to upset agricultural patterns and it’s going to change the balance of life on earth in ways that will be absolutely calamitous. You can ask our friends in Australia. That’s the place that is most clearly experiencing the adverse impact of climate change. So that means that all of us that are not in a political position have to ask ourselves, number one, who do I want to vote for? It really matters who’s in government. For example, I’ve got a great climate change project, but I can’t give you a new agreement. Number two, you have to say, whatever business I’m in is there any way I can do it that it still makes money, that produces an equality and stability in the unsustainability caused by climate change? And number three, we should all be doing something like what I do with my foundation. If you give $1 a year to a local community project, you’re doing that; you’re creating a civil society.”