Main Feature

BY KIM HUGHES, www.samaritanmag.com

It is no exaggeration to say that being born "albino" in the East African nation of Tanzania is one of the unluckiest fates life can hand you. It's also fair to say that Canadian activist and philanthropist Peter Ash has done more to assist Tanzanians with albinism though advocacy, education, funding and sheer resolve than anyone else on the planet. 

In most parts of the world, albinism is seen for what it is: a congenital disorder characterized by the absence of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes due to the absence or defect of an enzyme involved in the production of melanin.

People with albinism ("albino" is considered derogatory, Ash says, and is slowly being replaced) are highly sensitive to sun, classified as legally blind (development of the optical system is highly dependent on the presence of melanin), but are otherwise correctly perceived as ordinary if striking-looking people with white hair and fair skin.

In Tanzania — thought to be the albinism's physiological ground zero where the rate of incidence is 10-times higher than in other countries, occurring in roughly one out of every 2,000 people — people with albinism (PWA) are perceived as inhuman: ghosts or the evil spawn of an African woman and a white man.

Often, a best-case scenario for a Tanzanian with albinism is discrimination or being ostracized, denied an education and treated as a freak. Worst case scenario? Murder or savage mutilation; the guerilla taking of body parts which command a dizzyingly high price (by African standards) on the black market.

BY JORDAN ADLER, www.samaritanmag.com

When M&M Meat Shops co-founder Mac Voisin decided that his frozen foods business would start donating to a little-known cause in 1989 -- less than a decade after he started M&M Meats with Mark Nowak -- he made what he calls "the big discovery." He found that Canada had the highest incidence per capita of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in the world.

"At that time, there were about 150,000 sufferers and [Canadians] raised next to nothing for research. So we said, 'Well, why don't they raise any money for research?' And [scientists] said, 'Well, no one will admit they have the disease.' So, if you don't admit you have the disease, there's no awareness. If there's no awareness, there will never be any money for research," Voisin tells Samaritanmag.

This "big discovery" led Voisin to start building awareness and raising funds for the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of Canada (CCFC). In 1989, M&M Meats hosted a charity BBQ day at around 50 of their Ontario locations. Volunteers grilled and handed out hot dogs and hamburgers in exchange for a small donation, and raised close to $50,000. That donation total doubled the next year.

Twenty-three years later, more than 450 M&M Meat Shops across Canada still barbeque to fund CCFC research that goes to finding a cure for IBD. M&M Meats has raised almost $23 million for the CCFC. This year's Charity BBQ Day will be held on Saturday, May 12, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at all M&M Meat Shops.

BY JIM SLOTEK, www.samaritanmag.com

A former member of the Black Power movement, and an usher at the funeral of the slain Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., actor Samuel L. Jackson has long been involved with Los Angeles-based Artists For A New South Africa (ANSA), a non-profit organization whose original mission was to end the white apartheid regime, but now tackles AIDS/HIV and various medical and rights issues in Africa and the U.S., particularly for children.

"We have AIDS initiatives and we dig wells for kids and families who have to travel long distances to get water and we build schools," Jackson tells Samaritanmag.

The 63-year-old Avengers star has made several trips to Africa to inspect ANSA's work and challenges. On his most recent trip to South Africa last August, he discovered, "a village with basically no adults, because of AIDS, a situation where food and caregivers have to be brought in."

According to ANSA's web site, Artists for a New South Africa works in the U.S. and South Africa "to combat HIV/AIDS, assist children orphaned by the disease, advance human and civil rights, educate and empower youth, and build bonds between our nations through arts, culture, and our shared pursuit of social justice."

ANSA's key accomplishments include raising more than $9 million for effective African nonprofits; the shipment of more than 70 tons of medical supplies and books to impoverished communities; and, since 2005, providing ongoing comprehensive care and services to more than 3,500 AIDS orphans and vulnerable children in South Africa, and is working on scaling up efforts to reach more of the country's three million orphans.

BY NICK KREWEN, www.samaritanmag.com

Members of the Canadian music industry now have somewhere to turn when they experience hard times.

Operating under the slogan "Created by the music community for the music community," The Unison Benevolent Fund (UBF) will eventually provide emergency relief for the estimated 12,800-strong Canadian music industry workforce that are self-employed or contract workers and aren't eligible for the benefits usually earned by salaried workers. .

However, UBF executive director Sheila Hamilton tells Samaritanmag the fund isn't quite operational, despite the generous contributions of several corporate and individual benefactors to the tune of $800,000.

"We're very close," says Hamilton, a former president and executive director of the Canadian Country Music Association. "We need $1 million in the endowment fund to really be operational."

Hamilton says the $1 million figure is the benchmark dollar amount set by the non-profit charity's board of directors for the endowment fund to start generating significant interest and become self-sufficient.

BY KAREN BLISS, www.samaritanmag.com

Guitarist-singer Brian "Head" Welch, who now fronts Love And Death, co-founded Californian nu metal band Korn in 1993, but the hard partying lifestyle left him addicted to methamphetamine and other drugs and alcohol. After getting clean and sober, he quit the multi-platinum-selling band in 2005, saying he wanted to devote his life to Christianity.

That did not mean giving up music, however, just conducting himself differently, which included wanting to give unto others.

Welch got a little carried away at first. One thing he contemplated was building skate parks for disadvantaged kids.

"Yeah, I was just off of drugs. I had entered this new life and I wanted to do everything," Welch tells Samaritanmag. "I wanted to be this saviour of the world. I would love to be involved in that, but I don't think it's on my radar of things to do."

One of the first charitable ventures he undertook was with Good News India, a Christian missionary organization which helps communities in Northern India by distributing food and clothing to the impoverished, furthering education, sponsoring orphaned or destitute children, and providing relief to people in the leper colonies. GNI does all this while heavily promoting evangelism and distributing bibles...

BY KIM HUGHES, www.samaritanmag.com

If the best way to de-stigmatize something is to boldly put it under people's noses, then Frances Darwin's Henna Heals is making conditional female baldness both acceptable and, perhaps improbably, kind of chic. 

The Toronto-based photographer's company provides a novel service: beautiful designs applied to the smooth skulls of cancer patients who've lost their hair due to chemotherapy using naturally sourced henna dyes.

The swirling, intricate drawings, which are safe, temporary and applied by skilled artists, command the eye to the head of the henna wearer, inspiring awe rather than pity while offering an alternative to wigs or hats.

Perhaps more importantly, these henna "crowns" offer women suffering hair loss -- and the accompanying lost sense of femininity that brings -- a chance to feel uniquely lovely while inviting gentle dialog about a tricky subject. Darwin's ensuing photo shoots capture it all for posterity.

While most corporate taglines are studies in hyperbole, the mantra for Henna Heals powerfully drives home their mission: "We want to empower you. We want to help you feel beautiful, and give you the confidence to be a walking work of art."

BY KAREN BLISS, www.samaritanmag.com

A coalition of late guitarist Jeff Healey's friends, family and fellow musicians is raising money to make The Jeff Healey Park in Toronto more accessible for disabled children by adding specially designed playground equipment.

The park, originally called Woodford Park, was renamed last June after the internationally acclaimed singer-guitarist who had been blind since age 1 from retinoblastoma, a form of eye cancer. He died of lung cancer in 2008 at 41.

"We can do something meaningful for as little as $20,000 to $25,000, like have a little area that's more accessible on the playground," says Rob Quail, who played in bands with Healey when they were teenagers and in their early 20s.

Shortly after, Healey - who played the guitar flat on his lap -- formed The Jeff Healey Band with bassist Joe Rockman and drummer Tom Stephen which signed to Arista in 1988 and released the Grammy-nominated See The Light. The band's last album was 2000's Get Me Some, then Healey released numerous solo albums.

Jeff Healey Park is located at 1 Delroy Drive in the Queensway and Royal York Road area of Etobicoke, where Healey was born and raised and was living at the time of his death.  Healey's family has lived across from the park for 47 years.

BY KAREN BLISS, www.samaritanmag.com

Soft-rock band Train launched its own wine in 2009, Drops of Jupiter Petite Syrah; followed by 2010's Calling All Angels Chardonnay, with a portion of the proceeds going to Family House, which provides free temporary housing to families of seriously ill children receiving treatment at the University of California, San Francisco Benioff Children's Hospital. 

This month, the group, which formed in San Francisco in 1994, will present the charity with a sizeable cheque.

"They have been getting money funneled from our wine for a long time, but this will be the biggest cheque - it's $50,000. And so they're gonna be real psyched," Train frontman Pat Monahan told www.samaritanmag, when he was in Toronto to promote the band's new album, California 37, out April 17.

Train will also release a new varietal, a cabernet sauvignon named after the album. Target in America will carry the wine, says Monahan.

"We've always believed in helping kids," says Monahan of how the band ended up selecting Family House to support. "We're also are very cynical about charity because there are a lot of people who take advantage of charity. You can go to web sites to find ratings and there were a couple of things that we were really interested in that were not rated very well.

"Of course we want to make wine because it's fun and we're a San Francisco band where wine is super big and also it's probably the best US wine, so if we're gonna do that, let's do something cool at the same time by doing something better for somebody.