hope grows aids 'memorial garden - sydney meyer and friends ask for help

Source: Exit Magazine

March 2005: I've been obsessed with the idea of a seasonal garden for a long time. I wanted it to be a celebration of all the trees (both indigenous and benign alien) that have beautified Johannesburg and made it the biggest man-made forest in the world. Taking the back routes through the suburbs, I made lists of every tree that flowered or put on an autumn display and exactly what time of the year it did its thing.

When I met my partner, Nic Swart, he had been working in HIV/Aids awareness and said he could only devote his time to projects about HIV/Aids. He said the gloom surrounding the disease was demoralizing community workers. Victims and families, troubled by the stigma attached to the disease, were trying to hide behind a shroud of silence and denial, and relatives and doctors often stated secondary complications instead of the underlying disease as the cause of death. Lingering controversy about the cause and appropriate treatment was denying people access to life saving medication. He said HIV was no longer an automatic death sentence and many HIV positive people were living lives on a regimen that included retrovirals, healthy living and proper nutrition, supplements and vitamins. Treatment was becoming more sophisticated and cheaper and millions were being pored into finding a vaccine and cure, so the message that had to go out to counter the gloom was that the is hope and that hope is growing

I said what if we call it "Hope Grows" and make it an Aids Memorial Garden. The trees planted in circular calendar formation could then be linked to the birthdays of people who have died by placing an engraved brick in the footpath near their 'birthday tree'. When loved ones then come to visit once a year on the birthday, they will see the tree in peak display mode a fitting gesture, using the most enduring life-forms on earth to celebrate and remember life, rather than mourning death. And then, long after the HIV/Aids epidemic has run its course and came to an end, these trees will still be there, bearing testimony.

So we leased the land from the Johannesburg Property Company who generously positive offer it free. Nurseries and individuals donated trees and the Factory Bar gave us more money for. The Johannesburg Development Agency budgeted money for 2005 to help us with capitals developments, like paths, fences, toilets, etc. But we need to raise the money for running cost ourselves. The garden will be developed and maintained by Aids orphans, the kids of some of the people who died. But we have to pay them and this we thought we could do by launching this membership drive

So this is it: for the cost of a R50 monthly membership fee you can help us make the Aids Memorial Garden a reality and give hope to some of the kids orphaned by the disease. In return you will get regular monthly newsletters, invitations to open days and working picnics and your name painted on the Wall of Honour in the garden. Thank You

By Sidyney Meyer , Nic Swart and Gordon Timm

Hope Grows planted it's first trees on the 2nd October. We started the day off with 30 holes in the ground, 30 trees in black plastic bags, a pile of compost and the faith that some people we invited would come and help us plant these trees. After a slow start, they did. People who have read a story in the Joburg East Express or on the www.joburg.org.za website; a local fellow tree fan, a group of kids from Bertrams shelter, our own neighbours. It was refresher course on the old dictum 'Many hands make light work.' Homeless young volunteers and corporate executives were scratching in the dirty together, totally engrossed in what they were doing. This is the direction in which we want Hope Grows to go. All sorts of people cooperating to create something for the enjoyment of all and getting an opportunity to break out of their societal straight jackets in the process. Discover that you and a homeless street kids share the same attitude to the natural world.

Being so impressed with the reaffirmation of the "Many hands" theorem, we think it is appropriate to apply the same principle to issue of our financial support. We're not sure anymore if that one big corporate sponsor that solves all your financial problems is they way to go. They'll want to change our name from Hope Grows (which means something and conveys in two words what we're about) to the United Feduciary Bank of Southern Africa Aids Memorial Garden. They will own us instead of the community. We will be a corporate construction.

We want to be a grass roots organization supported by a broad base people who believe in what we're doing. We don't want people to be supporting something remote from them - that's just charity. We want them to participate, feel part of it short, be a member. So the monthly stop order contribution is not a donation, it's a membership fee. You're going to get benefits other than just absolution from it. It will entitle you to come to our meetings; get regular newsletters, get your name/logo on our members' graffiti wall, come to our monthly Saturday working picnics 2nd Saturday of the month form January 2005. if you're into gardening you can get your own title area in the indigenous section where you can plant stuff. And if, after a few months, you're not impressed with us or what we've done with your contributions, you simply cancel your debit order. But our guess is, you won't. You're more likely to arrive on a Saturday morning with a bag of cement to help build the path up the hillside.