my name is martin us about oh i'm the founder of the wagner foundation our mission is to tell the story of other foundations that are doing interesting and unique work around the world tonight is my great pleasure to welcome from a barefoot mile barefoot mile and i mean and come to lake coming to us from malawi the region to have a discussion on what really started out as a friendship and has ended up turning into something that has changed the lives of over nine thousand people two thousand babies being born or a number of years and just a remarkable story so as we were talking earlier in preparation for the show we were discussing how what you're trying to accomplish with barefoot mile foundation you're not trying to just build a donor base or just act as an organization is just handing out contributions to a village in fact it's quite the opposite the village itself the region is driving the agenda and saying what's needed so i thought we might start tonight's story by telling us how it got started and what brought you to malawi how your friendship got started and then how that progressed into the barefoot foundation so thank you so much how this all started back in two thousand and three when i decided to join the peace corps and went through that long process and then in two thousand and four i was actually sent to malawi and was stationed in the northern re different projects that potentially very good i ended up meeting i mean through the process because when i when i got into country i knew almost nothing it was difficult for me to figure out how to gather firewood how to grow a garden start a garden where to plant a garden how to plant the garden everything that i had known stateside here was completely different so there's no grocery stores you can't make a midnight run to your local market place you know it's hand produced all the way from the ground on up absolutely if you want to cook dinner you need to start playing two or three hours ahead of time and you need to know where to get the firewood you need you need to know to me with that so everything that you have out there you have to work for a big culture shock for you brand new peace corps volunteer here in a remote region in northern malawi faced with these challenges so when so you know tell me a little about your peace corps duties and how you venture wrapped up with the peace corps and transition to another phase obviously went barefoot miles right so what was the progression there so the progression was first of all it was in the area that i was at the region there had been a hospital that had been built but was not very well supplied or currently in use when i arrived there and i had no knowledge of this so i came with the idea from the peace corps to provide like i said hiv aids awareness to pit latrines to kind of do other things that the community kind of indicated that they might need assistance with  and so i did i remember my first and last hiv aids talk that i gave was for about an hour i gave this very rousing wonderful discussion about using condoms and contraceptions and how to be careful how to be safe and i just remember ending that our talk to a relatively large community group thinking this this is it this is why i'm here you brought the ask him you know how it's changed his life and so he did and the gentleman just looked me square in the eyes and in in the vernacular language in to look at basically said i don't care about ntery no medical care my wife will probably die in childbirth honestly hiv aids we don't really care about way down the list right now and i just remember being floored i just thought just happened and i remember going home that night being completely by myself having a candle in my in my small little house and just thinking what if i gave up everything to come out here i received some great training from the peace corps for the first two months they sent me in this great location but what am i doing here because what i just thought was exactly what i was supposed to do wasn't even close to what do was just to be quiet and listen and actually listen to what they were saying not maybe what other people were saying that they need well let's talk a little bit more about the village saying what the verses other organizations now to be clear the peace corps and other n g o s do fantastic work absolutely there's no question we're not disputing that here right but what you learned from that night is that sometimes the local community has priorities perhaps these other organizations are not equipped to fill right at that moment so even before paul was sent there you had had other volunteers you had had other non governmental organizations come to do what they can but in terms of the village itself your region was hiv awareness and you realized wow i need to be listening right to what they need exactly so you started to apply your efforts to get the maternity ward finished the maternity and to assist with basically turning the hospital into a better functioning it wasn't being fully utilized wasn't being fully utilized we had very little supplies and so i switched over to that is what everybody kept time and time again i  spent a couple of months just talking to people what do you need everybody from the chief of chiefs tribe of elders to just walking around with i mean what's the main problem here and time and time again it was we have no place to go for emergencies or hospital is it working like it should it's been six years and we still have no maternity there so the structure had been built structure six years ago but it wasn't being fully utilized fully staffed that although there is a relatively decent sized city you have to take the main road thirty about forty seven kilometers north from right and then you get off the paved road you get off the tarmac there's three yet one large path that you can get in there and then when you see a hospital that's when you know to stop that's the vet center and that's where the heart so in this whole region if somebody breaks a leg or has a deep cut if there's no maternity ward there's no assistance no ambulance there's no emphasis is what you came in to and you were just at this transition the village had already organized and i think that's an important part of the discussion tonight is that the village knows what it ne and in and i think this is what becomes duplicatable this is what can be replicated in other parts of the world is that it's not just a matter of the donor organisations coming and setting an agenda you need to have a partnership where the community at the lowest possible level of governance establishes its needs right and then they can go out to the greater community and say who can assist us with this so you happen to be arriving at a time when they i mean six years and you still don't have a maternity ward right right so what happened once you got that maternity ward i mean i remember i remember i went to one of your presentations recently and you talked about the drop tribute to the mothers and village in the country and the with that and the community and the community and because they are constantly say we need more training we need this we need that it's not myself or my wife coming in and saying here you should do this you should that it's them coming to us and saying next time you come back and you bring blood pressure right next time you come back and you bring a baby down there and you bring a book that describes different practices it's about the community saying one so easy to get the maternity ward completed i mean as i recall you had to leave the country you've gotten sick i after about a year in the peace corps i went into country hundred eighty six pounds left country one hundred twenty one that's the name he gave me and so i came back to seattle with a mission and my whole mission was to get back to malawi and it was difficult because there were things that i absolutely loved and had to be back for and there were other things that were really difficult to go back but i knew i had to that was my new home centrally and so i came back here and was very fortunate it was able to find donors  essentially sponsored my trip to go back to my lonely and was able to return for an extended stay in all of our projects and work again with me and work with the community and really just from a distance was able to watch all of this grow so this time when you so you found now you're you've been discharged from the peace corps you senshi you and your wife are going back you're acting as an independent in geo if you will to help that was it was after the peace corps that just left right and so when i went back so it was about as grassroots as a guest and that it was just again yeah and the only difference this time was it didn't have the support all the different all jazz aspects of which that and you can't just give your peace corps business card right to say i volunteer i don't know how your business card says paul scholes right right and so it was a whole new level you know it was a whole different me what it was like when you finished the maternity ward and mothers had a place to go to give birth instead of the mud floors i mean what how did the village feel about that finally getting done for the first time we got  it's really quite an accomplishment then to not lose one child since two thousand and six two thousand me how does that compare with the rest of the country i mean you're in a northern remote region which in the northern part of the law is considered the less economically strong part all right so the south has most of the resources so how does your zero mortality rate compare with the rest of the country oh it's probably hard to is amazing where we've gone and if you look at the past six to where we are now it's it's it's what keeps me up at night because like yeah you know if that goes at the successes that we're trying to replicate and other areas and that's what i think sometimes in the west we take for granted you know that when our wives are ready to have a child we just take them off there's a clean environment you know it can happen day or night  time they'll be well cared for we don't think in terms of you know our wife has to give birth on a mud floor right or our child broke his leg and we can't get him to the hospital because there's no transporter there or is there even a doctor where the end that but we there is no such thing as a doctor and our there is no such thing as a dentist in our hospital so when you deal with other issues there are nurses and that's  it and so again when you look at what we're able to accomplish with the training and the staff that we have again it goes back to the community the community only keeps workers who are interested in helping the patients so we've had many nurses come in and we've assisted with finding new nurses and discussing with other hospitals and with the district health officer about who we're looking for the kind of staff you want and we w of someone who is in a different person russia if you could tell me a little bit more what he's doing for the village yeah there's he's actually retired eye surgeon and what he's done is he's donated five hundred pairs of glasses for us to take over to the village and he is trained but it was it was funny and it was but at the same time it was wonderful because it's like wow there's going to be so much to learn yeah it's going to be so now you could be his teacher for once the way he saved  good what did you when you go back and talk to your day and you have to show you're married to your children your son and daughter what kind of vision do you want to share with them about what's possible you know in terms of what they can do with their lives the wider should have more knowledge yeah and that's the key right i mean until you know what you don't know you don't even know you know i mean you go to a whole new environment and you realize education is such a key and even before education health and the ability to have healthy babies and you know it's all tied together and sometimes you know other organizations come in and they have a certain mission that they're trying to accomplish and that's fantastic you can take from that what you're able  but other times a village has we have an even more basic need right we have babies and mothers dying we need our health care system fixed here right and you've gone on to do other things and again the i think the point of this whole story tonight is to show that you have a partnership between a village region of nine thousand people who came together and figured out what they wanted and an american who comes over under the auspices of the peace corps but ends up coming back on his own at the very grassroots  level and creates this bridge we're now you as project coordinator in malawi can now come to the united states and give presentations i imagine this is your first time on television world absolutely you know that if you have a group that self organizes and reaches out not for a handout but for a hand and finds people who want to be part of that community which is what you've done you really want to be part of that community i heard your presentation because you brought a mean to the united states i want to be part of the community your foundation gets you on t v right you know there are other the eye surgeon in seattle gets eyeglasses for your ch same template can be reproduced in many areas but we're excited that the barefoot mile foundation is leading the charge here at the grassroots level right right and so that we can bring more people into the wider community so so this is another project sponsored by the community right this is for example we've agreed this is a very important need right to because just finished our last project right and what that was it's a community li we just built a library we don't built a library the community did and how that started when they came to us and said we would like a community that very we already have an organization we have a budget you know it would cost we're willing to hold all of the bricks we're willing to build the structure we know where the structures are going to be because it was on the map fifteen years ago but the old cuomo so they already knew where it was going to be they could provide everything except three things so we need to build the all of this if we push this hard can you help us and push this so that idea of you push a little we push a little and so of course we said yes and so then that started the foundation working on pushing to find the funds needed for just these three teams and even once we provided the cement the timbers and the tin roof again it was the community did all the work they don't work right and they built it they designed it we have never started a single you know time and time in country and so when it goes back to this orphanage now we've seen the success of this with replicated these and so here it is again the community is saying here's a problem we can build a structure we know how to do  providing some budget that they can do it every year we're just topping up you know we're just helping because there are going to be more children that they'll be then the community can take care of that's what we're going to help and if it's a centralized location and that's what the donated one thing to that which is a bicycle bicycle and some land so they can go after that so you basically as a community side what's the best use of the resources to rebuild a central facility to we help families care for the basic light in during the day i don't know if you don't earn some members of the community but using the plastic coca cola bottles oh yeah that is the so the idea that you take you kind of hole in your tin said i would like to have solar panels right and at that time we can't afford can't afford a solar panel right we can't i will just bring a light a regular just do the coca cola life of which has been incredibly successful in places like india and library because now you you may you may have a donor company who's going to provide some computers you have a donor company here that has decided to donate ten station labs in our library but what's amazing about it is talked things up yeah that's what you like how we want to be a lighthouse fantastic every level on education on health we want people to come in malawi and outsiders other organisations we want them to come to us right and say how did you do  and these are the ways that we can do this is again by the ideas of them thing you would be great the library came one in an afterschool program because our children don't do well with the secondary school year then we can have a computer but again the computer has so much information not just the food so how can community you know how can we talk about these ideas that are coming in from the outside and the community also having its own priorities and saying help us with these things i'm sure there are a lot of viewers out there that they have an idea to contribute maybe they want to contribute resources maybe they know somebody who has an idea to help you accomplish these goals tell me about your website how do people get of different things is our whole goal like you said the very beginning isn't to just increase our donor our whole goal is to change the region one idea that time so we are looking for people who are knowledgeable on different in different areas so be it solar be it carpentry be it micro loans what we like to do is connect with those people and have discussions but what we also like to do is to connect our volunteers so if you know about micro loans and i mean would know about micro loans what i would do is put the two together so we can collaborate on a project laboratory and maybe pool your resources together will your contacts together and then we can do a larger scale or a more refined project that the community that scheme for so now all these years since zero four really when you started working together in the friendship developed paul's been kind of let's you know you communicate with paul you're really the corner there for all local activity you know from the must be a big job yes if you just from put on a for when i was working with him when he came here in two thousand  rate now as i understand it the cost the hard cost of goods fuel certain food that you don't grow yourself i mean it's just going up at a much faster rate than people salary how is that impacting life in the village job you need to go to your family land and grow the food this is the only way to survive so these cost increases really make it difficult for people you need to keep their jobs or to keep conducting commerce and because of the high cost of business so are you foreseeing potential famine in the country as a result of these difficulties yeah like this one exactly because i like could buy things that could be export right or produce things that you export directly even to neighboring countries mozambique or tanzania we do right now where you can bring in hard currency that can be exchanged right because very difficult right now to exchange mal kwacha for foreign currency so you know this kind of sustainable ecosystem from an economic standpoint is going to be very important not only for in dollar region but for any village that wants to  diversify its economic security because when you have an entire country whose currency has taken a hit and you have very high inflation you need to have some kind of economic activity that goes beyond your country to tell help provide stability for the children so we're really talking about expanding into a global community that perhaps one day could become a network of villages like and all the region that all share an one they're doing it which is being organized into is to know what you need and where you can get it and three is to somehow break that cycle dependancies right right you're talking about instead of asking that your hand out it's for hand  so that's what again where we go back to volunteers and encourage people to get involved because some people have these great ideas or they have connections with this jitters or their organization by you know from malawi or african countries and you can make arrangements we have micro businesses set up now who make that adds who do carvings who do cultural items that are native just to our area right and they're already working on and these are the people who see a future that i can't even see right i can't say you should make bags so hopefully we can write she's already making them because in her mind in a few years we're going to have a market so she's starting now  with any small bits that she can save when you're in a community that is just being beaten sometimes from absolute poverty right yet at the same time it's planning for a future  she always right it just baffles your mind and you can't help but want to get involved you can't help but want to come out and volunteer and start to be a part of this community not just receive a thank you letter and send in ten dollars but you want to greater community and they call paul and they give their ideas or they make a donation the community responds i mean you have the children write letters right what kinds of return contact do you give as a region to the people who help you like family yeah you're treated like family that you haven't seen twenty years and you want to take them out to a nice dinner and show him the town and everything that's how they treat you that's how they welcome you the first five minutes that you can see that you never have trouble i've been doing this for how many years now i've never lost something never had anything you know damaged or malice or any acts of your part of the community right but they do that you know everybody that walk who can fly there they can donate their ideas they can do it resources right you'll be putting up video blogs on the web site right now and we can set you up with a we do a pen pal program with the children right with children but also with adults yeah so if you're a forty any way that we can engage people we will actively do our best to engage so for a start they need to go on the website what mile down hill foundation dot org ok and your phone number my phone number is i mean with your