Lindhout honoured by Rotary

Dave Whitfield RMO

Rotarian Brian Callaghan presents Amanda Lindhout with a citizen of the year award, Wednesday (Aug. 17).

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Just weeks after returning to Somalia, where she spent 15 and a half months as a hostage, Amanda Lindhout was honoured by the Canmore Rotary Club as its citizen of the year.

The honour also came with a donation of $2,500 to Lindhout’s Global Enrichment Fund to help her current efforts to provide relief in the country, which is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years.

She said up until recently she never thought she would return to the country where criminals kidnapped her while she was working as a journalist and took her and an Australian cameraman hostage on Aug. 23, 2008.

The pair were released on Nov. 25, 2009 after their families paid US$600,000 in ransom to the criminals that held them hostage.

But, while in Kenya this summer to work on an education initiative at the largest refugee camp in the world for Somalis, famine was officially declared.

“What I saw in that camp will haunt me for the rest of my life,” Lindhout said through tears. “I spoke with many mothers who left home with five or six children and now they only had one or two.

“This famine in the horn of Africa is no doubt the worst humanitarian crisis in the world right now.”

She said some mothers had to choose which children they would take and “no mother should have to ever make that choice”.

With more than 200,000 people arriving on foot as refugees in Kenya from Somalia after travelling through the desert, Lindhout said she could not leave without doing something.

“It was impossible to ignore,” she said. “At the point I decided to return to Somalia I did not feel I had a choice, the emergency was so extreme someone had to bring food into the country.

“I was willing to be that person and undertake that challenge.”

So it was that on Aug. 4, with a convoy of food aid she had organized and gathered and being covered by major media from the U.S. like the Today Show and Anderson Cooper, she crossed the border with 52 tonnes of food.

“I found myself back in Somalia, a country where I had lost my freedom for 15 and a half months and we gave food to 14,000 people,” Lindhout said, adding her organization is focused on education and female empowerment, not emergency relief. “But at this scale, it deserves everybody’s attention.”

It was the first food convoy to get into the country. She said for the most part politics interferes with humanitarian aid reaching those who need it most in Somalia, which has been a frustration.

The food was handed out to those refugees travelling out of the country. Each was provided with two weeks of supplies to last them until they reached refugee camps beyond Somalia’s borders.

Afterwards, Lindhout said returning was an empowering experience.

“Of course I had some fears about going back, but it was empowering to be able to move through those fears in order to help,” she said. “We are committed to bringing food to the people of Somalia as long as the famine is occurring.”

Rotarians Bruce Keith and John Waterhouse presented the honours to the Canmore resident, who they said is an extremely worthy recipient who has shown service beyond self.

“It also reflects (the club’s) conviction and faith in you to use these funds in an appropriate and sensible manner to really help these people,” Waterhouse said.

The contribution from Rotary, said Lindhout, will go towards the second food convoy leaving on Aug. 30 that she will also be a part of.

With the international coverage of her first trip, she said over $200,000 has been raised in the last 11 days for a second trip.

There are also plans to organize a remedial unit to travel to refugee camps in the region in September.

Those interested in donating can visit www.globalenrichmentfoundation.com