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War catches up with Red Deer man again as he loses niece in Ugandan refugee camp

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It was 1985.  While 9 year olds here in Canada watched cable TV, played sports and went to school, Monybany Dau was running away from the war ravaging his village in Sudan.   Hiding and somehow surviving in the jungle, eventually Monybany took refuge with soldiers.  He picked up a gun and joined the war in Sudan.  Through a fortunate string of circumstances he survived and eventually found his way to a new life in Canada.

For over 20 years now Monybany Minyang Dau has called Red Deer home.  Day embraced his new life and set out to make a difference in his homeland of South Sudan from his home in Central Alberta.  With the Central Alberta organization A Better World he worked on a project to provide safe drinking water to thousands of people in the area around his former village.  He was married and had children of his own.

In the early 2010’s local filmmakers discovered his story and in 2013 Unveil Studios released a documentary about Monybany Dau called The Ladder of My Life.

Synopsis: The Ladder of My Life tells the unbelievable true story of Monybany Minyang Dau. Born in the small village of Atar in south Sudan Monybany grew up amidst the horror of a genocidal civil war. He volunteered to fight for the cause of the south when he was only 9 years old, enlisting as a child soldier. After walking for six weeks with thousands of others, he arrived at a ‘safe haven’ refugee camp in Ethiopia, a country suffering from a horrible famine. Eventually, Monybany and numerous other boys who had joined the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army as children were shipped to Cuba to receive an education, so that one day they would return and help rebuild a country that was devastated by war.

As the years pass you’d hope the horrors of fighting as a child might fade away.  Unfortunately the war that forced him out of his homeland still has an iron grip on his loved ones.  A few days ago, that war caught up with him again.  This time with the death of a 10 year old relative also forced out of Sudan.  Not fortunate enough to find a country to accept her, she died in a refugee camp in Uganda.

As Canadians are like to do, Monybany shared his grief with his friends on Facebook.  I was one of his many Canadian friends and acquaintances who share his grief.  As I  offered condolences to Monybany and his family I asked if there was “anything” a regular Canadian could do to help.  Turns out there is.  We might feel completely helpless and half a world away from this strife, but Mr Dau believes individual Canadians have the ability to influence the world even in a small way.

Monybany forwarded his original Facebook post.  Then he adds some advice and a small ask of his Canadian friends and acquaintances. Please read.. and share.. and take an opportunity to talk to your local MP.  It’s a Canadian thing to do.

From Monybany Minyang Dau


Our hearts are broken😭😭😭😭😭

Little Nyamujuok Obach Amum Okiech aka Obach Abui Minyang Dau, my grandniece was only 10 years old.  Many dreams, hope and aspirations are shattered like a broken glass.  She passed away last night at Northern Uganda’s refugees camp.  Could she have been safe?  Sure, could family have been together to support themselves at least emotionally, absolutely.  But thanks to the nonsensical political situation in South Sudan children like my grandniece, beloved Nyamujuok, are dying in an unprecedented rates. Many families in my beloved country are suffering the same fate. Grandniece, you are forever missed
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

In my view I think Canada can do a lot.

1 – Strengthen diplomatic relationships with South Sudan. This will open avenues for more collaboration and cooperation in many areas, especially in the humanitarians area.

2 – As part of the Troika Canada can put serious pressure on the parties to implement the peace they have signed about a year ago.

3 – Be more involved in humanitarian assistance. By this I mean working closely with many humanitarians agencies that are on the ground, especially with UNHCR at the refugees’s camps. Like many South Sudanese- Canadians, I have a good number of relatives in these refugees camp. They are living under inhumane situation. There is no
minimal sanitation, not enough food, no medicine and worse of all, shelters are inhumanely designed.

There could be more, but at least if Canada take this approach, the situation in these refugee camps can be improved.

One more thing

Canada can identify South Sudanese-Canadians who are willing to take on supporting roles in the situation in South Sudan.  The UNHCR needs good advisors to help with these particular refugee camps and the refugee system as a whole.  Canadians can influence this if enough of us speak to our politicians.

After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Community

SPARC Red Deer – Caring Adult Nominations open now!

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Red Deer community let’s give a round of applause to the incredible adults shaping the future of our kids. Whether they’re a coach, neighbour, teacher, mentor, instructor, or someone special, we want to know about them!

Tell us the inspiring story of how your nominee is helping kids grow up great. We will honour the first 100 local nominees for their outstanding contributions to youth development. It’s time to highlight those who consistently go above and beyond!

To nominate, visit Events (sparcreddeer.ca)

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Addictions

‘Harm Reduction’ is killing B.C.’s addicts. There’s got to be a better way

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Susan Martinuk 

B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy

Since 2016, more than 40,000 Canadians have died from opioid drug overdoses — almost as many as died during the Second World War.
Governments, health care professionals and addiction experts all acknowledge that widespread use of opioids has created a public health crisis in Canada. Yet they agree on virtually nothing else about this crisis, including its causes, possible remedies and whether addicts should be regarded as passive victims or accountable moral agents.

Fuelled by the deadly manufactured opioid fentanyl, Canada’s national drug overdose rate stood at 19.3 people per 100,000 in 2022, a shockingly high number when compared to the European Union’s rate of just 1.8. But national statistics hide considerable geographic variation. British Columbia and Alberta together account for only a quarter of Canada’s population yet nearly half of all opioid deaths. B.C.’s 2022 death rate of 45.2/100,000 is more than double the national average, with Alberta close behind at 33.3/100,00.

In response to the drug crisis, Canada’s two western-most provinces have taken markedly divergent approaches, and in doing so have created a natural experiment with national implications.

B.C. has emphasized harm reduction, which seeks to eliminate the damaging effects of illicit drugs without actually removing them from the equation. The strategy focuses on creating access to clean drugs and includes such measures as “safe” injection sites, needle exchange programs, crack-pipe giveaways and even drug-dispensing vending machines. The approach goes so far as to distribute drugs like heroin and cocaine free of charge in the hope addicts will no longer be tempted by potentially tainted street drugs and may eventually seek help.

But safe-supply policies create many unexpected consequences. A National Post investigation found, for example, that government-supplied hydromorphone pills handed out to addicts in Vancouver are often re-sold on the street to other addicts. The sellers then use the money to purchase a street drug that provides a better high — namely, fentanyl.

Doubling down on safe supply, B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy — though for now that effort has been stymied by the courts.

According to Vancouver city councillor Brian Montague, “The stats tell us that harm reduction isn’t working.” In an interview, he calls decriminalization “a disaster” and proposes a policy shift that recognizes the connection between mental illness and addiction. The province, he says, needs “massive numbers of beds in treatment facilities that deal with both addictions and long-term mental health problems (plus) access to free counselling and housing.”

In fact, Montague’s wish is coming true — one province east, in Alberta. Since the United Conservative Party was elected in 2019, Alberta has been transforming its drug addiction policy away from harm reduction and towards publicly-funded treatment and recovery efforts.

Instead of offering safe-injection sites and free drugs, Alberta is building a network of 10 therapeutic communities across the province where patients can stay for up to a year, receiving therapy and medical treatment and developing skills that will enable them to build a life outside the drug culture. All for free. The province’s first two new recovery centres opened last year in Lethbridge and Red Deer. There are currently over 29,000 addiction treatment spaces in the province.

This treatment-based strategy is in large part the work of Marshall Smith, current chief of staff to Alberta’s premier and a former addict himself, whose life story is a testament to the importance of treatment and recovery.

The sharply contrasting policies of B.C. and Alberta allow a comparison of what works and what doesn’t. A first, tentative report card on this natural experiment was produced last year in a study from Stanford University’s network on addiction policy (SNAP). Noting “a lack of policy innovation in B.C.,” where harm reduction has become the dominant policy approach, the report argues that in fact “Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms.” But it concludes that “Canada overall, and B.C. in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.”

The report is admittedly an early analysis of these two contrasting approaches. Most of Alberta’s recovery homes are still under construction, and B.C.’s decriminalization policy is only a year old. And since the report was published, opioid death rates have inched higher in both provinces.

Still, the early returns do seem to favour Alberta’s approach. That should be regarded as good news. Society certainly has an obligation to try to help drug users. But that duty must involve more than offering addicts free drugs. Addicted people need treatment so they can kick their potentially deadly habit and go on to live healthy, meaningful lives. Dignity comes from a life of purpose and self-control, not a government-funded fix.

Susan Martinuk is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of the 2021 book Patients at Risk: Exposing Canada’s Health Care Crisis. A longer version of this article recently appeared at C2CJournal.ca.

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