Brian: Hi. This is Brian McClure. Welcome to "A Call to Consciousness."

This show is brought to you by the Universal Flag Companies. The Universal Flag and symbol represent the oneness of everyone and everything.

In the past few weeks that I've been gone, I had the great pleasure of traveling to Africa and visiting with a number of Mentors over there who were opening schools and had the opportunity to take me and visit some of the poorest people, some of the probably poorest people that I've ever seen in my life. I really wasn't ready for the multitude of poor people that I would see.

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to have a friend of mine tag along, Michael Langevin, who is a social worker from Chico, California. That allowed me the opportunity each night to at least have someone to talk to about what we had seen that day and somehow to try to integrate the very, very difficult things that we saw.

SIERRA LEONE

What is interesting, in the past few months we have talked about the numbers of people that have a lack and limitation of food and water and shelter and of all of the things that we take for granted in each new day. Once I got to Sierra Leone, and once we got to Sierra Leone, it was a whole new world. We went through the airport through customs and once we got through and met up with the people that we were going to go with, what surprised me, first of all, were the numbers of people that were on the street. It was night time, and there were literally thousands of people that were selling things on the street, that were walking and it was dark outside, but everything was lit up with fire. There wasn't a whole lot of electricity in the country of Sierra Leone. We could see some people had electricity, but most people didn't.

I had no idea at the time that the majority of the country had no running water and no electricity. I was surprised that everyone was on the street at that hour and found out that people are on the street until the wee hours of the morning.

CITY OF 4 MILLION PEOPLE

So we got to our hotel, and really was ready for whatever came. The next day was our first opportunity to see Sierra Leone as it was. What we discovered was that there were literally hundreds of thousands of people, it's a city of 4 million people, that live in, I'd have to call them shanties. The shanties are set up everywhere. There is no zoning over there. They are on both sides of the road, and basically you could take trees that were 2 or 3 inches in diameter, and you cut those down, and put 4 or 8 of those together, and you nail some siding on it. The siding typically is some type of tin, bamboo or other wood, and they put a tin top or a plastic top on top of that, and that's the roof. The dirt is their floor. That's their living quarters.

For many of the living quarters that I went into, they were maybe 8 x 10 feet and in some of those living quarters, there were 6-10 people that lived inside of that. The shocking thing was that there was no rest rooms anywhere. We think of rest rooms, at least even out houses as being something that is less pleasant. Trust me, the sanitation in Sierra Leone was nonexistent. They basically dig a hole. They put a stone with a hole in the middle, and you will walk into an open area, and you simply squat down and go to the bathroom. I mean hundreds of thousands of people do that. There are very few restroom facilities anywhere.

ABC4All PRIMARY SCHOOL

The very first day, we went to the school that was being opened up, right down in the rough part of town, that a wonderful soul, Eddie Boston-Mammah, and the social worker, Steven, had worked for a long period of time to try to get set up because in that area of town, there are literally thousands and thousands of children who have no opportunity for going to school because there are no primary schools there. So they went in and they took street children and allowed them to come to school for free. You've got 5 teachers, and they had 650 applicants, and they had to turn the majority of them away. They accepted 155 students.

When we pulled up in front of the school, I was expecting to see a school. Maybe not the kind of schools that we go to, but I was still expecting a school. What we pulled up in front of was a block building that had no roof on it. They had just recently put a plastic tarp over it, some of the classrooms. The classrooms are probably that 8 x 10 that I was talking about. On the side of the walls, since rain had come in for so long, you have 6 months of a rain season and 6 months of a dry season, there was mold growing on the wall. There were no windows. There were just openings. The openings were directly to the outside.

The street was a dirt street that was very bumpy. If you went down it in a car, all 4 wheels would be going up and down, and the car would bottom out. That happened to us a number of times.

Right in front of the school was a 12-inch, like a wastewater sewer on both sides of the street, and you had to step over that 12-inch waste sewer and, interestingly enough, that was right next to walking directly into the school. I saw a lot of people getting water out of that. I don't know what they were using the water for, but it was a waste water sewer.

As we walked in, I was expecting to see maybe some desks. It was a dirt floor, and they had a blackboard and benches where kids could sit. Amazingly, they didn't even have the roof on the entire building. We helped them purchase some materials so that they could roof the rest of the building. They took those 155 children and gave them a start.

It was an eye-opening experience, and we hadn't seen anything yet.

TODAY'S GUEST: Dr. BURT DANET

You know, I was supposed to have Michael Langeman on the show tonight, but he is unavailable, so I thought I would get Dr. Burt Danet back on the show. Dr. Burt Danet was the person we had had on the show, and he was involved with A Better Community for All (ABC4All) http://abc4all.net. He is hooked up with Taking It Global http://takingitglobal.org and http://projects.takingitglobal.org/abc4allglobalteam and, of course, I have joined in both of those ventures.

Dr. Danet was the one who was instrumental in getting information to me and helping me set this entire trip up. Burt, welcome to the show.

Burt: Thank you Brian. I'm just astonished that we're on the same page here. Because I had no idea that MIchael was not going to be available, but as I told the person who called me just now, I was planning to call in and at least talk to you with a few questions and comments in terms of the experience that you've just had.

Brian: What I was going to do was to describe some of the living conditions that people have over there, and then I thought that you would probably have some questions, because you had a number of things that you wanted to know about my expectations, and I thought it would be just a great opportunity to get you on and ask that.

What I would like to do is maybe explain some of the additional things that really shocked me. For the children that go to this school, I was concerned about where they would go to the rest room, because there is 155 kids, and there is no running water, and there is no electricity in the school. I found out that there was no problem, there was a public restroom right there. When I went down, I took pictures of it. If you can imagine a rusted out shanty that you may have in your back yard after about 50 years, that's what it looked like, and when I opened the door, there was a little wooden covering that kids maybe could sit on, but you probably wouldn't have your pet sit on this thing, because it had been there for just as long a period of time, and was covered with all the things that you can imagine.

Of course, that was very difficult for me to film, it was very difficult for me to take a look at, but in each place that I went, I saw that the same conditions, or worse, existed. That was the school.

DAY 2: VISIT TO GRAFTON

On day 2, they took us to a very, very poor community called Grafton. At Grafton, there were 40,000 residents. It was a place that not many people visit. When I got there, the thing that amazed me was the hundreds of children that came out to greet us and the love and kindness and acceptance in all of their faces. All they could say was, "Ooobetu" or something like that. I think it meant "white man." Everyone wanted to touch me. Everyone wanted to grab my hand. I held everybody's hand, and I touched them all.

They rubbed me. They wanted to see if my skin would somehow turn their color, turn dark, and it didn't. They were pretty surprised, I think. I walked through the facility. I found out that in that community, 4-6 people die per day. They die from lack of nutrition, they die from using water that is contaminated. As I asked where their rest room facility was, they pointed to a little covering. You can imagine shower curtains covering this little 3-stall, and it isn't even a stall, that's what they call it, area, and it was kind of delapidated and falling down, and I asked if they could unlock this door. They had a little lock on it so I could take a look. I did.

Interestingly enough, I really had to go to the restroom at the time, and so I decided to use their facility. I'm happy that I'm still alive, because just standing inside that little room with the smell, which is something the cameras cannot even, you can't comprehend what it's like, when you're there.

Burt: We don't have smellovision yet.

Brian: No, we don't, and I wish we did because it would tell the story. In this huge facility, imagine that there are hundreds and hundreds of kids. There is a leper colony that I visited with, and there are 22 leper families that live there with children. They segregate everything. People who are lepers, people who are amputees from the long war.

Of course, Sierra Leone was the place where child soldiers were taken, literally thousands of them. Villages were decimated. The rebels came in. They gave them guns. They gave them everything. If you saw the movie, "Blood Diamond," that was where this was filmed. It is the country that this happened to.

It was a 15-year war that simply devastated the country. It is so far behind from where it was at the time. But the thing that is the most amazing is the hope in every child's face that I saw. I saw the face of God everywhere that I looked.

SOCIAL WORKER STEVEN

People came out, and they greeted us. Certainly they told us what they needed. But beyond that, they were just happy to have someone there that could document and see and take a look at what it was, the conditions they were living in and begging for anyone to come and help them. This community has been there for years, and years and years. The reason that we got to go was because Steven, who was the social worker with us and taking us around, had actually lived in Grafton when he was a little boy. There was a war in Liberia, and he had walked for 2 years with his family to get out of there, and they ended up being placed into Grafton. By the graces of God, he was adopted by a person who brought him into a Catholic church and school and sponsored him. Steven not only went through primary, secondary, he went through 5 years of the seminary before he dropped out and ultimately became a teacher for 15 years before he went into social work.

Burt: Where did he get all his background?

Brian: It was from a Catholic church that had set up a school system there, and he used to sweep the church out for a leone, and that is their currency that they use. It was a great gift to him. Steven is a great gift to that community. He really wanted someone to go in and take a look.

What's really difficult to grapple with is that when it rains, no one in that community is able to sleep because their floors are all dirt. They have what they call a kitchen, but really it's almost just like a carport. It is like 1/10th of a carport. They have a little covering over an open thing, and they cook on sticks. They really don't have much to cook, but whatever they do have, that's how they heat things up.

Right next to that is their residence which is just a little shanty, and some of them are made out of mud and have thatched roofs. Then, of course, the restroom is just one facility for probably 10,000 people. They only have about 4 restrooms.

Burt: Is that the example that's one of the slides in the video that was done for us? There is a picture of you bending over like a thatched hut?

Brian: Well that is one of the thatched-type huts, but Grafton, I haven't got any of that documentation out yet, and that was not one of the videos that you've seen.

Burt: Okay.

PICTURES/VIDEO FOOTAGE PRESENTATION

Brian: I do have pictures of the entire area that I am going to put up and develop and actual presentation because I'd like to show everybody the real conditions, the conditions that I saw. When you take a picture, the thing that's amazing to me is that it makes it look so much better than it actually is.

Burt: Right.

Brian: And maybe it's because they don't actually have smellovision, and they don't have the ability to see exactly how old everything is and exactly how desolate. When you walk into most of these little homes, they have nothing more than a bed on the floor, and in the corner, they will have a plastic bucket, and that is what they wash in. Many times, I saw children washing clothes and adults washing clothes in dark, brown water with some soap, and that's how they clean their things. I can't imagine that there's anything that actually gets those clothes clean.

Burt: Right.

POLLUTED WATER

Brian: For other places, they clean them in the only stream that's in town, and that stream is polluted by all of the waste that comes right back into the water. In most towns that I went to, there was a place for water. It was usually a mile or 2 away, and it was always down hill. So that you knew that everything that was going on uphill was draining downhill.

The first thought that occurred to me was, gosh, why don't they have septic tanks? Why don't they have any type of simple engineering that we've had for 100 years there, and I still don't know the answer, but I want to try to find out why that hasn't been done. Because that seems like one of the simplest things that could happen for some of these areas to start to change some of the water from becoming infected by waste.

FACELESS PEOPLE BEHIND THE INVISIBLE DOOR

After that, we had the distinct -- I don't know what to call it -- we drove out into the country. We went 110 kilometers out into another province, and along the way, I was absolutely shocked because we started seeing the faceless people behind the invisible door. That's what I called them, because they took amputees, as an example, from the war, and they put them in a community that with a map you couldn't even find them. You would have to have a social worker know how to get there, to take you there to see these people.

As I sat down with that community, I started asking the children what their prospects were for the future. The sad part is that none of them had an opportunity to go to school beyond primary school, which was probably grade 6, maybe grade 7. They had no opportunity of going to secondary school because they had no schools, they were too far out.

They were starving to death, because they didn't food. They didn't have any type of opportunity for agriculture. They were just placed in a community. Amazingly to me, they were segregated from everyone else. When I asked the people that had amputated legs and arms how that happened, and you could see that they were just literally cut off. They told me that during the war, rebels would come in with a machete, and they left them for dead. They thought they were dead because they would just cut their arms or their legs off.

Burt: Oh my goodness.

Brian: And somehow they managed to survive. But these people had children. That was one of the things, you could just feel your heart break for these people because there was nothing really that I could do, other than to document what their plight was.

Burt: Of course.

LOVING AND GIVING PEOPLE

Brian: And as we continued on out into the country, we got to a province, a town where we actually stayed overnight. Again, most people had no electricity, they had no running water, and I stayed in one of those houses. It was very, very hot at night time. They did use a generator in the house. They had us stay in the nicest house in the village. They came, and they sang to us, and they gave us food. They serenaded us for hours. A little bit too long, I'd have to say, but it would have been rude to tell them that we were tired or we wanted to go to bed.

Very, very loving and giving people. But when we marched the next day out into the bushes to see what crops and what agriculture they were able to plant, it was very little, because they had to do everything by hand. They don't have the gift of tractors. One of the things that I noticed about Sierra Leone is that there was no real construction equipment like we have all over our country.

Burt: Right.

Brian: In order to build a building, they take the same trees, and they tie them together, maybe 3, 3 inches in diameter, and they actually have scaffolding built out of wood like that, up to 4 stories high. I would not have even climbed one story. I didn't know how they did it. Lots of unfinished buildings there. Probably not a whole lot of building codes because I saw a number of structures that caved in. They don't really use cement.

Some people fire bricks as a way to make money. Around these 4 million people, one of the things I was interested in was how they survive. How did they survive in each new day. What I saw was everybody did something. Some people baked bread and they had their children take it out into the street to sell it. Other people purchased things, like bras or underwear or socks or things for cars. Small things like an air freshener or a steering wheel cover or tires. Everybody had something that they did, and somehow it all worked. They traded leones, and the leones gave them enough money to make that dollar a day to be able to feed themselves. Primarily that is what everyone does in the town. They have just enough to eat in each new day and then work the entire next day to make sure that they can do it again and again. A lot of people only eat one meal a day which would be dinner, whatever that is, whether it is rice or a piece of bread, whatever it is.

DENTAL CLINIC AND LACK OF HEALTH CARE FACILITIES

We had the opportunity in Sierra Leone to film the only dental office in town. When I walked in, I was in shock. The equipment was completely rusted out. It looked like it was from 1945. The entire dental staff was there, and I started asking them about their equipment or what they did, and I found out that they don't do any type of dental work that we do in this country. There's no teeth cleaning. It's primarily for extraction, and when we walked out, I said to Eddie and to Steven, "oh my gosh." There are open windows, there are no windows that close, and there was no running water. Even if there was, it was so bacteria infested, that I couldn't imagine having a tooth pulled. They told me that a lot of people die that go there because they catch infection.

So they kind of made a joke and said a lot of people go there to die. I made a mental note that I wouldn't have had anything done there. I really thought that the people who worked there were wonderful people. In fact, Eddie's cousin works there. But it was just suprising to me. They don't even have a dentist in town.

They lack hospitals, and they lack doctors. There weren't doctors to go to. Everybody in their communities used their own system of medicine. That's why so many people die, because they don't really have any medical facilities, which is suprising for a town of 4 million.

I was pretty happy that neither Michael nor myself got sick while we were there.

Burt: How did you manage to avoid getting sick?

APPRECIATION FOR PRAYERS FOR SAFETY FROM AROUND THE WORLD

Brian: Probably by all of the prayers that everyone said for us. You know, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone around the world who prayed for our safe journey there and back and prayed for for the work to be done because without your prayers, I'm sure that we may have gotten sick.

There were many, many sick people that I saw while I was there. There were people dying of AIDS. After Sierra Leone, we went to Uganda, and in Uganda, we happened to hit ground zero where the Ebola virus struck a few years ago, and we were also at ground zero for where the AIDS virus started in Masaka.

In Uganda, I met thousands, and I mean thousands of orphans. People who had lost their sons and daughters and grandmothers that were raising 9 children, 9 little children, in a small hut, with no ability to feed them. It was heart wrenching. I had never seen so many orphanages that didn't have anyone to take care of kids.

STREET CHILDREN

What happens to a lot of the other kids, both in Sierra Leone and Uganda, is that they become street children, and street children at the ago of, oh, I'd say 6-8, if they are on the street, a lot of times, they will find a guardian. A guardian will come along who really becomes, they almost become like slaves for the guardian. The guardian will bring them in and give them a dirt floor to sleep on, give them a litttle bit of food, but then they send them out each day to go work at whatever job it is, to carry water, to hock bread or whatever they do, and whatever leone or whatever money they come back with, the guardian takes from the street person.

It's no different from probably in our country, but it makes it difficult. You have 20 kids that are in that situation and ultimately you find a lot of the youths who are 16, 17 years old, and they have no skills. They have no ability to do anything to make money. There is a problem in those cities, and there will be a bigger problem in the future.

FOCUS ON CHALLENGES WITH EDUCATION

Education is probably one of their primary problems, because even in the schools that are government run, I found out that teachers usually don't get paid for a year, and a lot of them have to walk for many miles to get to their school, and they don't have any supplies when they're there. They don't have books.

Burt: Is that true for both countries, Brian?

Brian: Yes, for a number of the schools. I talked to a chemistry professor in Sierra Leone, and they didn't have a chemistry book, so he took the students out, and they dissected a lizard. That's more biology, but it was as close to chemistry as he could get. Some of those things surprised me.

A lot of people can't afford to go to school even if they are near a school, because they have to pay for uniforms, and they do have to pay for supplies, too. I think that Sierra Leone is more devastated than Uganda because of the war that's gone on for so long.

UGANDA

But keep in mind that Uganda is just south of the Sudan, which is where genocide is going on. Up in Darfur there is a war up there.

Burt: Right.

Brian: And they are just northeast of Rwanda, and in Lake Victoria, when Rwanda was going through that huge genocide, bodies used to float up Lake Victoria. In fact, they told me that the fish used to eat the bodies, and people stopped eating the fish in the lake because they were upset about that.

Burt: Mmmhhhhm.

Brian: So Africa is a continent that has many, many countries, obviously, and one of the things that was apparent to us was that every 10 kilometers, you would run into a new tribe, and that tribe spoke a different language. So there was a language barrier a lot of times. They kind of have the same currency, a leone, but each country has a different currency.

It's very interesting, because there is different trade. While we were in Africa, it surprised me because we started finding out some of the other countries that I really hadn't a clue, because I didn't really get much news over here in the United States, and that is the devastation in Zimbabwe, and some of the things that have happened in other countries. Word really got out through the areas that I was in.

For the most part, everyone just pays attention to what their problem is, because their problem is so desperate in each new day. Even in the areas, and we went into the home of Eddie. There was no running water. There was some electricity, but no stove, and you still had to cook with sticks on the back porch. Those are not conditions that we are used to. I don't know what I would do, if I had to live that way, I would, but it would be difficult.

LIFE-ALTERING EXPERIENCE/HOPE IN CHILDREN VERSUS DISAPPEARANCE OF HOPE IN OLDER PERSONS

So that's kind of an overview of my impression of the area. I can't tell you that it wasn't life-altering, because it was in seeing the total desperation. Somehow that brightness in the children's eyes starts to leave them as they become youths, as they become teenagers. You see a whole different look. You see a look of hopelessness in people's eyes.

The children carried all the hope and all the love and all the kindness that you can imagine, but as the youths got older, they would hang back. They wouldn't be as willing to come out to shake hands or to talk or to communicate in any way.

Of course, we had interpreters the entire time, so we were able to speak with all the people. Amazingly, in Grafton, the poorest area that we went to, they were some of the most eloquent speakers I have ever listened to in telling me about their plight and what it was that they would like to see happen, and I was really, really suprised by that. That happened in many, many of the slums that I went through.

I think that one of the points that I'd like to make is that everybody who is listening can make a difference to these people. One of the things that I decided is that I would use my 501(c)3 for the Universal Flag Foundation to bring money in. Anyone who is listening and would like to donate, simply go to www.universalflag.com and you can look for "donate now." You can use a credit card, and you can send us a check. You can do anything. That money is earmarked to really help the people first of all in Sierra Leone and then in Uganda.

MAKING CHANGES

I met with many people there who have lived there their entire lives, and they are trying to make changes. I have come to the agreement with them that what they need to do is give me a business plan, tell me how they are going to take the money that we bring or the resources and to create a sustainable opportunity to help themselves.

So in Sierra Leone, with the 5 teachers. Eddie started this school, and he promised the teachers, all 5 of them, that he would pay them, but he has no way to pay them.

What he actually would like to do is to start an internet cafe, because there is only 4 of them for 4 million people there. He needed 10 used computers and a copier and some seed money. The seed money is very little. He is going to use that to set up in the school an internet cafe where they can earn enough money to pay all 5 teachers on a monthly basis. I thought that that was an excellent idea.

Eddie just happens to be an accountant. He came up with a number of things. One of the crops that they grow is casava. We went out, and we visited a farm of casava. These people would plant casava. They would plant rice. We came up for an opportunity there for a sustainable opportunity, and that is if we buy some processing equipment. Processing equipment will probably cost around $4,000.00 but if they buy that, they can mill the casava root into the flour that they need, and they can actually start to make a profit to pay for additional crops and to pay back for the equipment.

Everything that I am talking about with them is that if we set up some seed money as a loan, that they actually pay us back. We are not looking for interest, but we are looking to be paid back, so that we can start to change the paradigm of "Hey, we need your help," and we send food over there, and then they say, "We need your help." We've done that for many years, and we talk about ending the lack of food and the shortage.

One of my thoughts is that we need to start ending that victim mentality. We need to start taking a look at what it is that we can do to help people to help themselves.

Burt: Exactly.

DONATIONS, PLANS AND COURSES OF ACTION

Brian: That is one of the big things that I am really, really reaching out to anyone that is listening. I am going to be setting this up on the website at www. universalflag.org, the opportunity to start donating in a big way, because I'd like to start a number of programs.

I talked to Eddie, and I talked to Steven. I talked to people in Uganda about setting up a volunteer opportunity for volunteers from our country to go over there, whether you are a carpenter, a teacher, retired, any skill that you have, auto mechanics, and you'd like to go help to train maybe some of the youths that don't have anything to do, you could teach them how to repair an engine, you could set up a facility where you were actually instructing them so that it could give them a skill. You could teach people how to drive or whatever that is that is your skill.

We could set it up that you can go over and you can also take a look at the areas that I went to with Michael, because I believe that the more of us that actually see these areas, the easier it is going to be for us to start to help them. Not just to send cash over there.

Also we could set up the opportunity to sponsor people who would like to go over there and give of their talents. You know what? I can say this. In Sierra Leone, you can stay in what they call a 5-star hotel, it's probably a 2-1/2-star hotel here. In Uganda, you can stay in a 5-star hotel that's the nicest 5-star hotel that you've ever been in, but trust me, just 3 or 4 kilometers away you will be in the area that you cannot believe how close you are. That was the shocking thing to me. I thought Uganda was different when I got to that hotel. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I didn't realize the areas that I would go out to that had such devastation. That was in the areas where AIDS had started.

One of the questions I had was, how can AIDS be so prevalent? These people are married, and I found out that culturally a lot of men have not been educated, and it's common for them to be coming home, and there are concubines in town because prostitution is rampant, because everybody needs money. It becomes a way of life. A lot of those men, unbeknownst to them, would contract AIDS. A lot of the women that their husbands died from AIDS, and they have 6 kids, are scared to get tested for AIDS because there will be a stigma if they are. If they aren't tested and they do have AIDS, they are going to die from AIDS and leave those children homeless. For those who have been tested and have AIDS, they have been given medication by UNICEF and some other groups that are over there.

I did see many, many groups, Save the Children, I saw UNICEF and a number of other organizations. I just never saw them where we were. I'm not really sure what they were doing, but the problem is so large that it's hard to really get a grip on it.

GREAT NEEDS EVERYWHERE

Burt: That's one of the things that's so glaring in terms of how you're sharing this information, Brian, that the needs are so overwhelming, and you only visited 2 countries.

Brian: I know, and I know that if we visited more countries, and certainly I was offered to go to probably 12 countries. How many countries could I go to, Burt?

Burt: You could go to every country in this world including the United States of America. In the community of Denver, Colorado, there is a river, for example, that's polluted in which homeless people are both bathing in that river and drinking the water. So we don't have to go to Africa to see such conditions. They exist right in our own backyard. The point is that the needs are overwhelming but how do we respond by not getting overwhelmed and creating a course of action?

100% OF DONATIONS GO TO THE CAUSE

Burt: Let me ask you a very basic question that I think a lot of the listeners might be interested in knowing the answer to. You talked about the 501(c)3, Universal Flag Foundation, and a question a lot of people might have would be what percentage of the funds that get donated into that foundation are going to be used for the purposes of what you are describing?

Brian: Well it's going to be 100% of the funds that get donated into the 501(c)3 because I don't need the money. I don't need people to make money off of it. I really set that up in order to facilitate the spreading of the Universal Flag, the symbol of our oneness.

Brian: You know what? That's the one thing that I haven't talked about. The symbol in Africa was overwhelming, the respose of people. There were towns that were going to start painting the Universal Flag symbol on the side of their houses, on the side of these huts that they live in because they recognized that oneness of all. They recognize that as being the way for each of them to start to help each other and, beyond that, to start to develop a connection with other people. I think that that's what I represented when I came over there, was a connection with somebody coming, and somebody who cared, and that maybe, maybe someone else would be coming along, and things would start to happen to change their lives. I cannot tell you how embracing these people are.

When I read about both Sierra Leone and Uganda on our government website, for both of those countries I was advised not to go into because how dangerous it was. I have to tell you, all I met were friendly people everywhere. People who went out of their way to be kind, and I was in a lot of places in 2 weeks. I was really surprised by that. At no time did I feel like my safety was compromised at all.

Burt: Interesting.

Brian: The students that I worked with, the college students who had just graduated, and some of the men that were just getting their mater's degrees and just graduated from that, they were some of most wonderful human beings that I have ever met. I met families that have set up schools on their own, 10 years ago, families that have set up orphanages on their own, because they recognize the problem, and they do things to help everyone.

That was what was really just eye-opening to me, the way that people have recognized that they have to help themselves, that there's no one coming. As I told people who really wanted me to do something for them, I told them that $1 million was not going to drop from the sky, that they had to start taking that step forward by themslves, right now, that they needed to get rid of the victim mentality of, 'oh, how difficult this is,' and then need to not quit.

As an example, we walked back in the bush, and we saw where 10 acres had been planted in rice, and they had about 250 acres they could plant in rice. They thought if I got them a tractor, that they could plant 100 acres. I looked at the Chief, and I said, "You have a village of 3000 people, 15 people planted 10 acres. If you set everyone up and gave them a job and gave them the opportunity to participate, you could plant 250 acres by hand. Everyone could get fed the rice, and you could sell the excess, and save up enough money to buy your own tractor. A tractor is not going to fall from the sky.

What I hear is that there are tractors available, but the government members use those for their own farms and by the time they get them out to the community, there's no opportunity to use them on the farms, because it is already raining. So it's an interesting situation.

Brian: Burt, what questions do you have about Africa?

COOPERATION, COLLABORATION, COMMITMENT BY ALL CONCERNED

Burt: Before we get to the questions which I obviously have, I'm going to make a statement, Brian. We're approaching I would say, maybe 9 months into the WorldPartnership between A Better Commmunity for All http://abc4all.net/ccghr.html and The Universal Flag Companies. In the time from then till now, what has evolved is nothing short of astonishing in so many different ways.

But just to provide the listeners with a few facts. We have at this point something like 655 or so, give or take a few more or a few less, ABC4All Mentors in about 103 countries. So the Universal Flag is going to reach all of those countries, and possibly we're going to move into every country in the world eventually. The partnership UFC and ABC4All has created many, many opportunities already.

I just wanted to share with you how privileged it is for me to be a facilitator to have been able to coordinate the trip that just took place between you and those mentors who received you in both of those countries, Sierra Leone and Uganda. It's astonishing to me from so many different points of view. You had many, many questions. For example, the question of safety that you just spoke about. You fielded those questions with the help of the mentors, and they came back with answers to every question that you had, which eventually allowed you to make this unbelievable and wonderful commitment to go there in person.

Then you had the magic of the accompaniment of a youth social worker, by the name of Michael Langevin, who turned out to be somebody who could go there and be with you and assist you in this incredible task that you undertook. So we have what I call a "GREAT JOURNEY to AFRICA," but basically it's a symbol, Brian, of the fact that you could go to any country in the world and do the same kind of "needs assessment."

What is so obvious to me in hearing you talk now is the gravity, the great need that exists, and how so many of us don't know, aren't aware, of the primitiveness and the conditions that people live under, and the charm of the children, and how they grasped you and wanted to touch you. The humanness. What you describe in terms of how you related to those children and to some of the others and the adults, etc. Yes, the adults may be a little bit torn and worn in terms of their hope for the future, but one of the things that's very obvious to all of us is that the Universal Flag as a universal symbol, brings exactly that. IT BRINGS HOPE.

FROM THE DARK TO HOPE: SOLUTIONS

So we can move "From The Dark to the Hope" http://abc4all.net/ftdth.htm as I've called it, and there are a number of options that exist in terms of what we are aware of and what can happen in terms of how your're suggesting that people can provide support now for what is needed. I will just mention a couple of them.

I just sent you an email about an organization called, "Greenstar." www.Greenstar.org is a group that will allow you, the UFC, to become their partner, and then what it says here on their front page, is "Greenstar builds a solar-powered community center that delivers electricity, pure water, health and education information, and a wireless Internet connection, to villages in the developing world." So here we have a total built-in solution to what Eddie's asking for in his country, in Sierra Leone and the school which he has created out of nothing. Extroaordinary story that you share in terms of what he's been able to do. So that's one suggestion.

Then one other suggestion is that we have a web page on ABC4All.net which if you will put an extension in, "WorldSolutions," http://abc4all.net/worldsolutions.htm then you come to some information that shows how we can create agricultural advantage in any area in the world, including in deserts, with superior results, with half the water which can be purified by our advanced technologies that we are aware of.

So we have many potential solutions in terms of the collaboration that can take place between ABC4All and UFC. The fact that you chose to take on this challenge and to make this trip to Africa, yes there were a lot of us who were involved with the INTENTION MEDITATION as we've termed it, to protect you and everybody involved with regard to the undertaking that unfolded with regard to this trip. Lo and behold, you landed in Chicago on 09/18/08 after departing on 09/04/08. You came and you went and you were safe. And here you are now and able to come back now and talk to us about this, and you've been able to document it with a lot of pictures and a lot of film on video that's going to be made available so we have the real McCoy here in terms of what it is that's needed and how it is that we can help create independence across the world with people whoever they are and wherever they are, because one of the major foci of ABC4All is called, "SELF-FUNding4All."

MANY GROUPS ALREADY WORKING FOR BETTER COMMUNITIES

Brian: Inside A Better Community for All, everyone that I worked with, has their own acronym for their own groups. I think it's very important to mention the people that I worked with, members of TakingItGlobal, have a group that they started, called SOVHEN, and that acronym is Supporting Orphans and Vulnerable for Better Health, Nutrition and Education.

Burt: There you go.

Brian: There's another group called SEED, and that's Education, Enterprise and Saving for Downpayment. And so no matter what the acronym is that you use, there are literally millions of groups out there that are doing their part.

One of the things that needs to take place in our world is a recognition of the oneness of all. Through the Universal Flag symbol, one thing that I recognized on this trip, the one thing that connects all those groups, every mentor that I got down on film told me, the Universal Flag is the one thing that has changed their vision of the world and themselves. Because it connects their group, SOVHEN, SEED and so many others in order to create a better community for all which is what A Better Community for All is doing around the world.

OPPORTUNITY TO DO A BETTER JOB

So literally there are thousands of places to go. One of the things that I think the Universal Flag is going to try to do in conjunction with all of the other groups is to try to create a sustainable opportunity, just like what Burt was talking about so that we can allow people the opportunity to be productive and very important portions of their world and of their environement, their country, and we can help them to have a better lifestyle because we can do better.

That's what Bobby Kennedy always used to say. I can tell you this, I think one of the next places I am going to go to are the Indian Reservations in our own country, because I want to film, and I want to show people what their conditions are. One of the things that we lack is education on these 3 billion people around our world that are living on less than $1 a day. I think all of us have the opportunity to a better job.

Burt, I'm glad you were able to join me on this show. For all you listeners, please feel free to donate. Go to www.universalflag.com. I can guarantee you that 100% of the money that comes in we are going to use to work on the projects that we have, both right now in Sierra Leone and Uganda, and we're going to let you know how those sustainable projects are working.

Stay tuned next week for "A Call to Consciousness." Till then, stay conscious. See you then.