BrewsterConnections - Brewster Academy

The Pendulum Project:
Helping Children With AIDS
All-School December 15, 2006
By Peggy Comeau
Ellen McCurley, executive director of The Pendulum
Project, used to have a high-paying job at a corporate
marketing firm. Realizing that she wanted more – to help
people in need on a grassroots level – she went back to
school and earned first her master’s in social work, then
her master’s in public health. Then, six years ago, she
founded The Pendulum Project, a non-profit humanitarian
foundation that helps families and communities care for,
support, and protect orphans and other vulnerable children
in Malawi, where the HIV/AIDS epidemic is raging.
The Pendulum Project links those who help these at-risk
children with those who can provide resources and hope.
She explained that every family in Malawi is affected by
the AIDS crisis – the death rate among children five and
under is 23 percent; the life expectancy of an adult is age 42;
and 25 per cent of all children are orphans, many of whom
are caring for not only their own brothers and sisters, but
cousins and other unrelated children who have no family
left.
McCurley recently returned from the project’s office in
Malawi, where she spends an average of four months
each year. Her son and daughter, both college students,
accompanied her on this most recent trip, and it was a
life-changing experience for both. She told the Brewster
students that no matter what they ended up doing in life,
they should realize they are part of a small world, a global
community, and should look for ways to help, to take over
from the generation now helping but getting older.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, philanthropist
Warren Buffet, and even pop singer Madonna were praised
for their help in the fight against HIV/AIDS. McCurley
stressed that the funds her organization raises via grants
and other donations world-wide do not go to pay for high
salaries nor benefits for the project’s staff, but for helping
Malawi children’s aid organizations at the most basic
level with medicines, education, books and other school
supplies, training, and simple technology.
Ellen McCurley, founder of The Pendulum Project, smiles
as she tells the students about Gladys, an orphan who was
very sick when they met but who was helped by an aid
organization supported by the project. On her recent trip
back to Malawi, McCurley found Gladys in better health
and back in school.
“AIDS is not just something we can
contain to one continent or turn a blind
eye to. Africa is not a lost cause. It’s time
for our generation to take a stand.”
~ Amberlee Jones ’08
Photos by Peggy Comeau
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