More on Abbey's work in South Africa.
She indicated that her work and her passion are based far from Cape Town in a rural mining area of Limpopo Province where her project interest is called Intervention with Microfinance for AIDS and Gender Equity (IMAGE), a joint effort between a university and a microfinance organization. The program has three parts: small loans to poor women, training on HIV and gender to these women, community mobilization training to a select handful of women who choose which projects to implement in their respective villages.
Having learned of the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship from a counselor at her university, she says her work would be impossible without the support she receives from Rotary.
When asked why she
would go to Limpopo Province when Cape Town itself has many problems to be
addressed, she replies, "...the women I work with and the women I
visit at microfinance meetings, invite me into their world in a way that I
have never experienced in busy Cape Town. I stay at their homes, I eat their
food, I learn their language, and I play with their children. (They)
invite me into their world in a way that I have never experienced in busy Cape
Town."