Calgary Herald

By: Meghan Potkins

It's been a railway hotel, a military hospital and, for former addict and prostitute Sandra Domenjoz, it was once a reliable place to find crack cocaine.

The 49-year-old remembers stepping over passed-out bodies in the halls of the Ogden Hotel on her way to a "date."

"I had come there to do a couple of dates. It was gross. You could smell urine every-where. It was infested," Do-menjoz recalls. "This building used to be a brothel. It used to be a crack house."

But now Domenjoz has an-other name for the historic southeast building: home.

The 100-year-old hotel, turned low-cost apartment building, languished for years under various owners, attracting addicts, prostitutes and drug dealers, before being purchased in 2007 by a church group determined to turn the place around.

Three years and $3 million in renovations later, the municipally designated heritage building has been transformed into an affordable housing complex for people looking to kick their addictions and get off the street.

The three-storey red brick building called Victory Manor hosts counselling services, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and money management work-shops for the nearly 60 residents in renovated suites.

And for 18 months it's been a home that Domenjoz calls a "miracle" after seven years spent working the streets.

Sitting at the kitchen table of her comfortable basement suite, Domenjoz describes a different time, and a version of herself that would be almost unrecognizable now.

"I would do a date and then I'd buy crack cocaine and then I'd do another date and then buy crack cocaine," Domenjoz recalls. "Sometimes I'd stay up for (days). I don't remember going to (the bathroom). I don't remember changing my clothes. I don't remember eating anything."

Like a lot of residents at Victory Manor, a chance en-counter at the Mustard Seed two years ago put Domenjoz on the path to sobriety. Now she spends her time volunteering for the church, caring for her cat and getting back in touch with her four kids.

"I didn't think I was ever going to come off the streets. I didn't think I was ever going to come off the drug," Domenjoz says. "I didn't think there was hope for me, but there's hope for anybody."

The owners of the building, the Victory Foundation, began renovations on the site almost immediately after purchase. It was a plodding project - involving the shuffling out of residents who were unwilling to abide by the building's dry policy and the piecemeal renovation of individual suites.

But resident counsellor Frank King believes the effort was worthwhile.

"The renovations communicated the message that we believe that our residents are worthy of the best possible accommodations," King said. "Now the people here take pride in the building and they respect the building."

Part of the renovations involved restoring some of the building's historic elements, including an antique tin ceiling in the former bar area, and the balusters of the hotel's original stair-case.

While touring visitors around the building, Victory Church pastor Don Delaney radiates pride, but three years ago things looked different.

"Just after we bought the building, I turned on the news and there is the (hotel) covered in police tape. I found out a guy had been stabbed 11 times in the building over a drug deal (and) that's the kind of building it was," Delaney said.

But there was an advantage in targeting a building so badly dilapidated and neglected.

"So many places in the city, there is NIMBY-ism (Not In My Backyard) about this kind of project. So if you find a place that you're going to raise up, you lose the NIMBY. This place was so bad when we came into it, the community welcomed us," Delaney said.

Const. Karen MacLeod said she has been impressed with the efforts made by Victory Foundation staff to improve relations with city police.

"We go to very few calls for service at the centre," MacLeod said. "When we have had to go there, it's a very proactive response. . . . We've sort of worked out more of a partnership."

Area Ald. Gian-Carlo Carra described the hotel as a "jewel on the landscape" that has the potential of becoming a focal point for neighbourhood revitalization.

Hand pumps, such as the one above, are the water source for most villagers. Photo by Allison Kwesell

A s your dentist knows, some fluoride is a good thing. Too much, however, can be devastating. The residents of Patari, a village in Uttar Pradesh, are among the millions of people in India who suffer the consequences of fluorosis, an irreversible condition caused by elevated levels of fluoride in drinking water.

Amit Mishra, of the Rotary Club of Unnao, hands a fluoride filtration kit to Mangal Prasad. Photo by Allison Kwesell

The dental symptoms of fluorosis include mottling and erosion of tooth enamel, and its painful effects on bones can result in deformities, calcification of ligaments and tendons, and osteosclerosis.

“The fluoride, because of its strength, rots teeth and destroys bones,” says Maurice Halliday, past governor of District 1020 (Scotland), which worked with District 3110 (India) to provide fluoride filters to 60 families in Patari through a Rotary Foundation Global Grant project. “Many people are bent and bowlegged, if not totally disabled. Farm animals are also affected.”

In a 2001 study of Patari and three nearby villages, researchers measured fluoride content in drinking water. The World Health Organization has set 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water as the safe upper limit; in Patari, drinking water measured up to 3.45 milligrams per liter. The body absorbs as much as 90 percent of the fluoride in drinking water, and the risks increase for people who perform manual labor in hot climates such as Patari’s, because they drink more water than average.

Fluoride occurs naturally in water throughout the world, with several belts of high groundwater concentrations. One stretches from Eritrea to Malawi, and another from Turkey through Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, India, northern Thailand, and China. In China, fluorosis is endemic in every province, autonomous region, and municipality except Shanghai. In India, it affects about 25 million  people.

According to a WHO report, “fluorosis might be one of the most widespread of endemic health problems associated with natural geochemistry.”

Earlier this year, photographer Allison Kwesell traveled to Patari and several other villages to document the children – in whom the irreversible effects of too much fluoride are only beginning to surface – and their parents and grandparents, hunched over canes, legs bowed.

She also photographed the Indian Rotarians who delivered the specially designed filters. The US$40,000 global grant project also provided toilet blocks, safe drinking water, and hygiene training to eight schools serving about 2,300 students in Uttar Pradesh. The effort addressed two areas of focus under the Foundation’s Future Vision Plan: disease prevention and treatment, and water and sanitation.

WHO estimates that almost one-tenth of the global disease burden could be prevented by improving water supply, sanitation, hygiene, and management of water resources. As the Indian villages demonstrate, the solution requires a targeted approach, including assessments of each community’s needs.

From India, Kwesell traveled home to Tennessee, USA. In August, she headed to Tokyo to begin studies as a Rotary Peace Fellow.

Meanwhile, District 1020 is researching another fluoride filter project, Halliday says, that would provide filters to another 400 households in the region.

W ith just one case of polio reported in the last 10 months, India is more determined than ever to ensure eradication of the disease.

As part of that effort, Rotarians helped administer bivalent oral polio vaccine to more than 35 million children during a Subnational Immunization Day on 13 November. The vaccine is effective against the two remaining types of the virus.

Sporting their signature yellow vests and caps, the Rotarians also helped organize free health camps and polio awareness rallies, as well as distribute banners, caps, face masks, comic books, and other items to the children.

On 20 November, a team of Rotarians from District 3700 (Korea) served in a health camp in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, which included immunization of children against polio. The camp was organized by Indian Rotarians in cooperation with local health officials and UNICEF.

The following day, the team took part in a door-to-door mop-up campaign, administering vaccine to children who otherwise would have missed receiving it. A TV news crew from Korea accompanied the Rotarians throughout their visit, taking the End Polio Now message back to their country.

And in Mumbai, Rotary leaders John Germ, chair of Rotary's US$200 Million Challenge Committee; Rotary Foundation Trustee Ashok Mahajan; and RI General Secretary John Hewko joined Indian Rotarians in immunizing children.

“This year, there have been just over 500 cases worldwide. The fact that only one of those cases is in India is a tremendous achievement that reflects the determination of the nation's leaders and its citizens to finally rid their country -- and the world -- of this terrible scourge,” Hewko wrote in an article published earlier this month in the Hindu Business Line.

India’s next National Immunization Days are scheduled for January and February, and a series of supplementary activities are planned through June. At the same time, intensive surveillance for the wild poliovirus is continuing throughout the country.

“Rotary has invested heavily in surveillance in India over the last 12 months,” said Bruce Aylward, the World Health Organization’s assistant director-general for polio eradication and related areas, at a September meeting of Rotary’s International PolioPlus Committee. “That’s the reason we can say with confidence that we think we’re getting close to zero [cases] in India.”

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