Tickets are going fast to listen to journalist and humanitarian Amanda Lindhout speak during a fundraising event to support Rainbow for the Future on April 13.
Rainbow for the Future is a Westlock-based non-governmental organization whose goal is to help improve the lives of Africans, particularly in Ethiopia in eastern Africa.
The event’s goal is to raise money to assist the organization in building a school in Ethiopia, said chair Leo Seguin.
While the evening is meant to raise support for the school project and promote what RFTF, the Westlock Rotary Club and the Westlock Growing Project are doing, it’s Lindhout and her story that are drawing a lot of attention.
“This girl is an amazing story,” Seguin said. “I think she’s one of the most incredible people to ever come to Westlock.”
He said the way she reacted to the 460 days she spent in captivity in Somalia after being kidnapped in August 2008 speaks to her courage and determination.
Whereas many people would be angry and want some sort of revenge, Seguin said Lindhout showed forgiveness and has willingly returned to Somalia to help the local people improve their lives.
“The big thing is she was able to forgive her captors for the tremendous abuse she received,” he said. “If a million people went through what she went through, I doubt any would ever go back there.”
In March, Lindhout spoke about what she plans to discuss during her time in Westlock this Saturday.
“What I’ll be sharing at the event in Westlock will be a broad trajectory of my life – of growing up as a girl in Central Alberta in my home town of Red Deer, and growing up in what poverty looks like in Canada,” she said.
At age 26, she was living in Baghdad, Iraq, but felt a stronger calling to Somalia and the problems in that part of the world.
“It was really heartbreaking for me reading about what the media often calls the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet.”
“People warned me not to go there,” she reflects, but she felt compelled to go anyway.
In August 2008, she went there with her friend, Australian photojournalist Nigel Brennan, whom she had met earlier in Ethiopia, for what was supposed to be a one-week work trip.
On their third day there, on Aug. 23, they were kidnapped. They were ambushed by about a dozen teenage criminals who were waiting for them. What happened next was a total of 460 days in captivity of torment, torture, and human indignities, all of which she will share at her Westlock speaking engagement.
She says it was during one of those times of abuse, she felt a personal transformation, “This understanding that there can always be light found even in the most extreme darkness when you choose to focus on gratitude. For me, my experience was that things were so tough, so bad that I reached a point where I thought I’m not going to survive this. I felt like I was just going to snap. I couldn’t handle it anymore.”
Tickets for the evening are selling fast. Seguin said anyone looking for some should contact Rainbow for the Future as soon as possible at 780-349-3300.
• With files from Les Dunford.
