BY SID CASSESE
STAFF WRITER
Newsday  LONG ISLAND
SUNDAY, JULY 24, 2005 | NASSAU EDITION

Copyright 2006 Newsday

She travels 5,000 miles to Africa as a volunteer to help build schools and to fight women's childbirth injuries, and Rockville Center's Barbara Margolies said she believes such a work also helps her own community and country. 

"While I get a tremendous amount of pleasure helping to improve the lives of these women and seeing relationships grow between Americans and people in Niger, it is also important to me to show them we are not the ogres we're made out to be by so many people," said Margolies, 65, a retired Brooklyn elementary school teacher.

Margolies and her husband, Ira, a retired executive for a Manhattan garment center manufacturer, have visited African countries dozens of times. The trips began around 1984, when she was doing research for the most popular of her four children's books, "Rehema's Journey: A Visit in Tanzania." She helped build a well and pump for the family of the 9-year-old subject of the book.

The Margolieses later spent a month in Ethiopia and would end up helping pay for the education of a teenager they met. Barbara Margolies also worked with the Flying Doctors of East Africa.

Inspiring students

In March 2001, she brought the UN ambassador from Tanzania to Rockville Center to address third-graders at Hewitt Elementary School. The presentation inspired the students to donate mosquito nets to a hospital in Dar es Salaam, the capital of the nation 35 million people.

"That was an exciting multicultural experience for those children, and it's even more exciting for the African children when I show them slides of American things and places," Margolies said.

Gretchen Browne, Rockville Center Public Library director, said she is impressed by Margolies' books and her dedication to Africa. "Her commitment crystallizes her view that it is the responsibility of Americans to help other people make their lives better," Browne said.

Margolies began her love affair with Niger - a nation of 12 million - after being hired in 2000 by the U.S. State Department to teach English to teachers there.

"Eventually, I visited some schools and learned there were few English language books available," Margolies said. "One school, with classes of 60 to 80 students, had one 1970 book. The teacher would write from it on the blackboard, and the students would copy it in their note books."

Margolies said she soon was able to persuade one of her publishers, Scholastic, to donate more than 3,000 books, which were divided between two school libraries in Niger's capital city, Niamey. "But books are still desperately needed," she said. Margolies also helped build two vegetable gardens and worked with an international agricultural organization there to provide two small irrigation systems for those gardens. "The students, helped by teachers, sell the produce to buy school supplies," she added.

Two years ago, Margolies formed the International Organization for Women and Development. It is a nonprofit agency that brings American surgeons to Niger to operate and train doctors there to operate on women with obstetric fistula, a major birthing problem in many African and other developing countries. And with the help of certain medical companies - Pfizer, Berlex, Johnson & Johnson, Boston Scientific and Vanguard Medical Concepts - the agency has provided $1.5 million worth of medicine and equipment to Niger, Margolies said.

Niger's Medal of Honer

"Barbara has not only made a material impact but also a qualitative one," said Niger's UN ambassador, Ousmane Moutari. She was the recipient earlier this year of Niger's highest award given to a foreigner, its Medal of Honer, he said.

"People all over the world want to see what Americas will do, and, with her help in health and general education, Barbara has shown us in Niger the best of America," Moutari said.

Margolies, citing a growing number of cases of obstetric fistula among women in the sub-Saharan region, will lead a group of doctors to Niger on Sept. 21.

At least 2 million women live with obstetric fistula, which affect an additional 100,000 women a year, according to the UN. It usually stems from prolonged labor obstruction and results in an internal tearing between the vagina and bladder or rectum, or both. Without surgical repair, it can lead to lifelong incontinence and social ostracism, a UN report said.

Margolies' group, mostly composed of pelvic reconstructive surgeons, is among the top tier of U.S. surgeons, said Dr. Alan Garely, chief of gynecology at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineral. "Single-handedly, she is responsible for those doctors going to Niger," said Garely, who helped form Margolies' organization.