Lyceum

[Editor’s Note: This column is taken from Dr. Williams’ address to the East African Trade Summit at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Ga., on June 28, 2001.]

I am honored by this privilege to speak to such a distinguished group of African and African-American leaders about a subject dear to my heart – bridging the educational gap between the United States and East Africa.

We have made a move toward bridging the gap between Atlanta and East Africa by hosting a meeting of more than 150 Kenyan students at Life University.

Albert Schweitzer, the great genius who spent a considerable portion of his life serving unselfishly in Gabon in Africa, once shared this thought: "I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve."

An old African proverb says, "It takes a village to raise a child." With today’s transportation and communication, the whole world appears to be just a big village. And I say to you now, "It takes a world to educate a child." If I have the resources to share valuable knowledge with a child, whether he is in my village, your village or some distant village, that is my child, and I feel obligated to teach him.

Every college and university in the United States has an obligation to share its resources to bridge the educational gap between the United States and Africa. Our educational institutions must rise above geography, rise above politics, rise above ethnicity and reach out to a world hungry for knowledge.

Life University serves over 3,500 students from throughout the United States and 226 others from 47 countries around the world. Thirty-seven are from African nations, including 19 from Kenya and one from Tanzania. We have more than 450 American students of African descent at Life — more than three times the number at all other chiropractic institutions combined.

Chiropractic has always had a good working relationship with the African-American community. The very first chiropractic patient was an African-American.

In the dark days of segregation, all of the 21 clinics I owned throughout the Southeast were open to all citizens with full equality and respect to all patients in need of chiropractic care. In fact, in the mid-1960s some 200 to 300 African-Americans visited our Austell, Georgia, chiropractic clinic on a weekly basis, arriving in buses, cabs and private cars from all over the United States.

My involvement with the African-American community reached its climax when, at the height of the civil rights movement, Dick Gregory called to ask me to meet him at Westview Baptist Church. After arriving at 6 a.m., I adjusted 60 to 70 marchers.

Mr. Gregory advised me to avoid talking to the marchers, who were going to integrate the bus at Rich’s department store, because the group was heavily infiltrated with government agents.

Later that morning, I attended a meeting where the principal speakers were Ralph David Abernathy, Coretta Scott King and the Honorable Andrew Young. Because of my participation in these and other activities, we were all branded with the same brand.

As a result, my $500,000 shopping center that was the base of my chiropractic clinic operations was burned down one year, and then again the next year on exactly the same day. I think somebody was trying to tell me something, but, in spite of the frustration and constant threat of violence, I didn’t listen because my heart was telling me to keep on keeping on.

As a result of that earlier bonding experience, Dick Gregory and I have been friends since. In fact, one of his sons is a Life graduate and now practices in Washington, D.C. If you’re ever in our nation’s capital and need an adjustment, Dr. Gregory is the chiropractor to see.

Our commitment to the African-American community is further exemplified by our contribution of over $750,000 in sponsorships to acknowledge African-American innovation and achievement in the fields of science, art, education, sports, engineering and politics through the annual Trumpet Awards presentation that is produced locally in Atlanta by Ted Turner’s WTBS.


From left: Life University student George Ondimu, Kenya Industry Trade and Tourism Director John Masila, Life University President Sr. Did E. Williams, Kenya Minister of Trade Nicholas Biwott and Life University student Sammy Niyamonga.

On the international scene, Life University has provided 16 full academic and 12 athletic scholarships per year since 1985 for international students. Since 1995, Life has given $7 million in scholarships, including $835,000 in international scholarships, and has provided over $1.5 million in discounts to international students.

Currently, more than 15 percent of chiropractors worldwide are Life University alumni.

The university also has invested more than $6 million in cash over the last 15 years in international humanitarian projects. Among these projects was our work with the World Health Organization. Life University’s participation in the WHO multi-disciplinary expert committee on back pain, beginning in 1993, resulted in the WHO publication CRA-99, Global Low Back Pain Initiative.

Life University sponsored and participated in the WHO Tobacco Free Initiative, demonstrating our willingness to preserve the right of the citizens of the world to health. Our logo "Chiropractors Against Tobacco" (CAT) campaign began in the early 1970s, when nobody else paid any attention to the deleterious effects of this destructive habit.

Life University has developed international humanitarian outreach programs that can teach spinal hygiene to the billions of people, living in rural villages in underdeveloped areas of the world, who might never in their lifetime get to see a fully educated chiropractor.

Presented to the world during the 2000 Geneva Social Summit, the spinal hygiene program attracted the attention of the NGO Forum of Health, and it was presented in a full-day program during the World Health Assembly in Geneva in May.

Interest in this layperson program was remarkable. Life University’s first national program will begin in Bangladesh this November. We intend to teach 100 teachers, who will train 1,000 trainers to travel throughout the countryside and teach spinal hygiene methods to village people in an effort to reduce spinal infirmities and empower these individuals to maintain a healthier lifestyle. We intend to work with authorities in Bangladesh to extend the program to every single village inside the country by the end of 2002, distributing over 30 million printed personal spinal hygiene guides.

India submitted a similar request, and we have plans to start there in the summer of 2002. India has a population of over one billion people. The burden to provide our services is going to be huge. A minimum of 500 million pamphlets will be needed, and we will definitely need financial help for this massive project.

Life University enjoys an extensive history of participation in international service and educational programs. Our first international programs director, Dr. Paul Penn, who is a 1978 Morehouse College graduate and a 1984 Life Chiropractic College graduate, is currently in private practice in Atlanta. He visited and introduced chiropractic to health authorities representing more than 40 countries in the mid-1980s.

Our current international director, Dr. Medhat Alattar, carried on with the expansion of our international activities with outstanding results. We now have working relationships with China, South Korea, Indonesia, Russia, Ukraine, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and Peru, to name a few.

In the East African region, our activities with Kenya started in the early 1990s. They involved recruitment of several Kenyan distance runners to participate with our other student athletes. Many sports links were created with the University of Kennyata. We worked with Kip Keino, who is, no doubt, the most famous runner in Kenya. Paul Tergat, of Moi University, is our friend, and he will visit Life University this fall.

Academic exchanges and community service programs have been initiated with the University of Maseno in Kenya. Our joint efforts resulted in improving the water quality and availability at the Maseno University campus by the funding the purchase and installation of four water filters, just off Lake Victoria, at a cost of over $30,000. And they are working just fine, even as we speak.

We are very excited about discussions currently in progress with Maseno to develop a chiropractic educational program and a public chiropractic clinic to serve the people of this community and to be used as a facility for qualified D.C.s to do their chiropractic internship training.

The late Dr. Mukasa Mango, Kenya’s former Minister of Health, served as a professor at Life University for eight years. During that time, he also enrolled with us as a chiropractic student and completed two years toward his chiropractic degree.

We are indebted to Dr. Mango for his contribution to the creation of this important bridge between our respective universities. Inspired by his example, we have awarded more than 10 academic and athletic scholarships to Kenyan students to attend Life University. Also inspired by his example, Dr. Mango’s two sons are now studying on scholarship at Life University, and one of them, Chimareni, is about to graduate with a Doctor of Chiropractic degree.

In the West African region, we opened a clinic in Burkina Faso in 1987. However, that facility operated less than a year because of a change in the official leadership of that country.

Over the years, we visited and developed contacts with Nigeria and Ghana and have succeeded in graduating several doctors of chiropractic from those countries who have returned to their native homelands to begin their private practices.

In 1998, Life University established a strong West African presence in Dakar, Senegal. Life worked with the government to initiate legislation recognizing the chiropractic profession in Senegal, thus making it the first French-speaking nation to do so. Since then, Life University has formulated plans to establish an educational/training program in conjunction with a chiropractic mobile clinic to be stationed permanently in Senegal.

Life University also has plans for the introduction of a Master of Science in Health (M.S.H.) degree that will be offered at the Rufisque Center in Dakar, Senegal, and will provide a regional focus on health and policy issues affecting West Africa.

In Central Africa in the early 1990s, Life University worked with the government of Rwanda to secure passage of legislation authorizing and regulating the practice of chiropractic.

In North Africa in 1983, Life University initiated a relationship with Egypt by providing a fully licensed chiropractor, Dr. Rod Handly, to conduct a joint research program with the national insurance organization and to serve the Egyptian people with chiropractic care.

The first Egyptian to graduate from Life was Dr. Alattar, who received his degree in 1987 and is now our dean of international affairs.

Since 1984, Life University has provided five full scholarships to Egyptian citizens. More than 15 Egyptian doctors of chiropractic have graduated from Life University, and currently four more are studying chiropractic at our Marietta campus.

We have learned at Life University that the love of sports gives us an international language that allows us to communicate on every continent of the world. Sports transcend political boundaries and bring together peoples of differing ideologies. And when it comes to sports, our record of wins enables us at Life to speak with some authority. Life University won more than 20 national championships in the past eight years.

In addition to numerous other international sporting activities, Life University chiropractors provided delegations to Sydney’s 2000 Olympic Games to work with the athletes representing Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras. The successful outcome of our participation resulted in agreements that have established centers in these countries that provide chiropractic care to their national athletes in preparation for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. We will be happy to entertain the idea of providing your nation with chiropractic care in your sports programs.

We at Life University are eager to take our expertise to your people. We love to share. We are willing to work with you to initiate academic exchange programs between Life University and universities and colleges in East Africa. We already provide 16 international scholarships at Life University that are available to qualified applicants from any developing country in the world, including those you represent here.

To further strengthen our relationship with East Africa, and to encourage other U.S. universities to follow our lead, I am pleased to announce that Life University designated a new full Doctor of Chiropractic scholarship, including housing costs, for any qualified candidate from East Africa. We have also pledged a $5,000 cash donation to offset the cost of holding this East African Trade Summit.

Finally, let me say that our goal – admittedly ambitious – is to do everything within our power to insure that people throughout the world will have equal opportunities to share and enjoy the fruits of this beautiful and productive world of ours.

We will do our part to help our brothers and sisters throughout the world stand tall; walk tall; live, love and laugh longer; and earn for themselves a better life in a better world.

About the author: Sid E. Williams, B.S., D.C., is founder and president of Life University. Comments should be addressed to him at 1269 Barclay Circle, Marietta, GA 30060; or E-mail drsid@life.edu.