DATE: Friday, February 28, 1997             TAG: 9702280560

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   89 lines

ACTIVIST PROVES ONE PERSON CAN CHANGE WORLD

When Zainab Salbi took an American vacation during her senior year of college in her native Iraq, her life changed forever.

In turn, she has changed the lives of several thousand women. She has become a living embodiment of the maxim that one person can, indeed, change the world.

Salbi told her remarkable story Thursday on a visit to Virginia Wesleyan College, sponsored by the college's Office of Multicultural Affairs.

During her U.S. visit in 1990, Iraq invaded its neighbor Kuwait, setting in motion the sequence of events that led to a crushing defeat at the hands of a U.S.-led coalition in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

``The longer I waited, the harder it became to go back,'' Salbi said. ``After the war I decided to stay here.''

She got a job as a translator in Washington and entered George Mason University in Fairfax. But soon, world events again intervened.

In 1993 she watched from afar as the former Yugoslavia dissolved into bloody civil war. She was outraged by the Bosnian Serb strategy of ``ethnic cleansing'' in which thousands of women were raped, brutalized and forced to flee their homes.

``The concentration camps, the rape camps - it was incredible,'' Salbi said. ``Every day I read about it and discussed it with my friends, how horrible it was and how the U.S. should do something about it. Then one day it occurred to me: We, too, can do something about it. So we did.''

The result was Women for Women in Bosnia, a grassroots nonprofit organization that recruits women in the United States and other Western countries to provide emotional and financial aid to women who survived the genocide in Bosnia and Croatia.

The all-volunteer group was organized on a shoestring by Salbi and her husband, then a doctoral student in religious studies at the University of Virginia.

Women for Women does its work one-on-one. Each volunteer is matched up with a refugee to whom she agrees to send a letter and $20 each month.

The money is urgently needed for food and other necessities in a country where survivors are completely dependent on humanitarian aid.

The letters satisfy an emotional need that is just as deep.

``The letters have an impact both ways,'' Salbi said. ``The women over there were completely isolated, in refugee camps. A lot of them felt very embittered and abandoned. So the letters acted as a connection to the outside world. To a lot of them, it restored the hope that there are still good people out there - there are still people who care.''

One rape survivor's letter, sent in reply to her American sponsor, was so haunting that it prompted Salbi to consult a psychologist.

``She wrote, `Tell me about Disneyland. Tell me about Hollywood.' And in the same letter, she talks about surviving a rape camp,'' Salbi recalled.

``The psychologist said, `That's normal. Her life has been so shattered and destroyed, she wants to see that there is still a normal life going on out there and that she might have a chance to live it.' ''

For the American sponsors, the exchange is an unforgettable education and a shatterer of cultural barriers.

``One of our sponsors had been on welfare,'' Salbi said. ``She had been able to get off welfare and get a job. She's a single mother. When we asked her why she volunteered, she said, `There was a time I needed help, and now that I've gotten beyond that, it's my turn to help others.'

``She's making a difference in someone's life. For her, it's just as rewarding as for the ones who are receiving the help.''

Despite its humble beginnings - for six months, the group worked out of Salbi's in-laws' basement in Fairfax - Women for Women has achieved an outsized impact.

A $60,000 grant from Working Assets, a San Francisco-based long-distance phone company that donates a percentage of its proceeds to nonprofits, enabled the group to rent a Washington office and hire its first two paid staffers.

In three years, it has distributed more than $250,000 to more than 1,000 women and has just launched a ``micro-lending'' program to help genocide survivors start businesses.

It has been honored for its achievements by President Clinton and Amnesty International. An expansion into Rwanda may be next, Salbi said.

At 27, Salbi hopes to cut back on her involvement in the group and return to school. Her work ``has taken an emotional toll,'' she concedes.

Eventually, she dreams of returning to Iraq - but only after Saddam Hussein's dictatorial regime is out of power. ``I'd like to go back when Saddam leaves and help rebuild Iraq,'' she said. ``It's completely devastated.''

In a young life already marked by daunting challenges overcome, it would be just one more. MEMO: For more information about Women for Women in Bosnia, call

202-822-1391. ILLUSTRATION: [Photo]

Zainab Salbi says she was outraged by the Bosnian Serb strategy

of ``ethnic cleansing.''

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