BARRINGTON -- When Janet Feldman's world was destroyed, the 50-year-old Barrington resident went online and replaced it with a virtual one.
As director of the international chapter of the Kenya AIDS Intervention Prevention Project Group, Feldman works with volunteers around the world to slow the spread of AIDS in Kenya. She coordinates grant-writing efforts, researches funding sources, and plans education programs with the staff of KAIPPG's Kenya chapter.
She does it all using a dial-up Internet service. Feldman suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome and finds it difficult to leave her home.
The slight woman with long blond hair and silver studs dotting her earlobes has never met most of the colleagues that she considers her dearest friends. Most of the time, her only companion at work is Johnny Angel, a stray cat that she took in last year.
"But I do have people," Feldman said. "The people I reach out to are the people I work with around the world."
KAIPPG is a seven-year-old organization that works to educate people in Africa about HIV prevention, and to provide food, health care, and skills training for women and children affected by AIDS. There were 29.4 million adults and children living with AIDS and HIV in Africa in 2002, according to the World Health Organization.
KAIPPG was founded in 1996 by a group of students and families seeking to halt the rapid spread of HIV in their communities, and currently has 15 full-time staff members and about 200 volunteers in Western Africa. The organization is also in a partnership with NetAid, a New York-based national volunteer-matching group, which links the group to volunteers around the world via the Internet.
Feldman became formally affiliated with the organization in 2000 when she launched KAIPPG's international chapter from her computer. But her involvement began in 1996, when all the paths she had taken earlier seemed to converge, and helped her rebuild the life that was devastated by illness.
"My life was totally destroyed," she said, "and it totally came back together again."
Feldman grew up in East Providence and Barrington, and attended the Lincoln School in Providence before matriculating at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass.
As a college student, she was active in women's advocacy groups, and cofounded an organization that provided emergency money for abuse victims in Western Massachusetts. After receiving a bachelor's degree in 1980, she spent several years working at a gallery and artists' space in Amherst, Mass., before moving to Boston in 1985 to pursue a doctoral degree in international diplomacy at Tufts University.
But in 1990, Feldman began to get sick. She began her year with a bout of mononucleosis in January, then became very ill in April with toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection, and cytomegalovirus, a herpes-like virus. Feldman does not have AIDS, but the last two illnesses are common among people who do.
Tests later revealed that Feldman had chronic fatigue and immune dysfunction syndrome, known as CFIDS, which prevented her immune system from fighting off the viruses.
Feldman dropped out of Tufts and moved back to Barrington to live with her parents. Over the next six years, she struggled constantly with her illnesses, and at times thought that she might die.
"I felt very forgotten by the universe at that point," she said.
In 1996, when Feldman had been through the worst of her illnesses, and was beginning to recover, she received a letter from KAIPPG's director, requesting a donation.
Feldman didn't send money. Instead, for reasons she still cannot explain, she wrote back.
"I would have to say there must have been something at work," she said. "When this came along, I said to myself, this may have been given to me for a reason."
She and the director corresponded for several months; he always asked for money, and she always declined. Gradually, she stopped communicating with him.
But her desire to get involved with something, now that she was finally healthy enough to do so, led her to send one more letter in 1997 -- although she was "very skeptical" that KAIPPG was real.
She received a reply from James Onyango, the current director, who told her that the former director had been stealing donations sent to the organization, and was in prison.
Feldman began writing to Onyango to learn more about KAIPPG, and researching AIDS in Africa. The organization seemed to incorporate her old interests -- women's issues and international relations -- as well as her new ones, such as immune deficiency and other illnesses associated with AIDS.
"Then I started realizing that the problem was so large," she said. "So I started writing letters to various organizations for funding."
Her mother's death from Parkinson's disease in 1998 took her away from KAIPPG for a short time, but it left her even more convinced that she had to take action while she could.
In 2000, Feldman bought a computer and incorporated KAIPPG International as a nonprofit corporation in Rhode Island. At first, her work consisted mainly of looking for grants.
A year after she incorporated KAIPPG International, Feldman saw an article about NetAid in Time magazine, and applied to it for help in volunteer recruitment.
Both organizations say it was an ideal match.
"KAIPPG has been a kind of model for the kind of organization we're seeking to engage with," said Bea Bezmalinovic, NetAid's senior program manager. "They play a critical role in understanding the needs on the ground, and we bring to them the ability to tap into resources."
Feldman's core group of 20 volunteers, most of whom found KAIPPG through NetAid, include a grant writer in the Philippines, doctors in the United States, and researchers throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. There are an additional 200 people who participate sporadically.
Feldman spends up to 12 hours each day in a first-floor room with a view of the backyard in her father's house. She monitors her volunteers, checks in with her colleagues, and spreads the word about KAIPPG -- all without ever coming into contact with anyone outside of her family.
She does have friends, however. Stanley Tuvako, a KAIPPG Kenya volunteer recently named one of NetAid's On-line Volunteers of the Year, is one; Terry Rosenlund, a volunteer from Arizona who visited Kenya last year, is another. Rosenlund and Feldman call each other "sister" and are zealous in their praise for one another.
"Janet deserves tons of accolades," wrote Rosenlund in an e-mail to The Journal. "As soon as there's a call for nominations for Volunteer of the Century, I'm personally nominating Janet for it."
The two have never met in person.
Feldman hopes that someday she will be able to travel to Kenya, meet some of her volunteers, see KAIPPG's clinics close up.
But at this point, even though her health is 80 percent better, she is still working up to leaving the house and spending some time around Barrington.
"I'm spending so much energy doing this, that I really don't have the energy or the interest to just go hang out somewhere," she said.
Despite the limits of her environment, Feldman is thrilled with what she has created. From her perspective, it has given her a chance to work internationally, help advocate for women's rights, and interact with fascinating people from all over the world and the World Wide Web.
"It has engaged everything that I studied for, worked for, dreamed about, believed in," she said. "I've found something that I want to do for the rest of my life."
To contact Jessica Ullian, phone 253-1200 or e-mail JUllian@projo.com.
