Starting with What We Have

This is the story of James from Mulenga, Zambia - a partner and servant to the poor and vulnerbale in his community.

"After hearing George Snyman's speech at Kaniki Bible School in Ndola in December 2003, I was moved with a strong conviction to do something about the weak in society. My wife, Sukai and I started praying and planning about this. Our prayer was that the lord give us excess money so that we start a feeding programme for little ones – orphans. Even after praying from December 2003 to July 2004, we could not even afford to buy plates and pots for cooking.

Then one day in July, my wife just said to me, ‘let’s just start this even without the new plates and pots’. I asked ‘how? She said,’ we start with the pots and plates that we use in our home.

This marked the beginning and indeed confirm that God uses what we have in our hands as demonstrated in the following scriptures Matt 15:32-39, 1 Kings 17:7-16 and Exodus 4:2

Gods hand was upon us that even the fears of failure that we had melted away because his provisions increased through our business. Twenty kids were privileged to have at least a meal everyday and this brought great joy in our hearts.

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Benefit Concert (US)

Hands At Work partner, World In View, is holding a benefit concert in on Saturday, November 15^th in Dallas, TX to raise money for our Mozambique projects. This will be an amazing night of worship led by emerging gospel artist, Douglas Feil. Douglas Feil has performed in concert, at the Grammies and on numerous late night shows with artist such as U2 and Kirk Franklin. Admission and parking are free, and an offering will be received at the event. If you are in the DFW area, please go and show your support! For more details visit: Benefit Concert. 

Hands Village Opening

View Photos of Hands Village

UK College Impacting Community Schools (ZAM)

Halesowen College Child Care Students’ Project for Community Schools in Zambia

Hands UK Chairman, Nick Lawrence, and his wife, Heather, who has been training community school teachers in Zambia for the last 4 years, recently attended a presentation evening at Halesowen College. During the academic year 2007-08, students in the Child Care & Education department created a wide range of educational resources to be sent to the community schools we support in Zambia and also put on several fundraising events. The picture shows Nick & Heather receiving a cheque for GBP 1,305.78 from Diane McCathie, Student Support Director at the College.

We are sincerely grateful to all the students for their hard work and, in particular, to Gill Pendry for co-ordinating the project. The College will be undertaking another project during the 2008-09 academic year as we continue to build on this excellent partnership.

Watch us online this week! (SA) (MOZ)

The TV broadcast Living Truth recorded stories of the work that we are doing in South Africa and aired it across Canada and the States this past Sunday. If you were unable to watch it you can view it online for this week only. Click here to watch stories from South Africa, Mozambique and Malawi of hope and need and learn more about Hands at Work along the way.

Reaching the Poorest of the Poor (MOZ)

On a bare patch of dirt in the bush outskirts of the community I met Jaos (9) and Luisa (7):  a brother and sister that lived under a tarp tied to a tree. Their mother died last year and their father was in an accident and can't use his arm or earn income. In April the family’s few clothes, blankets and cooking pots were stolen from beneath the open tarp, and church volunteers found the kids shivering in the cold winter evening.

Jaos and Luisa pass entire days without a meal. The only food they get is by begging from other already poor neighbors or by offering to pound (by hand) a neighbor’s corn kernels into flour for a fee of a handful of the flour. Neither of them is in school. They can’t afford exercise books or pens. But without food, they couldn’t concentrate enough to learn anyway.

The volunteers who discovered the family returned the next day to build a small single room with grass walls to at least shelter the wind. When I met them, the kids hadn’t eaten in a day. They had a single set of clothes: Luisa’s dress and Jaos’ jean jacket, so crusty they would stand on their own.

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Masoyi Home-Based Care Survey (SA)

A Grannie works in the community garden at a Care Center in Masoyi, South Africa.With an estimated 5.5 million people living with HIV in South Africa, the AIDS epidemic is creating large numbers of children growing up without adult protection, nurturing, or financial support. Of South Africa’s 18 million children, nearly 21% (about 3.8 million children) have lost one or both parents.

Despite the magnitude and dire consequences of the growing number of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) in South Africa and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, there is insufficient documentation of the strategies deployed to improve the well-being of these children.

To fill these knowledge gaps, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief commissioned Khulisa Management Services of Johannesburg, South Africa, to research and write case studies of 32 OVC programmes in South Africa that receive emergency plan funding.

Hands at Work’s Masoyi Home-Based Care project serves Masoyi, consisting of six villages in Mpumalanga Province. Here is the case study of what we do and how we do it.

Expansion into Zimbabwe

As part of the drive to reach three new countries by 2010, a Hands at Work team visited eastern Zimbabwe in July. Two rural villages were targeted as immediate expansion sites.

This grandmother is 75% blind, she doesn't work but earns a little  income by renting out her second room. Five of her seven children have passed away leaving her with 16 grandchildren that she now stays with in this one room. She has also taken in one other orphan from the neighborhood. These are the lives we want to touch by beginning work in Zimbabwe.

TV Telethon Airing in Canada

In July, Peoples Church (Canada) filmed two TV programs on Hands at Work’s activities in South Africa and Mozambique. The programs will air as part of the Living Truth broadcast October 12, 19 and 26. For information on times and stations see a braodcast schedule here.

Premier Home Based Care Award (MOZ)

Hands at Work’s Rubatano Home Based Care in Mozambique received government accolades for 2008 as the premier Home Based Care in Manica province, which was recognized for national best practice for community outreach.

An immobile patient in Mozambique being taken from the deep bush  up a small path to the main road on bicycle by volunteers who will send him to the nearest clinic.

Benefit Concert (CAN)

Bands play a benefit concert for Hands at Work in Africa (Canada).

Date:	Saturday, September 20, 2008
Time:	2:00pm - 10:00pm
Location:	Nose Creek Park
	Main Street, Airdrie, AB

For more information check out the facebook event.

De-Worming

In a single health campaign this June and July, 2900 orphaned and vulnerable children were successfully treated for worms in South Africa. 

Hands at Work is expanding to reach 100,000 orphaned and vulnerable children by 2010 with at least 3 services: Food Security, Education, and Basic Health.

Basic Health is an enormous category encompassing activities from wound care to rebuilding roofs on houses. But de-worming is a backbone Basic Health activity. It's not a sexy topic, and few of us understand the suffering of millions of African children with bellies full of worms. The following article should shed some light on the issue.

WHO De-worming at a glance

Read a personal account of one of the day's events
Jean Aimee Gifford, a volunteer with Hands at Work and nurse from the US: At the End of the Day

2009 Int'l Conference

March 26th to 29th, 2009

Our International Conference is a time when we gather together in one place with our Church and Organisation Partners, African Service Centers, and International Country Offices to fellowship, build relationships, hear about the work being done and set the tone and work plans for the upcoming year. Mark this time down in your calendars to be with us.

Details to follow.

Church Leaders in SA Complete Training

56 South African church leaders completed a six-week Hands at Work training program on July 9 on the church’s role in fighting HIV/AIDS and caring for widows, orphans and the dying.

Situated in the province of Mpumalanga and bounded by Kruger Park to the east, the local municipality of Bushbuckridge is a neglected area that is suffering under the crippling weight of poverty, social disintegration, and HIV and AIDS. 

With the mandate to capacitate locals to care for the poorest of the poor in their communities, Hands at Work has committed itself to helping start up four new home-based cares and multi-care centres in the Bushbuckridge area.  These new efforts are concentrated in the north-east corner of Bushbuckridge; encompassing approximately twenty villages in a 280 square kilometre area.  The residents have very little access to government health and social services.  The first step towards starting up these home-based cares is to mobilize the pastors and Christian leaders in the community to begin actively caring for the poor, sick, dying, and orphaned within their community.

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Lindy loved to go to school

Lindy and her brother outside their home in Likasi, Congo.In a village called Chitulu, in Democratic Republic of Congo, on a home-based care visit one day, my wife and I met a little girl named Lindy. She is five years old. She has dark, mourning eyes, and wispy little legs that poke out beneath her skirt. She is HIV-positive. No one seems to know where their father is, and their very sick mother died shortly after Lindy’s birth. She has a seven-year old brother who is healthy. The kids live now with their grandparents.

The grandfather is very old and works each day farming in their field outside town. He loves his grandchildren very much, and when Lindy began getting sick, he carried her on his back to the local clinic. The grandmother is completely blind. She sits on a soft chair in the middle of their house smiling with her eyes wide open: creamy white moons leaking slow drips onto her cheeks.
This is a broken family, but together somehow they are strong. The grandmother calls out to Lindy: “Lindy, is the door open?” or “Lindy, is it raining outside?” The little girl is her grandmother’s eyes. The grandfather relies heavily on his disabled wife for the emotional encouragement to keep working in his old age. Recently the grandmother became very ill, and it seemed for a while that she might not live. His old wife’s illness almost killed the grandfather.

The grandmother told us Lindy loved to go to school, that even though she was too young and was sick, she constantly whined and begged her grandparents to go to school.

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