Hands at Work began working with local church and community leaders in Macadeira in 2011 by gathering the churches and demonstrating the heart of Christ to see His church united together in caring for the most vulnerable people in their community. To overcome their lack of material possessions, the churches are being trained to see the strength of combining resources and working across denominational lines. They are also being challenged to get deep into the lives of the poorest children, sharing their burdens and providing love, support and mentorship to address the enormous challenges they face daily. Change looks possible for the future.

 Recently, the community’s leaders announced the plan to start making bricks from scratch with the aim of building their own secondary school. That is very good news for hundreds of children like Anita and Annabelle.

Six-year-old Mdeni Dlamini is a quiet boy who lives in Kaphunga, a remote and isolated community in the mountains of Swaziland. He stays with his 14-year-old cousin, Banele in a mud hut left by their grandmother. Their 25-yearold uncle stays in another hut on the same property. Neither child is in school.

Mdeni and Banele have no one to look after them. Banele’s parents have both died and Mdeni’s mother lives in the city of Manzini with his stepfather. The boys’ uncle, an orphan himself, is illiterate and does ad hoc jobs around the area when he can get them. But such work hardly brings in enough income to support the three. There is often no food in the house and water is scarce. The boys’ only source of water comes from a trickle of a dirty stream, likely to be infested with waterborne disease. The mud wall of the one-roomed hut has an enormous crack, and the unstable structure is threatening to fall apart completely.

The boys don’t have a bed, but sleep on the bare floor in this bitterly cold region. Mdeni tried living for a time with his mom and stepfather, but was treated badly and eventually returned to live in the rural village.

Hands at Work supports the local community- based organisation, Asondle Sive Bomake, working in the hills of Kaphunga. The community’s elderly women have banded together to bring the love of Christ to transform the most vulnerable children in the area. These women cross enormous distances on the mountainsides to identify and serve the area’s most vulnerable children, like Mdeni and Banele. Hands at Work supports them with mentoring, train-ing and finances to provide basic services. Maize seedlings and food supplements have helped to lighten the burden off Mdeni and Banele, giving them enough strength to start attending school in hope that an education will open doors for the future



Susu is an extraordinarily poor and isolated community in central Lawrence and Sanday at work in a local church.Zambia. When Hands at Work field worker Lawrence Kunda began visiting Susu the community was in despair. Poverty was widespread and alcoholism was a way of life. Nearly everyone existed only by subsistence farming and couldn’t afford access to schools or a trip to see the doctor for sick children.

Local community member, Sanday, was in such a situation when Lawrence discovered him. Lawrence struck up a friendship and began mentoring Sanday, slowly discipling him over many months about the love and compassion of Christ. In 2009 Sanday realised his faith was leading him to start doing something for the vulnerable community around him.

"Welcome to Susu, your second home. We love you, feel free!"

Together, Lawrence and Sanday mobilised a team of other local volunteers and began equipping and mentoring them to care for orphaned and vulnerable children. Seeing the great need for education, Sanday and his volunteer team began a small community school under the shade of the trees. It was a huge success and inspired the community to begin making mud bricks in faith that they could build an entire school.

By 2011 a full care centre had begun to emerge: the school walls were complete; a new bore-hole, providing children with access to clean drinking water for the first time, had been drilled; and a cooking space was constructed to feed the most vulnerable children. Community members have watched the transformation in front of their eyes.

Sharon and her sister recieve a hot meal from a local feeding point.One child participating in the transformation is 14-year-old Sharon. When her parents passed away in 2001, Sharon and her two younger sisters were taken in by their grandparents. Because they were poor and too frail to work, the grandparents struggled to provide food. Sharon’s grandmother often scoured the edge of already harvested fields to search for leftover food. Many days the family went without eating at all. When the family was discovered by Sanday and his team, Sharon and her sisters were enrolled in the school and the feeding programme. A dedicated Susu care worker began looking after the family, encouraging and supporting them in solving their problems. Sharon achieved second place overall in her class of students. This is a transformation the entire community is celebrating.

See more photos from Zambia 

He will be speaking at the Bragg Creek Community Church, Sunday, January 22 at 10am.

If you are in Vancouver he will be speaking at Mission Fest, Saturday, January 28, 2012, at 3:30 in Room 10 of the Vancouver Convention Centre.

See you there!

A day that is an opportunity for people world-wide to unite in the fight against HIV, showing support for people living with HIV and to commemorate people who have died.

It started on the 1^st December 1988, World AIDS Day is about increasing awareness, fighting prejudice and improving education. World AIDS Day is important for reminding people that HIV has not gone away and that there are many things still to be done. HIV today is a threat to men, women, and children around the world. The theme for World AIDS Day 2011 is “Getting to Zero”. After 30 years of the global fight against HIV/AIDS this year the global community has committed to focus on achieving 3 targets: zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. Remember if you are not infected, you’re affected. Let’s beat it! Make your move...

Click to view pictures from the event.

Dan and I both had the honour of staying in the homes of two separate families; one in the urban community of Toyota on the outskirts of the city, and the other a rural village set deep in the Congo bush. They call it the ‘Lost Community’, because you can’t get there without getting lost somewhere along the way. It was there that I stayed with Vivian and her family. Vivian has suffered from leprosy for a long time, making her too weak to care adequately for her three children. Her two youngest children stand head and shoulders apart - one tall and healthy where the other appears stunted and thin. At a guess, I would say they were 12 and 7; it was only as I left that I discovered they were identical twins. They were so deeply embedded in poverty that they had not been able to be fed equally from the very day they were born, and for reasons I couldn’t imagine one had always received more than the other. I slept on the floor alongside the children, a chicken nestling at my feet, in a room so small that were I not there it would still have been cramped with just the 3 of them. For too long these children have lived robbed of the freedom to dream, to aspire, to look toward their future – they were far too busy simply dreaming of their next meal. Nothing so steals away dignity as when the rumblings of a hungry stomach drown out every other dream and desire. Yet hope is stirring.

Squeezed into their one-room hut, I lay squashed against a huge bag of mealy meal – their staple diet – donated from the hands of local care-workers who are, themselves, crippled by the poverty that stalks the village. With that gift, the children will not go hungry again for a long time. As the weeks went on in the DRC, I saw more and more glimmers of life breaking through the cracks. Groups of widows pooling together everything they had so that none of their children would go hungry; volunteers walking 12km to teach a class in the morning then 12km back to teach another class in the afternoon; men whom orphaned children ran to because they saw in them a father who cares.

Life is breaking through. As for me, I think I’m beginning to see what beats at the heart of Hands at Work in a way I haven’t seen before. Working in the office, walking in the community, supporting and serving in any way that I can or know how, all of it submerses you deeper into the DNA of what this family, and our purpose, is all about. It’s all about life. It’s about beautiful feet, about reclaiming the life and love for which every one of God’s kids was designed. Not one is forgotten, not one abandoned. There is not one whose fingerprint God didn’t labour over, whose hairs God didn’t count, whose future God doesn’t imagine, envision or dream about. Six weeks of orientation prepares you, teaches you, and challenges you. But it is when you step into what you were called to Africa for, whatever it might be, that you hear the heartbeat of the Father. All you have to do is throw yourself into it – strive every day to serve with fresh passion, learn from all those who have gone before you, run after what God has prepared. Don’t look to what you’ll do but to who you’ll become. Africa changes anyone who comes willing – it is for that that God called us here. And if we make a difference, if we leave a fingerprint on this amazing place, well then the privilege is ours! Of one thing I’m sure: God loves Africa.

Adam Bedford is originally from the UK and has been serving as a volunteer with Hands at Work in Africa for three months. While this concludes his journals about volunteer orientation for our newsroom, you can still follow Adam, his thoughts, and his heart for Africa on his personal blog.

“The thought that came to me was simply have a heart of compassion. I needed to pour out my heart day and night for the children, and follow God’s cry for the heart of the children”

“...I was encouraged to stand and walk with those people, and I found that it’s so important to be there to celebrate with the children when there’s reason to, but to also encourage them when they have little hope. That’s what sincere love is – loving them through both good and bad moments.”

“The New Year is a time of restoration – God will restore his precious children to himself. Each child was fearfully and wonderfully made. He has an identity, a future and a plan for each child. Each child was God-begotten... it was not a human decision. It has been stolen from so many of our children – the freedom to choose the life He had mapped out for them. But He says Live. (Ezekiel 16) He says ‘I’ll wash the blood off of you and I will pick you up where you’ve been discarded. I will adorn you. I will make a covenant with you.”

“To be closer to the Heart of God almighty. Is that not why we’re here? Is there anything more important than this? It is by knowing His heart that we can finally come to know His love for us. It is by knowing His love that we can come to know His cross. And it is by knowing His Cross that we can come before Him emptied of ourselves, willing to give up our lives, and willing to know Him and be filled by Him. It is then that we are able to receive His Heart and his love.

'And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and by careful to obey my just decrees.'"

“My love will always run dry, my strength and my energy will always fade out, my heart will always grow cold. Lord, please give me a new heart and a new spirit; please give me your heart and your spirit. Please give me your love. For your love never runs dry, your strength never fades, and your heart never grows cold. In Jesus’ Name.”

"Father! You saw injustice in Egypt and you got involved by raising Moses to bring hope. You saw me and my hopelessness and you sent your son. Now I see injustice because You gave me Your heart. Give me courage to be like You and Jesus. I want to bring hope!"

"Ezekiel 16 speaks of God’s love and compassion toward Jerusalem. On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water... no one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you... I said to you live, I made you grow... I covered your nakedness. I have you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the sovereign Lord, and you became mine. I clothed you. I fed you. I adorned you."

“Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your heart do not think evil of each other” Zachariah 7:9 – 10

“God is at home. God is your home. He is a father who will protect you. A friend who will watch your back. A brother who will keep you from ever being lonely. He loves you so much and he is holding out his hand. Reach out for it and walk together. He won’t let you go or lag behind. He won’t run ahead, unless it is to protect you. He is your biggest champion.”

“Anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these... I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father”
John 14: 12 – 14

“My vision is that Jesus sees all the broken and vulnerable children. He sees our heartache and He encourages us to persevere in care and love to them. As we weep, he weeps over all the injustice”

The poverty of slums within Lagos, the country’s largest city, is beyond comprehension: hundreds of thousands of the city’s poorest people are jammed into tiny rooms without water or sewage systems. Water from intense seasonal rains and the tides of the nearby ocean bay flood the slums leaving dirty water filled with sewage and rubbish to surround even homes and schools, exposing children to bacterial disease and malaria.

At 3.6%, the adult HIV-prevalence rate is low compared to countries in southern Africa. But due to Nigeria’s large  population, it ranks as the country with the third largest number of people living with HIV in the world.

Hands at Work began operating in Nigeria in 2006 and works in 5 communities in the country’s south, including the hyper-urban slums of Lagos and the rural villages outside the city of Ibadan.

Long-term volunteer, Tommy Malster from the UK, recently visited some of these communities. We have uploaded a few of his photos to give you a glimpse of what daily life amongst Nigeria's poorest looks like:

"This is the pond where three orphaned siblings, Mary, Celina and Abigail from Elekuru, have to get their drinking water. It doesn't really look clean, but it's all they have--they live in such a rural community."

"Here Mary, Celina and Abigail are pictured with Hands at Work field coordinator, Bayo, outside their home. Mary's arm was badly burnt by the people she was staying with before.""This is a shot of Badia. It shows the level of rubbish and poverty the community's people have to live in. We had to walk on the planks of wood because the rubbish was filled with water and so many diseases. We were constantly walking past brothels, shops and also children with no clothes on because they simply cannot afford any.""This is a school in Badia. We [Hands at Work] have enrolled 50 vulnerable children at the school, mixed in with the government school kids. Here we are meeting some of the volunteer teachers who are with the community-based organisation (CBO) [supported by Hands at Work]. I am greeting Matilda, a teacher."

"When we visited the school, the playground had been flooded and so the kids had the option of either playing in the water or having to stay in the classroom."