In response to the massive need of Nigeria’s most vulnerable children, Hands at Work partners are challenging and training church leaders in the poorest areas of 3 regions across the country: Lagos, Ibadan and Kano. Recently, more than 200 leaders were trained in 3 – 5 day workshops.
Training Care Champions (MAL)(ZAM)(DRC)
A multi-country training workshop for the first ever group of Hands at Work Regional care trainers from Congo, Malawi, and Zambia was held in June at the Kachele Farm outside Luyanshya, Zambia, led by Levy Mwende, a long-time Hands at Work trainer and home-based care champion. These trainers will lead the training of other volunteers in their home regions, making the replication of the Hands at Work model of caring for vulnerable children more efficient and locally sustainable. . Special emphasis was given to the vulnerable children and their real need of love and affection as we minister to their felt physical needs
59 Bicycles Donated (ZAM)
Fifty-nine bicycles were donated to Community Based Organisations around Kabwe, Zambia. Care Workers are now able to visit those in need in their community more often and when needed use their bikes to transport patients to the clinic. They used to have to walk long distances especially to the most vulnerable who are often located on the fringes of communities, now they are overjoyed with this gift from Tour d’Afrique.
Hope for Families (DRC)
A recent partnership struck in Congo will bring life and hope to desperate patients and families suffering from AIDS by providing free access to life-saving antiretroviral (ARV) medication. Patients in the community of Likasi, DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) have never had access to ARV’s, leaving most AIDS patients (including mothers and fathers) no future other than death. Hands at Work in DRC has had a great longing to see their patients live longer, healthier lives. For too long they’ve seen broken families because of the death of one or more members due to HIV/Aids. Through a long process Hands at Work in DRC have finally been able to see their dream come to a reality. All patients now have access to free testing and treatment through AMOCongo.
Why My Little One...
A poem written by June Vorster after the God revealed His broken heart for the plight of the orphan and the widow. She is a 70 year old living in South African who recently met George Snyman when he spoke at her church. She shared this poem with him and now we share it with you.
I see you sitting all alone and forlorn,
Why my little one?
Your clothes are all tattered and torn,
Why my little one?
I see the emptiness in your dark brown eyes,
The sores on your legs covered with flies,
I see your thoughts and feel your shame,
I cry when you cry, I feel your hunger, your pain.
Makululu Shanty (ZAM)
Wrtten by George Snyman, founder of Hands at Work.
As my bus entered the outskirts of Kabwe town in Zambia, I remember staring out of the window and seeing the terrible slum for the first time. “Why have I never seen it before?” I wondered, and the next day asked Eric, the Hands at Work representative, about it. Eric’s words still ring clear in my mind to this day.He said, “George, not even the Catholics work in that area!” I understood what he meant – if the Catholics don’t work in an area, then nobody will work there. Seeing my yes, Eric knew what was about to happen next! And the next morning we entered Makululu. I wanted to know why Makululu existed and what made it such a difficult place.Eric and other community leaders explained to me that when President Chaluba came into power in the nineties, he launched a huge initiative to privatize the country’s mines and most of the factories. The whole exercise went horribly wrong for a number of reasons, and most of the deals were characterised by huge corruption. Within a year, most of these mines and factories closed down completely. It had a devastating impact on cities like Kabwe, and overnight thousands of people lost their jobs and houses. Adding to this, many rural people left their homes after a series of bad crops and flooded the bigger towns like Kabwe looking for work – all of these events contributed to the mushrooming of people in the informal settlement called Makululu.
The first day we walked the roads of Makululu there was no clinic, no government school, no government services like police or social workers, and no NGO activities. I was overwhelmed by what I saw: children in the streets trying to sell paraffin in small
Dare to Care; One Man's Experience (NIG)
In October, 2008 Mark Zweigenthal, a youth pastor and a friend of Hands at Work living in Johannesburg, spent a week in Lagos, Nigeria visiting the Hands at Work team and its local partners working in the slums of the city of 18 million people. Here is a record of his experience.
Leaving my home in Johannesburg, South Africa I was completely unaware of the adventure that awaited me in Lagos. Having been previously to Uganda, Zambia, as well as on many mission trips within South Africa I thought I had a good idea of what I was in for-until I stepped off the plane in Lagos and was confronted with a crisis of new proportions. I can honestly say that this week in Lagos wrecked my life (in the best way possible).
It’s fair to say that we live in a world of complete contrast, a contrast between the rich and the poor, oppressed and free, and a world where injustice wreaks havoc and materialism reigns. In my trip to Lagos I got to see how the other half live, love, and deal with this ever increasing poverty gap. A hugely humbling and eye-opening experience, one which I will never forget.
I do not believe that one can actually understand the crisis in Africa until one has touched it and shared the pain and challenges of the people who deal with it everyday. During this week I got the opportunity to experience this situation in a very unique and challenging way. I took part in many different aspects of the Hands at Work project in Lagos. All of which affected my life hugely.
This Year Living Truth Broadcast
Shooting went well for this years Living Truth telethon to raise funds for Hands at Work in Mozambique and Zimbabwe! We’re really excited to share this event with an even wider audience of Hands supporters this year. Dates for broadcast are as follows:
Oct 11 Mozambique update and stories
Oct 18 South Africa update and new Zimbabwe stories
Oct 25 Malawi
You can check out www.livingtruth.ca for specific broadcast times. Please send this on to your friends at home who have the opportunity to watch.
Thanks for your interest and support of this exciting event!
The Pulse Of Africa (DRC)
The pulse of Africa is felt in six-year-old Lebo. She carries a story of brokenness in her heart but fights back with a strong and resilient spirit. This is the tension that exists within Lebo and within Africa. Lebo's mother and father died of AIDS when she was only a baby, and left her with the same disease, which is slowly claiming her life. There is no access to affordable treatment for AIDS in her community.
Lebo lives, along with her brother, sister, and elderly grandparents, in the city of Likasi. They stay in a one-bedroom brick home that has neither electricity nor running water. Lebo’s grandfather worked in a copper mine for thirty years before being forced into mandatory retirement in 1995; he now stays at home most of the time and takes care of his wife, who is blind and requires assistance with basic tasks.
George Snyman in Gauteng.
George Snyman will be in Gauteng and North-West area this weekend speaking at a number of events facilitated by World Missions AOG
Friday 31st July 2009
George will be sharing his personal testimony and on how the church can be effective in their justice and missions endeavors.
13H00 Preferred Future Connect, Assemblies of God Missions Conference, Vanderbijlpark.
Saturday 1st August 2009
George will be downloading his burden and passion for justice to tomorrows African leaders.
10H00 RIOT Camp (age 14-25 yrs.) in Rustenburg.
Sunday 2nd August 2009
George will be sharing his journey and growing heart for the poor and vulnerable.
08H30 Assemblies of God Church Service, Rustenburg
10H30 Assemblies of God Church Service, Rustenburg
18H45 Highway AOG church service, Johannesburg
If you wan't to get involved in any of this, please contact: Nobsi Sibanda 0836966028
George will be debut Twittering this weekend. Go to his blog and feed. Go to twitter.
Hard endings, exciting reunions, big decisions
Alisha Volkman, a 25 year-old from Alberta, Canada, has been volunteering with Hands at Work for the past year, serving mainly in Kabwe, Zambia with Emily Osborne, from USA. What follows are her reflections on her time in Zambia and South Africa as she prepares to make her journey “home” again.
As things wrap up for Emily and I here in Zambia, every day has been full of, oh just full of so much! As our time is coming to an end it feels like I am meeting more and more people all the time. Many relationships around me are just peaking, and with each day I am finding it harder and harder to leave.
I'm now at a point where I have absolutely no idea what is next. All these years I was always just headed in a direction to come back to Zambia. And that I have now done. Now what? Now where? I know many people come through Hands every year. Many are impacted, and many make an impact. Some stay. Many move on. Where do I fit?
I LOVE Zambia! I have officially classified myself as a white Zambian. In so many ways I just feel like I belong. My heart is here with the people. I can't help but cry when I think of being away from this place for too long.
I want to go home although I don't want to leave. I have a feeling when I get there I will be again saying, “I want to go home.”
Nurses Mission Trip To Africa
Update 7 from Nurses for Africa on Vimeo.
This month, 16 nurses from Rosewood Care Centers in Missouri and Illinois, USA travel on a mission trip to the Republic of Zambia, in Southern Africa, a land plagued by extreme poverty and a disproportionately high number of HIV/AIDS cases. They will be encouraging the work and the people in Hands at Work in Africa’s local community based organisations.
We invite you to follow alongside the Nurses for Africa via thier journal, which will document the experience via blog entries, photos, videos and more.
For more information, please visit: http://www.nurseforafrica.net
Standing through the loss
Jan and Mado are two women who are overcoming the odds in the community of Likasi in (DRC), Democratic Republic of the Congo. They are two women who are using the power of friendship to survive and they are two women who live out love in action daily. Both Jan and Mado are widowed and, years ago, found support in each other when their lives began to crumble and fall apart.
Mado’s husband was killed in 2003 in a mining accident and left the family without a source of income. Consequently Mado and her seven children were evicted from their house. The family sought refuge in an abandoned school house where they still live to this day. It was during this period of grief and crisis that Mado found a true friend in Jan. Mado says that Jan was one of the only people who saw her through the pain of loss.
Jan’s story is similar in pain and tragedy.
Spotlight On Orile (Nig)
Pastor Chris lives with his wife, Faith, and two small children in the back of his church in Lagos, Nigeria. This is in the Orile community, a huge sprawling slum crisscrossed by murky canals and littered with multifamily slum homes and rubbish everywhere you can see. It is part of Lagos, but it is its own community within the enormous city of 17 million people. There are no government schools, no hospitals in Orile; there are many churches, but none working together to make any impact for the poorest children in the community. Many of the children in Orile are not in school; malaria is at epidemic levels because the canals regularly flood, filling the homes and leaving stagnate, black swamp water standing in the dirty streets and plugged drains. In one entire section of the slum, located between a canal and the railroad tracks, abandoned babies, the products of the scads of sex workers conducting business in the slum, are left to die.
Last year Pastor Chris attended a pastors training series facilitated by Hands at Work’s coordinator in Lagos, Rex. Chris now says he was deeply challenged by Rex’s call to care for the poor and by the example Rex was setting in his own community within Lagos: Ilaje.
Can we really make a difference? (SA)
A number of years ago, Locks Heath Free Church was challenged to respond to the world-devastating effects of HIV/AIDS. For years we had financially supported organisations such as BMS (Baptist Missionary Society) who care for those in need, and due to the far-reaching effects of HIV/AIDS, were undoubtedly helping thousands suffering from this deadly disease. However the call of God was clear – we needed to do more - to care, to love, to take action.
Our response was to partner with Hands at Work in Africa, and in turn we were introduced to a very poor community in South Africa called Belfast. When the first team visited in February 2008, we met over 30 local ‘grannies’ who despite their own clear poverty, were daily visiting and caring for the orphan, widowed and poor in Belfast. For the past five years these ladies have chosen to respond to the call of God and were caring for those living under the shadow of the HIV/AIDS virus and its dispassionate theft of life.
We now had the opportunity to partner with these amazing ladies; to encourage them, work along side them and help enable
Colourless Dreams (SA)
Jackie, 17, and her sister Laura, 11, live in a dilapidated one-room shack in the village of Welverdiend, within Bushbuckridge. Their mother died in 2006, leaving the girls in the care of their grandmother and father. In 2004 the girls suffered yet another loss at the death of their grandmother. To make matters worse, later that same year their father, their only provider, was involved in a road accident that left him paralyzed and permanently hospitalized.
Jackie and Laura face daily challenges, such as, hauling water from the community water tap which is two kilometers from their home and rationing the food they receive to make it last. They comfort one another as they spend each night alone and vulnerable in their rickety room.
The spirit of a champion (Zam)
Osborne Mwape is 11 years old and lives with his grandmother, Bana Kulu, in a community in Kabwe Zambia. His parents were HIV positive until they passed away in 2003. His mother died from Tuberculosis. She was not a believer but did give her life to the Lord on her death bed. The suffering and hardships Osborne endures are great. The hut that he and his granny share, burned down recently, and they had to use plastic and grass as a means of shelter during the cold and rainy winter season. Food is also scarce and Osborne sometimes misses school to look after the house while his grandmother goes out to look for a job or food.
Hands at Work representative Floyd Mwila, a home based care manager in Kabwe oversees, New Life Christian community school which Osborne attends. The establishment of the school was partly due to a request by Osborne whose wish was to get some education to prepare him for the future. The school not only provides education but also helps to support and encourage Osborne, giving hope for his young dreams to be realized.
Osborne has the spirit of a champion; even at school, he is known as an encourager of the other young boys. His energy and willingness to participate, far surpasses his small size, be it in sport, school clean-up chores or any other school activities. Osborne is in grade 4 and is achieving good marks; he is positive and his little spirit is on fire!
Denial (Moz)
Hannah Chung from Welspring Church California, been volunteering with Hands at Work since August 2008, volunteering in Mozambique.
Last Friday was my first experience in encountering something so real but so… sad.
Tuesdays and Fridays, I go on home-based care in a community called Nhambia. The people in this community live relatively far from each other and grow their own maize in their mashambas (fields). If a bicycle or money to catch a shapa (local taxi) isn’t available, people must walk tens of kilometers to visit a market to obtain anything else.
A home-based care visit in Nhambia with a volunteer named Marcelino led us to the home of a thin and gaunt middle-aged lady. She greeted us, bringing us a mat to sit down on. She talked a little, but didn't say much; it was apparent that she was very sick. Every word was interrupted by what seemed like a chronic cough.
"Is she positive?" I asked.
“We don't know,” Marcelino said. “She didn't get tested.”
"Did you go to the hospital?" Marcelino asked her.
Breaking New Ground: Entering Malawi
Levy Mwenda is a nurse from Zambia who has worked with Hands for many years. Residing in South Africa, Levy has assumed many roles with Hands in several countries, including Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, and Nigeria.
Levy’s first trip to Malawi is a ten-day undertaking to map out the community of Ngwele in Dedza. Knowing no one but a contact through a South African church, Levy goes to find out if this is a community in which Hands should work. Pastor Roy, the contact, is the headmaster of a school in Dedza. The two-room school holds 120 children in one room and 95 in the other, and Roy is the only teacher. He runs between the rooms throughout the day to teach both groups of children, who are packed tightly into the relatively small space. Roy has dreams of starting his own school, Levy discovers. Though the school he teaches in is extremely overcrowded, there are still many children who can’t afford the fees to attend. Roy wants to start a school that doesn’t require any fees and serves the most vulnerable children, those who have nothing.
Before doing anything else, Levy must receive clearance from the community leaders, including chiefs and tribal authorities. This step is important, as these leaders have the power to either enable or disable the work to begin. Levy seeks approval and partnership by sharing the heart of Hands at Work: to see the local church effectively caring for the dying, orphans and widows.
Driven to Care (SWZ)
The luxuries of paved roads and street lights have long been left behind by the time you reach the mountainside homestead of Samuel and Nomsa Lukhele, who head the Hands at Work community organization in Swaziland. The last leg of the journey into Kaphunga is treacherous, taken over roads so deeply weathered with grooves and ruts that you wonder each minute whether your vehicle will make it any further. The winds and twists of the road up the mountain are so frequent you are certain you will never find your way down. About twenty minutes into this body-jarring trek, you start to wonder if people could possibly live here at all; so remote, such a difficult trip, no other cars, no sign of civilization, how could people live here? Another half-an-hour and suddenly people are coming out of the dark night from all directions; women walking down the road, men offering to give directions, and lights peaking through trees are evidence of the living that is taking place here, where you would least expect it.
The next day we, a group of volunteers visiting Swaziland for the first time, drive to meet one of the home-based care’s oldest volunteers. Maria makes her way out to the road to greet us. She is 70, we later learn, but she doesn’t look it. She is strong and active. She proudly shows us the chickens she keeps for the orphans served by the home-based care and the wooden tool she uses to make mats out of river reeds and twine; painstakingly sewing each thin reed to another to form a mat for sitting and sleeping. The one she shows us has taken her three weeks to make. And she shows us the children.