Hand-in-Hand was officially launched on December 23, 2020. On this day our website went live and we announced ourselves to the world as an NGO devoted to sustainable living and social justice with a focus on three African communities. The roles of 3 African women and their empowered visions was the inspiration for Hand-in-Hand. Read about the story behind the formation of our NGO on our website www.handinhand.space.
A small group of women from the Netherlands, the United States, and Canada joined together with the three women in Africa. Mama Dinah represented the Oloonkerine Maasai Mara community in SouthWestern Kenya. The community consists of 80 bomas with approximately 150 people living in each boma. Bomas are discrete clusters of homes and the bomas are spread over a 10 km area. The community of approximately 12,000 people has no dependable supply of clean water. The generator used to pump water out of their borehole died two years ago and is irreparable. The men built dams to create a collection pond for rainwater and the women carry large, heavy jugs daily of this silt laden water back to their villages. The ponds are frequented by the livestock as well. The water is chlorinated and boiled before being consumed in the villages.
In Western Kenya, Sister Agnes saw hungry parentless children being lured by offers of food across borders, where they are trained to become child soldiers or sex slaves. It started with one hungry child on the church steps and has now become an orphanage of over 30 children to be fed, clothed, schooled, and taught sustainable life skills. Sister Agnes’s goal is to start a poultry farm and market the eggs and broiler’s for income, to the residential schools and small hotels in her local community while at the same time teaching the children, entrepreneurial skills.
In Togo, Mama Charity, saw newborns and young children abandoned by mothers who had been raped or simply were unable to sustain life for themselves and their child. She took them in, feeds, clothes, and schools them with a goal of teaching them life and occupational skills. Her dream is to have some land with fruit trees, poultry farm and to grow produce for the orphanage and to sell for income. The children would learn life skills in the process
Our leadership team expanded when Siobhan Mullan, a civil engineer from Ireland
learned about Hand-in-Hand. She has a keen interest in water, wastewater and converting waste to energy in remote areas of the world.
Team meetings are weekly. One week the whole team with the African women meets via video on What’s App. Isn’t global technology amazing: We can have video meetings even in remote areas of Africa! The Internet connection isn’t perfect and it’s good enough that we can conduct business this way. The following week on Zoom part of the team meets to bring creative energies alive with the steps to reach our goals.
In our next newsletter we will share updates on each project. We’ll talk about our conversations with the local company that can install a solar powered pump for the Maasai Mara; finding, losing, and finding again land for purchase in Togo; and, just what it takes to start a poultry business in Western Kenya.