Volume 1 Issue 7
We are on the threshold of our one-year anniversary since launching Hand-in-Hand and want to share something about our origins and our successes this year. Before we do though we want to share with you, it was not only Mama Dinah and Mama Charity who suffered loss of family last month. Sister Agnes lost one of her fellow sisters who joined the order at the same time as her. They have been closely bonded for over 40 years and her friend was also called Sister Agnes, Sr Agnes Nafula. When one looks at photos of our Sister Agnes, they look to be biological sisters although they are not.
How did Hand-in-Hand begin? Lucille Mandin worked for the University of Alberta before her retirement and had agreed to take students on a cross cultural educational and humanitarian experience. For 9 years, they traveled to different countries in Africa and partnered with organizations that made arrangements at the different sites where they stayed. They traveled to the Maasai Mara village of Oloonkerine in southern Kenya on four occasions. Lucille speaks of sitting with the Mamas and beading with them. Conversation became intimate, speaking of things like the girls missing school during the time of their menses, the practice of genital mutilation, and the practice of men having several wives. Mama Dinah invited Lucille to come to her home for tea and they cemented a friendship. Once Lucille was no longer leading groups of students on cross cultural experiences, she and Mama Dinah continued to communicate by letter which meant there were long interims between contacts.
When Lucille knew the program from the University was ending, she met a man at a gas station who also led trips in Africa and he invited her to co-lead a trip with him the following year. As there were some disturbances in Kenya at that time, the cohort of students which she co-led with Greg Rogers, traveled to Tanzania. One day a taxi, which in this area is a scooter with the passenger sitting behind the driver, came rolling into camp. On it sat a nun with her veil blowing in the wind, looking so happy to be there. This is where Lucille met Sister Agnes. She stayed for 3 days and got along well with everyone. Lucille learned she ran a care and feeding program for adolescents who because of their hunger and lack of homes were living on the streets, prime targets for being convinced to go to Somalia where they were promised food and other good things when in reality, they were enrolled to be child soldiers or sex slaves once they were in Somalia. Sister Agnes took them in to feed and educate them and thus she inadvertently started a small feeding and housing program for those who needed it.
Meanwhile Mama Charity was running an orphanage in Lomé Togo and preparing to build a structure to house the children. She took in newborns and up in age. She refuses no child.
After the cross -cultural university programs, ended, Lucille maintained contact with all three women. If there was a specific need, she sent money or sometimes raised a little money to send back to Africa,; bedding for Sr Agnes; money for the building for Mama Charity, sanitary napkins for the young women in Oloonkerine. The needs were so great, she began to think of creating an organization that would give long term sustainable support and help these three remarkable women to become self sufficient in each of their communities. In the fall of 2020, ,she decided to create an NGO and partner with Bridges of Hope which had the structure for receiving donations, giving tax receipts and knowing how and what tax filings needed to be done. Hand-in-Hand with African Women was born!
The leadership team for Hand-in-Hand grew organically. Some students who had traveled to Africa with Lucille supported the efforts and then others heard about this through a global organization Lucille was active in. Just the right people with just the right leadership talents stepped up to help guide and support the efforts of growing the NGO. A website was created, and fundraisers were planned. A leadership team fell into place and included each of the three African women identifying the priorities needed for sustainability for their communities to thrive and becoming project leaders in their community. Mama Dinah needs fresh water as the women each carry 25 liters 3 to 5 km from a dug-out hole used by livestock back to their homes for boiling for everyday water use. She dreams of fresh water, accessed through a bore hole with a solar pump as they cannot afford a diesel generator and do not have the skills to maintain that type of generator. They have livestock, if they could have a place for refrigerated milk storage, they could sell more milk and have monies for expansion and further developing their beading for jewelry sales to a wider marketplace. In 2020 with the assistance of the Hand-in-Hand resources, she agreed their current borehole was not a good investment for the solar powered water pump as the water was brackish and insufficient to provide enough for the community. A new borehole would need to be drilled and Hand-in-Hand supported her getting a hydrologist to determine if and where aquifers would provide the water they need on their land. She has laid the ground structure for moving forward: in 2020, getting a bank account, hiring the hydrologist, getting an estimate for the solar powered pump, contacting drillers and getting estimates for drilling a new borehole. It has been a year of drought for the community and all livestock have been walked 6 days away to have a source of food and water as the community had very little for them.
This year Sister Agnes stretched her wings and dreamed of creating a poultry farm to help raise money to support the children’s education. Hand-in-Hand helped support the building of a poultry shed and once money has been raised for a vehicle to deliver the broilers and eggs to local hotels and residential schools, she will get an incubator and chicks and be on her way to creating a hatchery. The children will be involved in the business and learn entrepreneurial skills. Money raised will be used to send those who are good candidates to secondary school and on for training in nursing, hospitality or whatever they are most suited for. And of course, the eggs and broilers will enhance the nutrition at the orphanage and feeding program.
This is our Holiday and New Year Project right now. We would like to raise enough money for the costs that have not yet been covered and Hatch the Hatchery! Our website and our Bridges of Hope donation page have more information, if you feel able to share some of your resources to make this happen. We have put together packages for all levels of giving and if you would like to make your holiday gifting impactful and support sustainability, check out the link:: https://bridgesofhope.ca/project/hand-in-hand-main-dans-la-main/
Meanwhile Mama Charity in Togo was able to purchase some farmland and plant her first crops which will be used to supplement the food at her orphanage which has grown in this last year from 99 children to 115 from newborns up in age. When the spring rains come Mama Charity will start planting fruit trees on the land and eventually, she wants to have a poultry shed as well. She will need a water source next year and has dreams of building a school there for the 65 local children that live in the area of the farmland as they walk many kilometers to school right now and often do not go. Mama Charity has unstoppable dreams for the children and when the land purchase was surveyed as less than it was advertised as, she took some of the money that would have gone into land and built a primary school on land her family owned in Ghana just across the border from the orphanage. School opened the third week of September and classes are taught in French which is the language used in Togo. The children in school had lived in Lomé, Togo until it became unaffordable. They moved with their families across to Ghana and are delighted to have school taught in the language of Togo. Mama Charity’s school, La Charité Révélée, has a large commercial oven for baking traditional bread and the older students will learn how to do this. The bread will feed the children, in the school and in the orphanage. The surplus bread will be sold and money saved will be used to support the farm land and to build a secondary school on the land that houses the primary school in Ghana.
Much has been accomplished since the Hand-in-Hand NGO was launched in December 2020. We have raised $24,681 USD since our launch in December 2021 and supported movement forward in the three projects. We would like to see the first stage completed for each project in 2022. Hand-in-Hand developed a Business Plan and each of the projects in Africa, are completing their own Business Plans. This keeps us all clear in our intention.
Autumn and December have many celebrations around the world of harvest, joy, and new beginnings. We are certainly celebrating all our blessings since our inception. Our wish for your Holiday celebrations are many blessings and time spent with those you love. We are grateful for those who have supported the African projects and we feel we have made many new friends in our efforts to make the world a more equitable place.
