Volume 2 Issue 7
This month we would like to share with you a few updates on our three projects as well as a new member of our leadership team. Ilana Abbey Walker is the newest member of our leadership team and she brings us a new (to us) way of looking at the role of our organization in the world. As many of you know, we were founded and officially became Hand-in-Hand with African Women in December of 2020. Lucille Mandin’s private dream became Hand-in-Hands vision. Lucille who had traveled to Africa overseeing a cross cultural experience for University Students had met with women who are now our Project Leaders. As the African Women shared their dreams with Lucille, they became Lucille’s dreams too
Again, many of our Newsletter readers know we started on a shoestring and partnered with Bridges of Hope to oversee many of the administrative functions of a charity and we created our website and our Newsletter from donations of time and money from the small team of leaders Lucille had gathered around her. This included two of the students, Kristen and Marie, who had traveled to Africa with her as part of the University program as well as Eliana in the US who was on a Zoom call with another organization that she and Lucille both belonged to, and heard Lucille exploring her decision to support the creation of a sustainable future for these women. The team soon attracted Siobhan, a Civil Engineer from Ireland; Barb. a recently retired business and marketing specialist, and later a specialist, Ivana, in creating NGO’s to have the most impact. Now we have added Ilana who brings us a broad background in online businesses and fundraising. Ivana and Ilana bring expertise in how to inform the world though social media. We have had others along the way who have consulted with us to bring their special insight at the times it was/is most needed. We are filled with gratitude!
We invite you to go on our website page with the backgrounds of the team leaders on the Hand-in-Hand leadership team. (https://handinhand.space/what-we-do/). At a recent team meeting we viewed together a Ted Talk given by Dan Pallotta an activist and fundraiser. (https://youtu.be/bfAzi6D5FpM). Dan explores the history of Charity’s like ours keeping overhead,/administrative costs to a bare minimum so donations can have their maximum impact on the projects. And he explains why this is a counterproductive decision. The greatest impact, he explains comes from spending money to spread the word, advertise, bring in a greater range of donors and thus more money than would be gained by limiting these expenses. Dan has real examples from his own leadership in fundraising and is very convincing that we need to re-think our business model. Of course we want to keep admin expenses in control and we would do better to target advertising dollars to broaden our message and have a greater impact.
The team is integrating this new perspective, re-visiting our business plan and discovering what is right for us.
Now for the Project Updates:
Sister Agnes and her team are slowly unfolding the poultry business. They have 60 hatched chicks of different ages now, the oldest being about 3 months and the 40 additional eggs ready to go into the incubator just starting their journey. It will be a few more months before any of these chicks start laying eggs of their own. The children are out of school and will be able to become more involved in learning chick care and what’s involved in running a business. The pigs and piglets that she is raising are growing fatter which means they will command more money when they are sold.
Mama Charity has had the hoped for follow through on the children’s vaccinations and health exams. Joanna the 2 year old malnourished child who was failing to thrive is back in the pediatric hospital.
On the farmland that Hand-in-Hand helped purchase for the use of the orphanage, Mama Charity now has 5 goats
The orphanage now houses 117 children with 12 babies under 1 year of age and 18 less than 2 years of age. Mama Charity had help in putting together a short video tour of some of the orphanage so our readers can have a better idea. Towards the end, the kids are dancing, we wonder if they are ready for the American TV show “So You Think You Can Dance”. Mama Charity joins and leads them too.
On the ground floor is a primary school for the children. On the first floor up is the nursery for the young children and the dormitories. A rented building across the street has the dorms for the older boys as well as storage room and a playground for the kids. The primary school in Ghana will have children out for the summer and back to school in late September. The Godparent sponsorship program for children in both the Ghana school and the Orphanage school is being put together with photos and profile of the kids and the procedure to sponsor one or more of the children. We mentioned last month, a child can be sponsored for $100 euro and that covers a whole year of schooling.
Mama Dinah: Mama Dinah is now recovered from her surgery although the doctors advised her they could not do everything they wanted during the surgery and she will need to go back in a few months for an additional surgical procedure. She has now been meeting with the bore hole driller to verify all specs of the drilling and to get a final costs that includes the water storage tanks and the water tower support structure. A decision was made to postpone any distribution system to transport the water out to the community. The original hope was to bring in piping to transport water about 1 km in 4 directions to make access for the community easier. With bore hole drilling and costs for solar pumping increasing due to the same price increases we see around the globe, it is more important now to drill for the water and pump it and do distribution later. A campaign for the final funds needed to push the project into “Go” is being put together now.
We look forward to sharing with you more updates on the projects as well as results from reviewing our business plans. This is an exciting time for us.