The Inside Scoop May 3, 2022

May 13, 2022 / By
Recently our team watched a documentary about Charities and NGO’s and the unintended consequences that can occur when there is a desire to help a community and culture that is suffering from the effects of poverty or devastation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXT3cjHtlno&ab_channel=YTminusTime). We had the opportunity to look at our own structure as a Charity/NGO and appreciate and contrast to what we were seeing in the documentary. We’d like to take a minute here and share the differences with you so you know the structure you are supporting.The formation of Hand-in-Hand with African Women came after the founder, Lucille Mandin had spent several years taking University students to different African countries on a cross cultural experience. Lucille was a professor at the University of Alberta in Canada and had been asked to lead the Cross Cultural travel program.
She met and worked with the three women who are now our Project leaders in Africa. She personally observed their leadership role in their communities and their desire to make a difference, especially when it came to supporting the education of children in their communities.When women gather in circles and share, they often reveal what is in their hearts. Simple yet profound needs may be discussed.
A heartfelt moment is shared by Lucille Mandin and Mama Tekla of the same Maasai Mara community as Mama Dinah.
For Mama Dinah, it was that girls missing a week of school each month because they had their menses and without sanitary napkins, the practice was to skip school. Mama Dinah saw this cultural norm as lessening the opportunities of these girl because they missed a week of school each month. She asked Lucille if there was opportunity to get sanitary napkins for the girls so they could stay in school. This is an example of how it all started. In each community it began with concern for children and how their lives could be improved by meeting basic needs and thus allowing education to bring empowerment opportunities to grow and thrive.Lucille had developed ongoing relationships with the 3 women even after she retired and was no longer taking university students for cross cultural experiences. The women shared their needs for bedding (Sister Agnes for her house and feed program), Mama Charity who was growing her own foundation for caring for children who were abandoned or otherwise orphaned and needed to be able to build a building for the growing number and support all the children’s basic needs and then support their education. Lucille in her retirement would share within her own community in Edmonton, Canada and bedding was sent, or whatever could be sent to support the efforts of the 3 women’s endeavors.Gradually Lucille saw a greater opportunity: ask each woman if a project could be supported, what would help their community thrive and increase the possibilities for families and children, Mama Dinah identified the need for water and getting the water out of the ground with a solar pump rather than a diesel generated pump which had been donated by a helping organization who did drill a bore hole and install a diesel generator to pump the water. The community had no expertise in maintaining/repairing a generator or money to purchase the fuel.
Sister Agnes thought to establish a poultry business where children would learn the business and income would be generated to support secondary education for those with aptitude.
Mama Charity wished for a piece of land to create an Agrifarm to grow crops and trees that could supply food for the growing orphanage and income to be used for children’s education.

Mama Charity steps in to give children a chance to thrive and be part of a community. A few weeks ago a newborn was found abandoned at birth and brought to Mama Charity at 2 days of age and a 2 year old who was abandoned and malnourished. I know she will look totally different in 6 months of care by Mama Charity who has increased her numbers of children from 99 to 117 in the last year.This is how Hand-in-Hand began in the fall of 2020. Structure was created, we became an NGO. People in Lucille’s circles heard about it and joined the leadership team. One of our team leaders Ivana Petrisková who hails from Slovakia joined saying she was attracted because of our innovation, creation , and addressing widespread stereotypes of Africa. The 3 African women became project leaders of their own projects, identifying needs and growing the dreams as money became available. To date, Mama Charity has bought land for an Agrifarm,and planted a crop and is now working on drilling a bore hole for water to sustain crops during the dry season. She is loaning widows with children money to plant, tend, and harvest crops. After harvest the widows repay the loan and keep the rest of money earned to feed and educate their children. weeks.
Sr Agnes has built the poultry shed, purchased a vehicle to deliver eggs and broilers to local residential schools and hotels, purchased incubator, feeders and all that is needed and is now awaiting the first eggs to hatch. We think we will have baby chicks within the next couple of weeks.
Mama Dinah has hired a hydrologist to identify an area for a new bore hole to be drilled to allow the community to have an adequate water supply and has gotten 3 bids for the borehole and a solar pump. Hand-in-Hand has raised money to support this and a separate fundraiser was done in Germany with proceeds sent to Mama Dinah. She is close to what is needed to proceed and needs a couple thousand dollars to bring it to fruition.All our projects are initiated by our project leaders. We work collaboratively to develop the project and support them moving forward. We raise not only funds, we raise hope and bring our own expertise in the collaboration. We have leadership team members who help bring awareness to the needs on social media, a civil engineer who looks at possibilities with us, we create local fund raisers as well as international ones. We explore grants and collaborative relationships with larger organizations, and we strive to enrich the relationship with individual donors who support our projects. We embrace transparency, sharing how donations are being used to support sustainable communities
Sister Agnes’s Hatchery is up and running. Water is so crucial to all three projects. This is the water tank for storing catchment water from rain in the poultry shed and this is the used vehicle Sr Agnes will use to deliver eggs and broilers to local schools and hotels.
If you have resources to contribute to raising the rest of the money needed for Mama Dinah’s solar pump and water storage tank, please consider sharing with us. If you’ve been reading our newsletter, you know she lost more than half of her cattle to lack of water due to the drought a few months ago. We will be happy to report successful drilling for water and how this is positively impacting the community.
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