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After cutting their teeth at the Hands at Work base in Masoyi, South Africa for 10 weeks, the February, 2007 intake of Footprints volunteers was sent out across Africa. Here’s an update.
In May, Brooke Bruns from Fargo, North Dakota arrived in Gondola, Mozambique to work as a project home-based care nurse with the Rubatano team, doing daily home visits in the community, operating a baby clinic and furthering development of a patient database system for the project. She will continue the work of two other Footprints volunteers, Sarah Irish and Ginna Hardie. They return to South Africa in mid-July before returning home to the US in late July, after serving 9 months as nurses in Gondola. Watch for Sarah and Ginna on a speaking tour of the US in September and October.
After a month of added preparation for her project, Megan Christopherson, from Phoenix, Arizona, arrived in Luanshya, Zambia in late June in the back seat of the Hands at Work 4x4 along with Hands at Work longtime leaders Sal and Robyn Hunziker. For the next six months Megan will work with multiple projects in the region to initiate a ground-breaking care program for orphans and vulnerable children, including psycho-social counseling, kids camps, and volunteer training.
F.M. was also deployed in late May to Luanshya, Zambia where he spent a few days with Pastor Jacob before crossing the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo where, as a trained architect and lover of children, he is serving with the Esperance Home-Based Care team in Likasi as the first long-term international volunteer the project has received. Here is a word from F.M. about his experience so far:
“We climbed a hill to take a photo of Likasi, and standing there on the windy morning, we heard the community’s life taking place all at once. Sounds of pots and pans clanging, roosters announcing, goats shouting, children playing, screaming, crying, laughing, hundreds of mouths speaking, sounds of doors opening and closing. Washed in those sounds from dwellings close and far, many of which contain more than five children, we could only imagine the struggles and joys.
The children being helped here are the severely unfortunate. They are orphans and vulnerable children, many belonging to AIDS victims, those killed in the dangerous mining work, or the Congolese war in the North.”
The next Footprints intake begins August 6. Applications are still being accepted. For more information on this program visit the footprints page on this site.