Hands at Work believes in the local church in Africa and the International church working together to care for the most vulnerable children in Africa. Throughout the Christmas season, our International partners found unique ways to advocate on behalf of the children; sharing their stories and the challenges that they face on a daily basis.
In December there was an event at church in the UK for partners and advocates hosted by Rose Westwood. She shares,
"Our Christmas event at church was about Christmas around the world. Our international friends were showing the Christmas traditions practised in their home country. We decided to take the opportunity to talk about Zwelisha, our partner community is South Africa. We didn't know any South African Christmas traditions so instead we hastily cut the shape of a baobab tree out of two pieces of cardboard and slotted the pieces to make a tree. We wrote the first name of all the children in Zwelisha on pieces of card, tied them with a ribbon and hung them on the tree.
We hadn't planned an activity to engage the children so on the day, someone suggested inviting the children to choose a nametag and to take it home to hang on their tree.
It was all very organic but it was so powerful.
We could tell the family whether the child from Zwelisha was a girl or a boy, how old they were, when their birthday was and whether other siblings were at the Care Point with them.
We pointed to the photo of the Care Workers in Zwelisha, those smiling, joyous, amazing women who stood up to the chief in the community and continued to feed the children throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
Suddenly it wasn't a game.
Three of us sitting round the tree, including my mother, could say that we had been there and met the children.
The parents really listened and were moved.
They heard about children like theirs with names and birthdays and siblings. You can't avoid that, you can't easily turn away.
We said no when we were offered a donation. Instead we asked them to remember the child's name over Christmas. They will have found the names again when they took their tree down."