In late August CEO George Snyman and home-based care trainer, Levy Mwenda, left to visit Margart and Dominic, our project leaders in the Democratic Republic of Congo. George and Levy report that despite a lack of government infrastructure and no access to ARVs, the amazing project continues to grow, showing love to the sick, caring for orphans, and recently beginning a program for the youth.
Construction Continues
Construction of the ground-breaking Hands at Work village continues! A large crew of local workers overseen by volunteer Michael Kaufman and construction manager Sal Hunziker have sweated out 10-hour days getting to roof level of the Footprints training and accommodation center and have also started the staff accommodation. A strong boost is expected on October 17 when a construction team from Westside King’s Church in Calgary arrives to lend a hand.
In a previous post it was written that Hands at Work “needs to be off ASM by the end of the year.” This was incorrecly taken by some readers to mean ASM was throwing us into the street on a whim. That is not the case. ASM is also a growing ministry, and a phased transfer over the next few months to the new property will be done in line with the expansion of both ministries. It was, in fact, ASM who generously provided the land for the new Hands at Work village. And the incredible opportunity to move together as a family of staff, footprints, and visitors to our own land far outweighs the challenges!
Video Message from George
Hear more of Hands at Work in Africa's involvement in the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
George Snyman in AUS: OCT 11 - 26
George Snyman will be spending two weeks in Australia, visiting and speaking at various churches and conferences in Melbourne and Sydney about the plight of HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa. Below is George's intinerary for the period 11 to 26 October 2007. If you would like George to speak at your church, please contact him on +27-(0)13-7512341.
Hands 2008 International Conference
Planning is already underway for the 3rd annual Hands at Work International Conference to be held 4 - 7 April, 2008 at the Hana Lodge, South Africa. The international conference is a place where Hands at Work partners and project leaders from around the globe gather to share ideas and plans and to encourage and minister to one another. This year’s agenda promises new opportunities for learning and collaboration among our partners.
As usual, the International Conference will be preceded by the 4-day African conference gathering of Hands at Work leaders from projects across Africa. Project leaders spend time learning from one another, communicating with Hands at Work staff, and, especially, being ministered to. Contact Hands at Work for information on sponsoring a project leader to attend the African conference.
Hands at Work in UK Visit
Veronica Caperon, marketing coordinator of the UK team, visited Masoyi, South Africa and the Rubatano project in Central Mozambique in July and returned inspired by the work and commitment she found amongst the Hands at Work volunteers. She will be giving a talk about her trip at St Peter’s Church, Edgmond on Tuesday 16th October at 7.45pm
“It must have been so depressing - how can we get on top of this terrible problem?” That has been a common response from people when I have explained that I’ve just spent 10 days visiting projects for an HIV/AIDS charity in southern Africa. They then seem taken aback when I reply that I have returned inspired and uplifted by the excellent things I have seen.
Footprints all over Africa
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
Hands is Moving
When George first spoke it to the Hands at Work staff, the message was a hard one: “Hands at Work must be off ASM property within six months,” he said. “By January, 2008, we will not live on this campus any longer, we must be on the land we’ve been given.”
A hard message, when spoken on land yet completely bare of buildings. Yet George spoke with a smile, because although it will take a literal miracle to get the property ready for the staff, teams and footprints students to live and work there by January, and although the alternative—scattering the Hands at Work staff around the region—would devastate operations and momentum, he says this is a chance to forge the collective character of Hands at Work like no other.
Since the beginning in 1998, Masoyi Home-Based Care (MHBC) and Hands at Work have operated from the Africa School of Missions (ASM) property in a wonderful partnership that gave Hands facilities and housing and gave ASM students practical outreach opportunities. Last year the process of moving MHBC offices into the community began in faith; in September they will be open.
A Place for the Church in Nigeria
I flew to Lagos in late May, worried sick about the sermons I knew I would have to preach. Three of us— Levy, a Zambian nurse and youth worker; Ginna, a young American nurse; and me, a Canadian former petroleum explorer—were in Nigeria for 10 days to strengthen Hands at Work’s two youngest projects in Lagos and in the desert region Kano, training pastors, teaching home-based care, ministering to prostitutes, and teaching illiterate women. I sensed something about the trip would drag me to my knees. I thought it would be the preaching. It’s not the first time I’ve been wrong.
It wasn’t the foreign setting that disturbed me. Though in Lagos the air was always hot and heavy and the dusty streets vibrated beneath the rumble of at least a million people on the move at all times. We slept in the home of the Lagos project leader, Pastor Rex. And each morning at 5 am the crackling cry of a prayer call blasted into the rooms from a speaker mounted on the tower of the mosque behind his house.
Care Center Dreams in MOZ
Though it is 3am, Carlos Giua cannot sleep. The coordinator of Rubatano Home Based Care (RHBC) in Gondola, Mozambique spends many nights awake. His wife, Pascua, laments her husband’s constant inability to rest. “But how can I?” Carlos responds. “There is so much for which I must pray.”
Eight miles from Carlos’ house in Gondola, a woman named Amelia also wakes early. Her husband passed away nine months ago from AIDS. She knows his killer is returning soon for her. She feels deep pain, but more from the soul agony of knowing she will soon leave four young children behind than from the physical trauma of the virus on her body. Death weighs heavily on her mind. Though she has watched many people die, Amelia often wonders, “What will it be like? Will I die in great pain?” Each week she is visited by an RHBC nurse who helps to ease her pain.
Deeper still inside Gondola, 5-year-old Joalinho wakes to his baby nephew’s cry.
Report from the Congo
As the children were waiting for their teacher to mark their tests, Dominic sat outside with them to have a friendly chat. The teacher informed Dominic that many of the orphaned and vulnerable kids in the Esperance Home Based Care (EHBC) school are improving rapidly in their studies. They love to participate and to be acknowledged by their teachers. Thirty of the children have written a test, which, if passed, will allow them to go to a public school with the help of EHBC . The children also receive Biblical teaching. It is important for them to know the nature and spirit of God that can overcome the problems they have gone through and may face in the future.
Another school is on the brink of opening here. With a strong belief in the Church fulfilling their Biblical mandate in caring for orphans and widows, EHBC has posed that challenge locally. After a meeting with the three pastors and elders of a church, one said that if they do not know how to care for the orphans and widows in their area then they do not know how to worship God. The church/school, based in a steel-framed structure scarcely covered in tarp, will have its humble beginning in September. Until then, there needs to be the provision of siding for the church, school furniture, two teachers and a cook.
The support for orphans is also expanding to the area of Kikula. With this addition the total number of orphans and vulnerable children supported in Likasi will increase to 500. EHBC has recently begun a school program for orphaned youth between 14 and 22 years old. Once the caregiver of a house dies, the family often has no means to carry the burdens of school fees, uniforms, and books for their children. If the children do find a way to go to school, most of them drop out in their teenage years, meeting heavier fees and more pressure to provide for their large families. This program has been given the vision to care for such youth. They meet every Saturday as a large family, having fun, exploring the scriptures and their relevance to our lives, forming friendships and an understanding that we are not alone in life’s struggles. The program is moving towards starting life skills training for those who do not plan on going to school, as well as those who need to secure an income to do so.
Something has come up in meetings with the youth that is pointing towards the opening of a new service. Many widows, uneducated and unemployed, remain in this state long after the death of their husbands. Many seem uninterested to find jobs once a church or other service decides to provide some assistance. The vision is to bring widows facing this challenge together in order to provide encouragement and life skills training, enabling them to provide for their families regardless of the loss of their spouse. There is immense value in helping to reconstruct broken families, and we are excited to step out in the direction of equipping widows for such a task.
New Offices
In late March, the newly registered UK office of Hands at Work was officially launched at a ceremony before an international guest list including the Nigerian High Commissioner and the Deputy Speaker of the UK House of Commons held at Zion Christian Centre.
George Snyman attended and addressed the audience with the Hands at Work vision. In response he was blessed with a gift: a large sheet covered with the paint-dipped handmark of each attendee, symbolizing their commitment to the cause. The launch was an incredible success.
The next Hands at Work regional office registration is underway across the world in Australia. For information on that process or to lend advice, contact Shane Lepp at slepp@bigpond.net.au
Year in Review 2006
Click here to tour our Hands at Work in Africa 2006 Year in Review and find out everything about how we opperate. (pdf)
World AIDS Conference 2006
Click here to download the presentation that George Snyman used at the World Aids Conference in Toronto in 2006.
It contains a brief overview of the Hands at Work in Africa vision and mission. The presentation goes into detail in the Masoyi community intervention model in the area of the Lula Care Centre model.
Letter from Sarah Aldrich
Yesterday I left Africa. I arrived in Fredonia, NY, USA, this afternoon to surprise my parents. The past seven months has been an incredible experience- an experience that I am slowly trying to process, and one that has certainly left an indelible mark on my heart.
It was a blast, a high, a drag, a gutting time, an education, a time of celebration, a time of mourning, a time of change. It made me reevaluate my values, cry, laugh and think. From weddings to funerals, concerts to safaris, dirt to diamonds, Victoria Falls to shanty towns, it was everything......except regrettable.
My time in the Congo and Zambia proved to be the highlight of my volunteer work with 'Hands at Work in Africa' I left both countries stunned with admiration for the unremitting work that is conducted and the faithful lives of the people volunteering with these projects. The generous hospitality the Congolese and Zambians showed me was magical. The conditions there are so dire and are in desperate need of aid relief. There are tragic images in my head that will continue to haunt me, yet to forget such experiences would be, by far, an even greater tragedy.
Hands Annual Report 2005
Click here to read the 2005 Hands at Work Annual Report. This report not only gives the financial statements for December 2005 as audited by PriceWaterhouseCooper but also gives a brief overview of some of the work in the 6 countries and the strategy for 2006 - Reaching 100 000 Orphaned and Vulnerable Children (OVC) by 2010.