40 Days of Prayer
Hands at Work
Meet Mwete

Raising a large family isn’t easy but Mama Safi isn’t alone in caring for Mwete. He has a bigger family of support at the Care Point, with the Care Workers and the other children.

Meet Mwete

Reaching the Poorest of the Poor (MOZ)

On a bare patch of dirt in the bush outskirts of the community I met Jaos (9) and Luisa (7):  a brother and sister that lived under a tarp tied to a tree. Their mother died last year and their father was in an accident and can't use his arm or earn income. In April the family’s few clothes, blankets and cooking pots were stolen from beneath the open tarp, and church volunteers found the kids shivering in the cold winter evening.

Jaos and Luisa pass entire days without a meal. The only food they get is by begging from other already poor neighbors or by offering to pound (by hand) a neighbor’s corn kernels into flour for a fee of a handful of the flour. Neither of them is in school. They can’t afford exercise books or pens. But without food, they couldn’t concentrate enough to learn anyway.

The volunteers who discovered the family returned the next day to build a small single room with grass walls to at least shelter the wind. When I met them, the kids hadn’t eaten in a day. They had a single set of clothes: Luisa’s dress and Jaos’ jean jacket, so crusty they would stand on their own.

Masoyi Home-Based Care Survey (SA)

A Grannie works in the community garden at a Care Center in Masoyi, South Africa.With an estimated 5.5 million people living with HIV in South Africa, the AIDS epidemic is creating large numbers of children growing up without adult protection, nurturing, or financial support. Of South Africa’s 18 million children, nearly 21% (about 3.8 million children) have lost one or both parents.

Despite the magnitude and dire consequences of the growing number of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) in South Africa and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, there is insufficient documentation of the strategies deployed to improve the well-being of these children.

To fill these knowledge gaps, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief commissioned Khulisa Management Services of Johannesburg, South Africa, to research and write case studies of 32 OVC programmes in South Africa that receive emergency plan funding.

Hands at Work’s Masoyi Home-Based Care project serves Masoyi, consisting of six villages in Mpumalanga Province. Here is the case study of what we do and how we do it.

Expansion into Zimbabwe

As part of the drive to reach three new countries by 2010, a Hands at Work team visited eastern Zimbabwe in July. Two rural villages were targeted as immediate expansion sites.

This grandmother is 75% blind, she doesn't work but earns a little  income by renting out her second room. Five of her seven children have passed away leaving her with 16 grandchildren that she now stays with in this one room. She has also taken in one other orphan from the neighborhood. These are the lives we want to touch by beginning work in Zimbabwe.

Premier Home Based Care Award (MOZ)

Hands at Work’s Rubatano Home Based Care in Mozambique received government accolades for 2008 as the premier Home Based Care in Manica province, which was recognized for national best practice for community outreach.

An immobile patient in Mozambique being taken from the deep bush  up a small path to the main road on bicycle by volunteers who will send him to the nearest clinic.

De-Worming

In a single health campaign this June and July, 2900 orphaned and vulnerable children were successfully treated for worms in South Africa. 

Hands at Work is expanding to reach 100,000 orphaned and vulnerable children by 2010 with at least 3 services: Food Security, Education, and Basic Health.

Basic Health is an enormous category encompassing activities from wound care to rebuilding roofs on houses. But de-worming is a backbone Basic Health activity. It's not a sexy topic, and few of us understand the suffering of millions of African children with bellies full of worms. The following article should shed some light on the issue.

WHO De-worming at a glance

Read a personal account of one of the day's events
Jean Aimee Gifford, a volunteer with Hands at Work and nurse from the US: At the End of the Day

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2009 Int'l Conference

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March 26th to 29th, 2009

Our International Conference is a time when we gather together in one place with our Church and Organisation Partners, African Service Centers, and International Country Offices to fellowship, build relationships, hear about the work being done and set the tone and work plans for the upcoming year. Mark this time down in your calendars to be with us.

Details to follow.

Church Leaders in SA Complete Training

56 South African church leaders completed a six-week Hands at Work training program on July 9 on the church’s role in fighting HIV/AIDS and caring for widows, orphans and the dying.

Situated in the province of Mpumalanga and bounded by Kruger Park to the east, the local municipality of Bushbuckridge is a neglected area that is suffering under the crippling weight of poverty, social disintegration, and HIV and AIDS. 

With the mandate to capacitate locals to care for the poorest of the poor in their communities, Hands at Work has committed itself to helping start up four new home-based cares and multi-care centres in the Bushbuckridge area.  These new efforts are concentrated in the north-east corner of Bushbuckridge; encompassing approximately twenty villages in a 280 square kilometre area.  The residents have very little access to government health and social services.  The first step towards starting up these home-based cares is to mobilize the pastors and Christian leaders in the community to begin actively caring for the poor, sick, dying, and orphaned within their community.

Lindy loved to go to school

Lindy and her brother outside their home in Likasi, Congo.In a village called Chitulu, in Democratic Republic of Congo, on a home-based care visit one day, my wife and I met a little girl named Lindy. She is five years old. She has dark, mourning eyes, and wispy little legs that poke out beneath her skirt. She is HIV-positive. No one seems to know where their father is, and their very sick mother died shortly after Lindy’s birth. She has a seven-year old brother who is healthy. The kids live now with their grandparents.


The grandfather is very old and works each day farming in their field outside town. He loves his grandchildren very much, and when Lindy began getting sick, he carried her on his back to the local clinic. The grandmother is completely blind. She sits on a soft chair in the middle of their house smiling with her eyes wide open: creamy white moons leaking slow drips onto her cheeks.
This is a broken family, but together somehow they are strong. The grandmother calls out to Lindy: “Lindy, is the door open?” or “Lindy, is it raining outside?” The little girl is her grandmother’s eyes. The grandfather relies heavily on his disabled wife for the emotional encouragement to keep working in his old age. Recently the grandmother became very ill, and it seemed for a while that she might not live. His old wife’s illness almost killed the grandfather.

The grandmother told us Lindy loved to go to school, that even though she was too young and was sick, she constantly whined and begged her grandparents to go to school.

UK Summer Newsletter

Click here for the latest news from UK supporters or click the links below
Christmas in May in Swaziland • Spend two weeks in Africa • UK represented at African Leaders and International Conferences 2008 • British schools help with GoLD future in South Africa • From Halesowen to Africa - college students link with Zambia schools
• Regular monthly giving • Financial Statement for first 17 months as a registered charity • Your Will, Their future - a legacy from you will be such a welcome gift to ensure a future of hope and fulfilment for those affected •  Schools Service - From infant classes to agricultural students, talks are tailored suitably • Hairless for Hands! GBP1395 raised!  Forthcoming fundraising events: throw yourself off St Peter’s Church for Hands at Work  Abseiling with local scouts - “hands...at work... in Africa” photo exhibition -  “An evening of Words and Music” - performed by singers of the much acclaimed Midlands Chorale and The Keele Poets - whose poetry reaches parts of your soul no-one else ever has • Christmas is coming...
Give someone something useful this Christmas. Now you can make a difference to the lives of those affected by HIV/AIDS - and give it as a present to someone special! • Progress in Nigeria - Local managers report in Nigeria on our Lagos Home Based Care (HBC) Programme, and helping commercial sex workers tackle the daily problems of HIV/AIDS at Isolo. We include some stories of children given new hope by volunteers on our Community Based Organisation (CBO)

George in Canada

Hands at Work founder George Snyman will be in Western Canada Aug 9 to 19 speaking to churches and other organisations. The following key events are open to the general public:

Sunday, August 10 – Westside King’s Church, Calgary, AB – 9:29am, 11:11am, and 6:46pm
Tuesday, August 12 – Lakeview Church, Saskatoon, SK – 7:00pm
Sunday, August 17 – First Assembly Church, Calgary, AB – 9:00am and 11:00am

For more information on these events or to arrange a meeting with George, please contact: deb@manbiz.com.

facelessbook

"Statistics turn people into a number... A quantity... A thing... But AIDS doesn't happen to 20 million people in the same way. It happens 20 million different ways one person at a time.

Each story is different. Each story deserves to be told by itself."

Check out facelessbook.com. There are currently 4 profiles up there now, all stories from orphans, caregivers and volunteers of Hands at Work projects. Courtesy of Dave Zak.

PEPFAR Awards Funds

Deputy Chief of Mission for PEPFAR, Don Teitlebaum (R) with orphans from WINROCK program in Masoyi, South Africa."Hands at Work provides home-based care services for Orphans and Vulnerable Children in the Masoyi community.  Through its PEPFAR grant of R5,250,000, Hands at Work Africa has assisted 6,500 children and over 1,200 primary caregivers.  With PEPFAR assistance, the organization hopes to reach 100,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa by 2010."

See full article

Taken from: PEPFAR Program Awards More than 700,000 rand for Ten Mpumalanga HIV/AIDS Organizations

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Waves Across Africa

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Carly2.jpg Have you ever stopped to consider your life and wondered how you got to where you are today? I often do! If you asked me three years ago to tell you where I would be today, in May 2008, I would never have guessed that I would be living in South Africa , a part of Hands at Work in Africa. The past 3 years have changed my life completely. My name is Carly, I’m an ordinary 28 year old woman, who was living an ordinary life in Sydney, Australia. I wasn’t the type of person who dreamt big or looked to do ‘missions’, I simply prayed that God would use me, in whatever way He chose. It’s been an adventure ever since…

A Church Partner Working in Luanshya, Zambia

Dauna%20Chanca%20Girl%20-%20thumb.jpgIn March, long-time Hands at Work in Africa partner Westside King’s Church sent a team of congregation members to work with the Hands at Work Luanshya Service Centre supporting the launch of a new home-based care (HBC) organization in the community of Mulenga.

Below is the team’s report of their activities training HBC volunteers, mentoring youth, and generally participating in Zambian life.