ADRA

 Stepping through the front doors, we get our first clue that something big happens here. Lining the walls, from floor to ceiling, are crude wooden shelves. Each shelf is heavily packed with the reason we are here … crackers, small cakes, cookies, and bread.

If you walk through a small door in the back of this room, your eyes won't believe what you see. Hidden by this small storefront is a huge bakery, where production is happening at a rapid pace. On the left, a man sticks a long paddle into a deep wooden oven and effortlessly picks up a pan of baked goods lying deep in the oven, twirls it on the end of the paddle, then lays it back down again to finish baking. On the right, someone else is mixing huge batches of dough, and another person presses the cookies into shape with ingenious makeshift equipment. Huge bags of flour and other ingredients are stacked along the wall. What once was a small, struggling business is now a thriving enterprise.

This is the home of Maritza Molina, a baker and mother of five, and a member of an ADRA-supported community bank, which was named "Together We Triumph" by its group members. She began working with ADRA 10 loan cycles ago. She started with a loan of 3,000 lempira ($180) and has worked her way up to receiving a loan of L15,000 ($800). Before the loan, she lived in a small wood house and rented the bakery property, which she staffed with four employees. With the loan, she's been able to build a larger brick home and hire six employees, and she now owns the bakery property. She also used to have to buy her baking materials on credit, but with her loan, she can now buy her ingredient inventory with cash and get a better price. Her clients have increased by five distributors, who take the product and sell it to clients. In production, she used to use six 100-pound bags of flour per day. Now she uses up to twice that amount. As for sales, she used to sell L1,500 ($80) per day; now she sells nearly L3,000 ($180) a day and is able to give a commission to her distributors. She still has goals to grow her business and get more equipment, such as a mixer, and replace her wooden oven with an electric one.

Her entire family is involved in the business. She works with her spouse, also a baker, and her son and daughter help after school. "I thank God for the opportunity to be in this bank, and I thank ADRA for investing in me, for the loan to improve my business, and for teaching me money management, how to run my business better, and the importance of good customer service," says Maritza. "The extra profits have also helped with our health and education expenses."

Maritza is part of ADRA Honduras' credit program for micro and small enterprises. The program promotes the socioeconomic development of mainly low-income women who do not have access to conventional forms of credit in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and who are presently involved in microenterprises. Loans are made available via more than 100 community banks of solidarity groups consisting of approximately 30 women each. The loans are used by women for such activities as wholesaling, retailing, small manufacturing, tailoring, auto mechanics, agricultural activities, and others. Amounts of approximately $100 to $600 are loaned in incremental steps for four months at a time. More than one loan will be allowed as long as the previous loan was successfully managed and the interest and capital duly returned. Repayments are made biweekly with a flat interest rate of three percent per month. The solidarity groups are expected to save 10 percent of their individual loan amount. ADRA-employed credit agents monitor the loans, each facilitating 10 to 12 groups of up to about 300 members total.

At the time of our visit, ADRA was targeting three neighborhoods of Tegucigalpa: Flor del Campo, San Francisco, and Nueva Suyapa. During a four-year period, the program directly benefited 2,830 women, 150 men, plus the owners of 20 existing small businesses.

The middle and lower income sector of Tegucigalpa numbers about 700,000 in 316 townships. Water for the townships is in short supply, and few have sewerage systems. Electricity is also rationed, and unpaved, eroded streets are standard. Other factors aggravating the problem are illiteracy, single motherhood, limited or nonexistent manual and professional skills, frequent illnesses, and exploitation by harsh merchants and clever entrepreneurs. All have combined to provoke a vicious cycle of destitution as well as food insecurity. At the time of our visit, 65 to 68 percent of the economically active population was underutilized or unemployed.

Poor entrepreneurs are unable to access formal forms of capital and must rely on local moneylenders, who charge very high interest rates. With low or no savings and no access to credit or formal lending institutions, entrepreneurs have no capital to invest in business activities.

To enhance the beneficiaries' entrepreneurial skills, ADRA trains them in organizing and managing solidarity groups, opening and managing bank accounts, operating pertinent machinery and equipment, bookkeeping, small business management, and production techniques.

Maritza is just one person who has benefited from this program. I also met Felicidad, who has a small grocery store, and Nora, who has a beauty salon. Lourdes enlarged her tortilla shop, Suyapa sells chickens and snacks, and Miriam is a diesel mechanic with a taxi business that grew from one taxi to 11! Maria sells spices and herbs, and Plasida has a produce stand. Each of these women was selected by ADRA because they have a favorable attitude toward change and organization of the community, as well as a desire to participate in the development process. They were already entrepreneurial women and eagerly joined hands with ADRA to grow and expand their businesses to become profitable enterprises that bring income support to their families, enabling them to purchase ample food, pay school fees and doctors bills, and become self-sufficient.

At each home and business we visited, we saw joy and pride on the faces of women empowered by ADRA. But also in each neighborhood, there remain more women in need of a hand of assistance to attain the dreams they have for their families or their businesses. Your continued support enables more women and their families to reach the business and personal goals they so long to attain. It's just as Maritza's community bank members believe: Together We Triumph!

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Watch the One Man in Siberia Voyageur Journal

The cold tarmac at the Vladivostok airport was the end of the line for me. The air was about 17 degrees Fahrenheit, as warm as it was going to get for a mid-winter morning. Twenty dull hours of flying had set my wrist watch no less than fifteen hours ahead of Washington D.C. to a distant time zone in the Russian Far East. Here, if not for strict border crossings, a person might drive to North Korea for lunch or go to China for an all-afternoon shopping spree. I was, for the moment, in a different dimension.

The moment we stepped off the bus that ferried us from the plane, the main terminal door swung open and we entered reverently in a single file. Down the hall a crowd of eager Russians, shapkas on every head, searched our group of new arrivals for a glimpse of their husbands, girlfriends, and business guests. I, too, was looking deep into the crowd for a man who just two days before had promised in a short e-mail to meet me here. He had sent me his telephone number in case one of us failed to show up, but he didn’t see the likelihood of that happening since he had booked himself on a flight that would arrive several hours before mine from a distant city in Siberia. The only thing he noted with some level of concern was,  “I have problems with English language.” And that was it.

It was almost 11:00 a.m. by my watch, and I stood in the middle of the hall wrestling with my bag before I set it down on the shiny floor. For a moment it occurred to me that he would not arrive. After all, there are still many things that can keep two complete strangers 9,343 miles away from each other from converging at the same time on the same spot of earth in a place unfamiliar to both.

That impossibility, however, came only as a passing thought.

I watched a family, anxious to see a relative arrive, stretch out their arms as he approached their side of the airport hall. As for me, I imagined the meeting with my local contact being something like this:

“Am I glad to be here! I wasn’t sure if we’d meet, but I’m certainly happy that you made it. So, good flight from Novosibirsk? Are you ready to get on with the trip? By the way, when do we catch the train tonight?”

Which is why, a minute or two later, when I found myself standing in front of a man wearing a suit and tie and an elegant black shapka who spoke to me only in Russian, but to whom my identity was fully known, I was only half convinced that this was Nikolay Grebenyuk, director of ADRA East Russia, the person with whom I had corresponded for a month and who had replied to all my inquiries in a series of messages in well-written English. How could this be? I was flummoxed. Then I said:

“Nikolay?”

A wide smile spread across his face, the kind that says unequivocally, yes, it’s me.

He had immediately recognized the stitched ADRA logo on my windbreaker jacket when I walked into the terminal. He pulled out a paper folder with the same logo printed on it, as a gesture to ensure mutual recognition.

“How did you manage to write in English?” I asked.

He fumbled with some words, and said, “Computer program.”

Pointing to the exit, he asked (I could only guess), how my flight from Moscow had been, and was I ready to get on with the trip? He patted me on the back. As we walked out into the brisk morning air, I sensed that perhaps he was also glad to know that neither of us had flown all this way just to be stood up by the other.

At two o’clock that same night we were seated comfortably in a spacious and mostly empty sleeper railroad car on our way to Irkutsk, a city three days away that lies near Lake Baikal’s southern extremity not far from the border with Mongolia. Although we had enjoyed the convenience of a local translator during the day, our communication was now restricted to loose Russian and English words, wild hand signals, and doodles on a small paper pad.

I crawled into my sleeping bag. Nikolay, who still seemed to be working out some words in his head, stood up and said, “Chai?” The word would have gone past me had I not visited northern Pakistan a year earlier where drinking tea is a part of every social event and is offered to any guest who enters a home, much like a calumet among American Indian tribes, to extend friendship and peace.  He quickly dashed through the narrow corridor and got two tall glasses from a train attendant, then filled them almost to the brim with hot water from a boiler at the end of the railroad car.

“Good chai,” I said. Nikolay responded in Russian and seemed pleased by my appreciation of the local tea.

“My country drink chai. All people,” I said.

A puzzled look settled on his face. The confusion, perhaps, had something to do with my assertion that everyone in my country, like Russia, was a tea drinker. Or that he wasn’t sure what country was my country.

“America?” he said pointing to me.

“No, no. No America,” I said putting my index finger to my chest. “Chile.”

I drew an imaginary map in the stale air of our compartment, and after a brief pause, he said: “I Ukraina.”

“Not Russki?” I said in the best bit of Russian I could summon.

Until now it had not occurred to me that Nikolay could be anything other than an authentic born and bred Russian. Perhaps, if I’d known the language well I could have detected a slight foreign twist in his voice, but then again, he had lived outside the Ukraine for so long that he surely had by now left out of his pronunciation any clues of having been born elsewhere.

His mother and father, who raised him Russian Orthodox from birth (he would later become Seventh-day Adventist), still lived, he said, in his childhood home in Kumejki, a small rural village 110 miles southwest of Kiev, where they had a large field of bright sunflowers, which they tended to year after year. They loved the Ukraine and would not live anywhere else, even if that meant seeing their son, who had lived in Siberia for the better part of two decades, only from time to time. Fortunately, his older brother lived just down the road from them, and that gave Nikolay a measure of comfort.

Family was sacred to him; one doesn’t need words to sense the love of a man for his wife and children. Opening his notebook computer, he clicked on several photographs which popped onto the screen: holding a big fish with his 12-year-old son, Pavel; daughter Katya, 16, posing near the door of her grandparents’ home in Kumejki; and Lena, his wife of seventeen years, sitting on a beach during a recent summer trip. I was sure, then, that being on this train with me meant that Nikolay was losing time with them; it was the nature of the work. We’d all been there: far-removed, longing.

Presently, as we sped through the darkness across the vast Russian countryside, we were taking sips of hot tea. It was late in the night, but there seemed to be a sense of interest in each of us to know where the other had come from—and perhaps where he was going.

The train traveled the entire night along the Chinese border all the way to Khabarovsk, then turned west at the northern end of the city and crossed the Amur River. Nikolay was delighted to see the river flowing undisturbed under a hefty layer of ice possibly as much a three feet thick, he said. To sink a fishing line into the river a man would need to drill by hand for the better part of the morning, a sweaty task even in the deep freeze of winter. But no amount of ice, nothing really, was going to get between a man and his fish.

This was apparent the next day when it came time for lunch. Long before boarding the train (when exactly is anyone’s guess), Nikolay got his hands on a trout that only two or three day ago, I imagined, had been swimming up a river in Kamchatka, an extensive peninsula opposite to Alaska across the Bering Sea whose fresh fish products are considered the best in the region. Now, the trout lay smoked inside a plastic bag. Using a small kitchen knife, he cut the flesh into thick slices; the outside was clearly well smoked, but bringing a piece of the fish to my mouth, I tasted the raw gelatinous body.

“Good,” Nikolay said, “Very, very good.”

One bite was enough. In Russian he offered to give me half of the fish. Taking the knife, he pointed to the slices that were mine. I declined, offering my upbringing as a poor excuse for not being accustomed to eating fish. He said no problem, and having eaten his share of the trout, he put the rest back in the bag and placed it by the window where the deep cold from outside would keep the meat fresh until the following day, in case I changed my mind.

By now it was customary after every meal for us to read from a book or stare out the window or simply sit back and choose a conversation topic to pursue. We had somehow managed to discover words in Russian and English that we both vaguely recognized, and soon we were having lengthy exchanges.

One such discussion started hours after we left Khabarovsk as the train worked its way across a vast, uninhabited plain colonized by birch trees and little else. We were in the Siberian taiga proper, Nikolay said, a biome that extends all the way to Norway and, skipping the Bering Sea, into Alaska and much of inland Canada. A man takes a measure of pride in saying he has been in it—in winter especially. It is, after all, a place of infinite beauty, but which can test even the most rugged of men. In years past Nikolay had ventured into the open taiga for days at a time, not necessarily alone, but always in the spirit of adventure.

“My friend professional hunter,” he said.

It was with his buddy Sasha and two or three other friends from Irkutsk that he would walk into the wild on weekends to camp, rest, and sometimes hunt. He was showing me some photographs of one such trip when he said he owned three carbines. It was with one of these that he went into the forest one day and killed a bear. At present, however, he kept his carbines stored at home, because he hadn’t found much use for them in recent years since he moved west from Irkutsk to the bigger city of Novosibirsk.

Life in Irkutsk had been memorable: hunting trips to the Siberian taiga, visits to Lake Baikal, friends, romance. But Nikolay had not moved there postulating that he would achieve those things, but rather that those things would come to him in time, as one must often do upon arrival in a strange, foreign land. This was 1986 and he was enjoying the relative freedom of having finished four years of training at a military academy in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) at the confluence of the Volga and the Oka rivers 250 miles east of Moscow. The Soviet Army, naturally, would expect a return on its investment. Before the blanket of winter dropped on Siberia, Nikolay arrived in Irkutsk to report for duty and begin, he said, a career as an acquisitions and logistics officer. The job meant supplying the base—from the grunts to high commanders—with everything from socks to the lard used in the kitchen. He was organized and watchful of every detail and over the years he rose steadily, as did his love for Irkutsk and his new wife and later his two children, to become major—by now in the Russian Army. 

A few days later, in late afternoon, he would take me to the main entrance of the army base to show me his former home. A Sukhoi jet fighter was propped handsomely on the snow near the gate. A young guard was standing out of the cold inside a yellow building. Nikolay didn’t say a word. He just smiled. But I knew that he had thirteen years of memories tucked away behind those tall black metal gates.

Siberia, if you didn’t know it already, is enormous. It extends eastward from the Ural Mountains not far from Moscow and southward to neighboring Kazakhstan, and runs along the borders of Mongolia and China all the way to the other side of Asia where the land dead-ends at the Pacific Ocean eight time zones later. If you take a cutout of the map of Alaska and set it down over Siberia, it will easily fit no less than eight times and leave plenty of wiggle room to add California, Oregon, Washington, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Connecticut, and two Districts of Columbia.

To approach the size of Siberia in a different manner, one comes to the conclusion, after some simple mathematics, that Nikolay must oversee—and try to crisscross—as many square miles as the vast majority of ADRA country offices in, say, Africa (twenty-six out of a total of thirty-four)—Mauritania, Mali, Cape Verde, Senegal, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Sao Tome, Angola, Namibia, Madagascar, Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mauritius, Ethiopia, Malawi, Lesotho, South Africa, and Zimbabwe—alone.

One man.

He tackles distances by plane and car and, as we were doing now, also by train. Getting around remains a very big undertaking.

Nikolay, however, had not let a single moment of frustration slip out of him since we’d met. If he ever felt overwhelmed by anything—by the size of the territory he was meant to bring relief to, by the needs of the people, by the time away from home—it was never apparent to me in any way. Perhaps, Siberia had had the opposite effect on him. Or he had dealt with it long ago. The reality, nevertheless, is that eight years after leaving the army to work for ADRA he remained driven, optimistic, confident, and, best of all, cheerful to the marrow. 

In the process, he had managed to stay deeply human, too.

“Every time I go to a project I dedicate myself to the people,” he said later through a translator. “I try to do my best to help them and make their lives a little better.”

I saw this side of him even more clearly in Irkutsk, where we arrived in the middle of the night after seemingly time traveling 2,569 miles over the frozen Siberian taiga sipping hot, sweet tea.

The next day at noon we gathered in Novolenino, a residential district of the city, inside a spacious, sunny room at the Regional State Organization Orphanage #2. Here, sometime ago, ADRA had brought food to supplement the pantry of the orphanage and improve the diet that the children needed to grow up healthy. Lunchtime was well underway and two dozen little children, one to four years of age, sat around tiny square tables eating hot soup and bread. A few, too little to master a spoon full of soup, got help from the staff. When lunch was over, the children ran inside the room chasing each other around until they slowly grew tired.

Many of the children staying in this orphanage wing, called Aistenok (it means “stork-baby” in Russian), are living with HIV. Some arrived at the orphanage soon after birth, abandoned, in some instances, near a bus stop, in the snow, or in the alleys between houses, well before they would know the love of a mother or understand the cruelty of the world outside these walls. Fortunately, on this day none seemed aware of the latter yet.

The happiness in Nikolay’s face was palpable. He held a little girl in his arms and whispered a few short words to her. She was shy. Quiet. He said something else, tickled her chin and she broke out in a wide smile.

“This is what drives me to do my best,” he said. “The children.”

We stood quietly watching the staff put every child in bed for a nap. Not every child was willing to go to sleep. Minutes later, however, the room grew peaceful. Silence.  We heard only the gentle, rhythmic breathing.

I was certain that the faces of these children, of so many others, too, would stay with him beyond this day. He had said to me, “Each time I return home after several weeks, I feel pain for the people. I am touched by the sorrow I see in many places in Siberia. But then I tell myself that I’m working for them.”

We drove to Lake Baikal the next day over newly fallen snow. The icy surface of the lake was a clear window into the depths of the water. So clear, we could see the bubbles trapped inside the ice. Nikolay walked to an open market not far from the edge of the lake. When he returned, holding something wrapped in a newspaper under his arm, he said,

“Baikal fish.”

I sensed right away that Nikolay Grebenyuk wasn’t going to let my upbringing get in the way of a good fish.

We spent the next hour eating fish with our bare hands.

“You like?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said.

Looking down from the relative comfort of my airplane seat as I pass over the vast, arid country of southern Somalia, I notice that the water holes are downright dry. Blame it on Gu and Deyr—the seasonal rains that have been largely avoiding the Horn of Africa for the better part of a decade.

In general, one would remark, the region is in trouble. Slowly keeling over. The two consecutive failed rainy seasons are giving the residents of the districts of Huddur, Elberde, Rabdure, Tieglow, and Wajid, in the Bakool region, a reason to consider the worst. The last dry spell arrived in 2005 between April and June, when the Gu rain was supposed to soak the grazing areas and give farmers enough moisture for their fi elds. But when the water didn’t come again in October, and the fodder and the water holes became critically low, livestock carcasses began turning up all over the place. That’s troubling news when your way of life depends on the health— and size—of the herd.

In the Bakool region alone, more than 1.4 million people are beginning to feel the effects of the drought. Water prices are already jumping. But the water itself is increasingly going to fewer people—that is, to people who can afford, and are ready to pay, 35 to 40 Somali shillings for each 52-gallon drum, nearly US $3. In a country where the yearly income for an average person is $600—when there are no droughts, of course— that kind of spending will cut a hole in your pocket. If the situation worsens, the United Nations fears that there will be more than just dead animals. The magnitude of the situation then would be like shutting the faucet off in, say, Colorado Springs, Minneapolis, Honolulu, and Tulsa at the same time—indefi nitely.

Elberde district is the most affected by the lack of rain, and the problem is stretched to an almost unbearable level by the ongoing clan confl icts. Only two hand-dug wells and one borehole—from a total of 18 wells—are functioning. The rest have simply dried up.

Many herders up and down the Somali-Ethiopian border are not waiting for the water to come to them. Instead, they are pushing their flocks, and their families, to the south across an area the size of New Jersey toward more fertile areas in Garas Weyne, Morogavi, Dhil Siji, Xuddur, El-Lahelay, and various Tieglow villages where they are likely to fi nd a river. The move, in humanitarian lingo, has turned them into IDPs— internally displaced persons. This means that thousands of people are now strangers in their own country. And that, most likely, means that someone else will decide whose bucket dips into the water fi rst.

Although ADRA rehabilitated several wells and boreholes in the area, the infl ux of 12,000 IDPs and their camel and goat herds has reduced water levels by half. That’s worrisome, if not alarming, when you consider that the next rain— the Gu seasonal rain—is not due for another two months. However, no one should have to wait around that long for water.

But some do. In Falanfay, a small village near the Bakool regional capital, Xuddur, people waited four years to see the water in their well. Nevertheless, after all that time, Ibrahim Golbow is thankful. He is 98 years old, a former shoemaker and a village elder. He has a good reason to be happy about the water. That’s because over the years he has become the father of 20 children— 14 boys and six girls. And he wants to see them live a long life, as he has. He says, “ADRA is the sun of our village. It has brought us water, which had been a problem for ages. I see hope on the way, and this is a good thing, you know.” Finding water when you need it most is in some ways an exercise in patience and stubbornness.

Take the plan of ADRA, for example. It’s a struggle against the harsh Somali landscape: picking a collapsed borehole, removing the silt from the inside, digging deeper into the earth, and restoring water yields to normal levels—all of this before moving on to the other 69 holes. One by one.

While other relief agencies are trucking in the water from the Juba River, a steady drink that meanders across the most droughtprone region in Africa, ADRA’s plan—funded by the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA)—is entirely set up to give towns and villages in the Bakool region—Garas Weyne, Elberde, El Dhun, Xuddur—a permanent way to get their water. Already, the UN Water, Environment and Sanitation (WES) committee is on the ground, so work can start immediately.

Soon, ADRA will carry out a geophysical survey and drill a borehole in Abal, a town east of Xuddur. Also, because that kind of assistance most likely won’t be enough, ADRA hopes to partner with Médecins Sans Frontières- Belgium to pump and pipe water from the El Dhun borehole to Xuddur, then build latrines in some of the most overcrowded villages, chlorinate water sources, and produce kitchen gardens at some of the rehabilitated wells to increase food production and give people better choices of food.

For now, however, the attention is on the holes. No one is celebrating yet.

Perhaps, if the people of Bakool fi nd the water before the water fi nds them, they will have time later, one hopes, for everything else.

" 'I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid…’ ” Leviticus 26:6 (NIV)

A couple months ago, I returned from a trip to East Africa, including southern Sudan. Sudan is the largest country in Africa, but has been in a state of war for approximately thirty years. The results of this long-term conflict have been tremendous.

The infrastructure—including roads, schools, health facilities, and much more—is in shambles. One particularly bad 10-mile stretch of road took us 1.5 hours to travel! To get to ADRA’s projects, we, like ADRA South Sudan staff, had to fly in on a United Nations single-engine plane that lands on dirt strips.

The poor transportation and communication in southern Sudan make this area extremely difficult to work in. On top of this, there is the constant threat of ongoing conflict. At all times you must carry a “quick run” survival kit containing enough water for four days.

Despite these conditions, ADRA is carrying out a tremendous work in southern Sudan. Education projects are supporting schools that have no supplies. A guinea worm eradication project is helping to eliminate this painful, but rectifiable, disease. Women’s groups are learning literacy and numeracy skills and starting their own business to create income for their families.

One school that stands out in my mind is the Affa Displaced Primary School. It’s a school that ADRA is supporting with supplies and teacher training. The children who are students there were forced to flee their homes farther north due to fighting. Many of their stories are very saddening.

The future in this region depends heavily on the peace process that is ongoing. I hope you’ll join me in praying for the safety of ADRA staff working in this dangerous environment, the continued community involvement and support of ADRA’s projects, and especially for peace in southern Sudan.

“And on that day they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God had given them great joy. The women and children also rejoiced. The sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away.” ~Nehemiah 12:43 (NIV)

After packing the essentials for a four-day visit to the village of Donomade, I met Irene, a field worker for one of ADRA Togo’s women’s empowerment projects who lives in Donomade during the week.

When we arrived that afternoon, ADRA’s AIDS Prevention Program team began by giving questionnaires and doing informal discussion groups with villagers and showing a film about signs of AIDS, transmission, and prevention. “Now we know how to protect ourselves,” said Bosi Rosa after the presentation. “I will start telling my children about AIDS and how they can prevent it.” Dovi, a petite little girl with a stack of schoolbooks resting on her head commented, “What I learned about AIDS makes me sure I want to avoid it.”

When I stepped out of Irene’s hut at 7 a.m. the next morning, a large circle of villagers was gathered around. ADRA’s life-skills classes, covering topics like women and children’s rights, health, sanitation, nutrition, family relationships, family planning, and methods of income generation, begin very early as its often the only time when women are free.

ADRA reaches youth through weekly presentations at primary schools. Out of 32 students, only eight were girls. This is not surprising in Togo, where there are nearly twice as many illiterate females as males. Early pregnancy and marriage are two factors that cause many Togolese girls to drop out of school. “My dream is to be a journalist. I want to stay in school and finish my education,” said 15-year-old Kristine. “Today I learned that I need to avoid early marriage and pregnancy to complete school.”

On the trip back to Lome, Irene and I passed barefoot school children on the narrow footpaths, waving as we drove by. We saw women walking with heavy loads of firewood balanced on their heads and men riding bicycles with towering sacks of corn tied to the back. These are everyday sights in Togo, and it’s easy to pass them by without noticing. Yet within each person, there are needs and a story. My week in Donomade gave me insight into some of those stories, and encouraged me as I saw the rejoicing of the women and children—like Bisi, Dovi, and Kristine—as ADRA brought empowerment to their life and hope to their future.

"You are the light of the world" Matthew 5:14 (NIV)

ADRA has been drilling wells in Somalia since 1992. Water is extremely rare, with water points being 70 to 100 km (43 to 62 miles) apart. People and their livestock have to walk two to three days to get water. The countryside has no lakes or rivers, and rain falls only about twice a year. Otherwise the climate is hot and dry year-round with temperatures averaging 40º C (104º F) in the shade.

Drilling wells is a real challenge. Boreholes have to be around 200 meters (656 feet) deep. To drill that deep we need from 80 to 100 thousand liters (21 to 26 thousand gallons) of water. Tanker trucks bring water from the nearest source located about seven hours one way over heavy sand and sharp rocks.

Sheik Mahmoud Diblawe from the Datable clan visited our office in Mogadishu. He wanted to thank ADRA for helping his people and to assure us of safety under his protection. Our drilling team and equipment were guarded by 50 armed militiamen with six technical cars, each mounted with a heavy machine gun.

I recalled his friendly welcome during our survey trip two years before. As we talked, I had mentioned that I was also a religious man, a Christian sheik—adding that we all pray to the same God. Impressed, he asked if I could dig a well for his village. He added, "Because of the remoteness of our area, no international organization has ever made an effort to come here."

Due to lack of funds, I could promise only to do my best. As we left, he asked for my business card. I wondered about this request since his area has no post office or telephone. "I have kept your business card in my Koran," he said. "Every day when I read it and pray, I include ADRA in my prayers. `If this man is a true sheik,' I told myself, `he will keep his promise. One day he will return.' Now I realize that you are a true sheik, and I thank ADRA for what has been done for my people!"

“Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases.” ~ Psalm 103: 2, 3 (NIV)

It was a bright, sunny Togolese national holiday morning as I walked out of my apartment to go to the villages for one of our project visits. Kofi, the driver, Mawunyo, the project coordinator, and I were on our way to the village of Donomade. I wanted to know if Donomade had any spectacular meaning. Yes, it had! And that was, “the village is so far that a sick person can never get there.” Upon our arrival in the village we saw a group of women under a big tree involved in a health training session facilitated by Chantal, the ADRA agent for this village. Their faces beamed with joy as they welcomed us, shaking our hands warmly. They quickly realized that I did not speak the local language because I did not know how to respond very well to the local greeting.

Suddenly, a mentally challenged man with a broad, genuine smile interrupted the meeting and started questioning why some people were speaking in English. He seemed curious and wanted to be my friend.

The shock of the day came when, on saying good bye to the community members, the man came close to me, and as he held my hand to say goodbye, he gently lifted it to his cracked lips and kissed the back of my hand. I reassured him that I cared about him, too. As we drove back to the city of Lome, his parting words filled my mind as I was reminded of my new buddy in the village.

I learned lessons from this precious child of God. We each desire to be loved. Thank God that His love is unconditional at all times, and when we need His attention He is always there. More so, He is the great physician who not only heals physical diseases, but the spiritual, too. And in Donomade, “where sick people cannot reach,” there was a mentally challenged child of God. I’m thankful that God can always reach Donomade, regardless of the distance. And as God’s arms and hands, ADRA is reaching out to people, even in villages considered too far. I love being part of the ADRA family!

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6 (RSV)

Ella, a 13-year-old girl in the village where I work, had just finished primary school and had gotten her certificate (after passing the test). But her mother did not want her to continue her studies. The little girl, who was very unhappy about this, told me about it and pleaded with me to help her convince her mother to let her continue school. I went to their home and spoke to her mother about it; but her mother did not agree and would not be convinced. She responded, “I do not want her to continue her studies. The purpose of a girl is to work in the kitchen, on the farm, and to have babies. Me, I didn’t go to school but I eat and do everything just like those who have been to school.”

The situation was tense but we did not give up. I tried all the different means to bring her to reason. One evening after dinner when the three of us were all in the same room, I started to tell a story, a story about a woman doctor who had saved the people of her village from a terrible disease. The mother listened attentively without saying anything. However, the next day she came to me and asked if I thought that one day her daughter would be able to become a government official. I said “Yes, but only if she continues her studies.” With that dream, her mother was convinced.

One week before school started, all was ready for the girl to start school. Her mother came to visit me and excitedly reminded me, “My girl is going to school.”

ADRA strongly believes in empowering young people to reach their dreams. And education is a necessary tool to breaking the poverty cycle. I’m reminded how rewarding this work is every time little Ella happily thanks me—and ADRA—for our help

“Think how you have instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands.” Job 4:3 (NIV)

The view from the top of Mt. Muhavura, an inactive volcano in Western Uganda, is overwhelmingly green. It is a jungle of intertwining trees, hillsides covered with swaying banana plants, and a valley blanketed with the delicate hue of tomato vines, cabbages, onions and potatoes. But the tiny pygmy huts that are scattered throughout the region are largely invisible.

Walls of mud and roofs of palm fronds give shelter to one of the most marginalized groups in Uganda. In 1991, the Batwa Pygmies were evicted from their forest home in order to create Mgahinga National park, one of the few remaining habitats of the mountain gorilla.

Without land, the Pygmies have been forced to become squatters. They have no permanent home, no gardens to grow food and for many, they have no hope. Standing next to the huts, the children’s eyes are large with sorrow and hunger. Their bare feet are cracked, their bellies distended from malnutrition. Their clothing is colorless and filled with tears.

But ADRA Uganda has been making a difference by building the Mabuyemeru Primary school. Now Pygmy students have a place to sleep, access to clean water, regular meals, school uniforms and, most importantly, a life-changing education. In a district where the illiteracy rate is 67 percent, the Pygmy children are learning how to read and write. They are also gaining skills like tailoring, weaving, and farm maintenance.

In the past, Pygmies were so discriminated against that their children could not attend local schools. But at Mabuyemeru, Pygmy children stay in the same dormitory as non-Pygmy children. They share clothes, school supplies, and dreams for a better future.

Alice Nyamihanda is fourteen years old and the first in her village to finish primary school. Her shy smile belies a determined spirit. Alice dreams of graduating from secondary school. Right now, she is halfway through.

ADRA is giving Alice and many children like her a priceless gift—a chance for a better tomorrow. “Please tell ADRA to continue their compassion for the destitute,” said the leader of the Kanyabukung Pygmy community. “Please tell ADRA that they give us hope.”

“. . . we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance.” Psalm 66:12 (NIV)

It was the worst flooding in Hanoi since 1984. The water crept up the steps leading to the ADRA office. This had happened before, but the water had never come through the doors. As the rain continued, we were alarmed to see it inching under the doorways despite our best efforts. We moved computer equipment and file drawers from the floor to tops of desks and tables.

Later, one of the men brought used bricks and buckets of red clay to build barriers at each of the four doorways. Now it was possible to use buckets to remove water without it immediately returning. The rain slowed, and then stopped. There was concern that, if another storm came very soon, it would be worse. By evening, the office was nearly cleaned up, but outside the water still lapped just below the porch floor.

The light rain predicted for Saturday began on schedule, but it increased about 5 AM. At the office, water poured over the "mud/brick dams" that had been built. Closed doors slowed the flow, but water gurgled up through the floor drains of the bathrooms and leaked through gaps between floor tiles. We emptied lower shelves. Just before the water reached it, the bed in the guest room was raised onto a couple chairs.

With the water rising, about 35 people moved office items to the second floor. The rain continued, off and on, throughout the day. While lighter than during the night, it was enough to keep the water about the same height. By late afternoon, boats had ferried many things to a new location.

We have decided to stay, at least for the moment, in the new location. According to the "authorities," there could be additional flooding this year. We are not prepared to go through this "moving experience" again anytime soon. While still anything but organized, our office is beginning to take shape again.

As we provide aid in the future, we will be able to better understand the feelings of helplessness and loss when flooding strikes.

“So the poor have hope, and injustice shuts its mouth.” ~ Job 5:16

“The first thing they did was shoot my husband,” she (pictured below) said, looking down at the mat as I gripped my pen a little tighter. Her eyes met mine and I could see they were full of tears. I glanced around the hut, where 20 women sat detailing their lives before and after arriving at this refugee camp in West Darfur, Sudan. As the stories poured out they were similar in their tragedy—full of pain, murder, rape, and pillaging.

My tears started to make it difficult to write. I thought about my closet full of clothes and shoes, the half empty water bottle I threw away, and the comfortable bed I would be sleeping in that night.

The dust blew in my already irritated eyes as I rode in the back of the pickup to the ADRA compound. We were quiet and absorbed in our thoughts, overwhelmed by the enormity of the task—1.2 million displaced people with similar stories and lacking basic necessities like food and water. “How can man be so cruel” I thought? “Where is God?”

“Inasmuch as you did it unto the least of these, you did it unto me.” The words rang through my head. As our brothers and sisters in Sudan call out to God for help, ADRA responds. It is here in the midst of the largest humanitarian aid crisis in the world—building latrines in the hot sand, digging wells for water, and giving friendly smiles—ADRA is bringing hope to those who are without, bringing aid to the least of these.

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” (I Corinthians 6: 19 20, NIV)

I arrived at Ajakuac Payam on graduation day for 43 Guinea Worm Eradication Program (GWEP) volunteers and supervisors who completed ADRA’s three-day workshop in Twic County, Bahr El Ghazal. Walking to our vehicle, an elderly man came beside me, chatting away in the Dinka Language. I could not understand a word, so I smiled. He continued chatting away and held my hand. I called one teacher who could speak both English and Arabic who translated, “I am impressed because this young lady knows ‘the pen’ well. Because she knows ‘the pen’ well, I am willing to marry her and pay her parents 50 head of cattle just for her pen and 100 head of cattle for her to be my wife.”

I was greatly impressed! Not because a man in Ajakuac Payam was willing to pay 150 heads of cattle for a bride price; but because I realized that ADRA South Sudan’s hard work to promote girl’s education was paying off.

Community members in Twic County are pastoralist, and value cattle very much. Here, wealth is measured by the number of cattle one has and the number of wives one can afford to marry. Happy is the man who has many daughters, for his kraal will always be full of cattle.

The fact that girls in this community are sold off for a bride price at a very tender age, poses a great challenge in the area of girl’s education. ADRA South Sudan, through community mobilizations, workshops, and meetings has been encouraging the community to send girls to school since 1998. Statistics throughout south Sudan shows that only 26% of the pupils enrolled in school are girls in spite of the fact that female’s make up over 60% of the total population of south Sudan. Retention of girls in school is also a great challenge.

The fact that the old man was willing to pay 50 herds of cattle just for ‘the pen’ (equivalent to USD $10,000 encouraged me that the community is gradually changing and placing a high value on girl’s education.

ADRA believes in the importance and value of girls and women and works to uncover that value in societies where it has been clouded. And just like Christ, ADRA believes every man, woman and child has inherent value. I’m glad ADRA is able to show God’s loving face in societies where some genders or ethnic groups have never had their value affirmed. And just as a valued bride is bought with a great price, it reminds me that God bought us with a great price because He, too, values us so intensely.

He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. ~Deuteronomy 10:18 (RSV)

Continued from the last devotional…

Synopsis so far: Evelyne Nielsen’s husband, Bent, served as the country director of ADRA Burundi until he was murdered in 1998. With the desire to carry on the work of her husband, Evelyne took over as country director until June 2001 when she moved to continue ADRA’s work in Tunisia.

Now, after more than 25 years in Africa, I am discovering a new culture in a new country: Tunisia. Here, again, I am bringing ADRA’s mission of love and respect for everyone without consideration of race, gender or religion. My brightest experience after nearly five months in Tunisia, is of participating in Aïd el Fetr, a celebration on behalf of elderly people at the end of Ramadan. ADRA Netherlands sent funding for ADRA Tunisia to be a part of bringing joy to elderly people who were isolated and forgotten during the festival. It was thrilling to see elderly men and women in their traditional clothes moving in rhythm to the religious songs—songs sung for the glory of God by a traditional band, a Souleimia. They also received warm clothes to help them fight the cold of winter.

I will never exchange my place for another one. To work in the ADRA network means to be part of the long chain of solidarity all over the world between people of good heart and good will. It means expressing God’s love to people, who are suffering in their soul and in their flesh. That love is expressed through projects where they are involved right from the beginning—for their own development and the development of ADRA itself—and through projects where everyone—the community and ADRA teams—are learning together in friendship and humility.

“…The LORD, who remains faithful forever. He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry…” ~Psalms 146 6 - 7 (NIV)

Recently, I visited Camp Ded Madi Okollo in Arua, Uganda, and met with a small group of refugees that had lived there for the past five to six months. This was their third camp and most had been refugees for at least 10 years.

The life of a refugee is a challenging one. The food rations which are per person, per month, are 26 lbs. of maize flour, 4 lbs. of beans, and 0.6 liters of cooking oil. There are no supplemental foods for babies. There are two working boreholes for a camp of more than 7,000 people. To get to the borehole water, you have to walk nearly a mile each day. Usually, it’s the women who bare this task.

Imagine all your possessions fitting in a small shelter structure with a “United Nations” tarp over the top and thatch walls at each end. A family of 10 might live in a shelter like this. All your worldly possessions were probably lost in your last move. You are faced with limited rations and water and are located in an area without employment opportunities or schools and with limited medical facilities. The only way to earn a living is by selling your meager rations. These are conditions most of us cannot even fathom.

Compare this with your life. How many cars do you own? How many square feet is your home? How much junk do you have stored in your garage that has not seen the light of day since your last move? Think of the health care that is a short distance away.

How do people become refugees? It is usually associated with violence, and/or freedom of expression. For most of us who live in societies where we are not subject to threats, conflict or acts of violence and who can express ourselves pretty much as we please, these situations are remote. Yet in parts of the world they are common daily experiences.

On June 20th of this month, the world commemorates World Refugee Day. I’m reminded of the small group of men and women I met at Camp Ded Madi Okollo. What should our response be as Christians? It is easy to say we should feed the hungry, clothe the naked and aid the sick, but it is probably a different story to stand up and fight for just treatment of people. It requires activism on our part. I believe that Christ calls us not to be “couch potato” Christians, but activist Christians who get involved in helping support those who are in situations—like refugees from Sudan living in a camp—where our voices might be the only ones supporting them.

Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6 7 (RSV)

From the blue-tiled splendors of Tamerlane’s Samarkand to the holy city of Bukhara, boasting a mosque for each day of the year, Uzbekistan, lays claim to a breathtaking architectural legacy. Bound by sand and snow, these fertile oases attracted the greatest travelers and conquerors in history along the fragile threads of the Silk Road. This is our new home.

As soon as we arrived here, we began working to get ADRA accredited in Uzbekistan. This has taken much patience and persistence. Finally, the United Nations finally granted ADRA bona fide status to cross boarder operations from Uzbekistan to Afghanistan. This status helped ADRA obtain its accreditation, and in March 2002 ADRA Uzbekistan became official!

When we think about our challenges here, the most amazing and comforting fact is to see and feel God’s guidance all the way. It is awesome how things happen when we make ourselves available to God. Doors open before us. The right people step into our lives. Again, on God’s schedule, not ours. Sometimes the task before us is difficult or the needed information isn’t shared or isn’t clear, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of frustration. This happens especially when you look to all ‘you’ are doing. That’s the point! The little secret I’ve learned to avoid frustration is to make sure we are doing all we can, but then to look to Jesus and trust it all to Him. As we act in faith, reaching out to the needy ones all around us, the Holy Spirit, the mighty angels, and all the powers of Heaven are there to assist us. We look forward to seeing ADRA make a difference in this country.

ADRA Uzbekistan, currently a small team of four people, is contacting the government, NGOs, public institutions, and communities to assess the needs of the country. On a recent meeting with the Minister of Public Education, ADRA received strong support to implement educational programs such as vocational training for vulnerable children and a tobacco awareness programs at the schools. We are working hard on these possibilities. In addition, we hope to assist many in Northern Afghanistan and soon eight containers of winter clothing for distribution.

There is a work to be done in this country! We know that with God’s guidance, our best efforts, love, and donor’s compassion, we will make it happen! This is just the start of an exciting journey…

“Think how you have instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands.” Job 4:3 (NIV)

Every morning is much the same for me. I push a button to shut off my alarm. Then I flip a light switch, and click another button on my electric toothbrush. For water, I turn a couple of knobs. Later, I tap a few buttons on the microwave to heat my food.

Life for many people in Africa is far different. Millions face starvation and an AIDS pandemic. Helplessness, pain, hunger, and fear touch young ones who barely understand their world.

Drought has destroyed more than 90% of the food crops in the southern part of Africa. Political turmoil compounds the situation. A small can of cooking oil costs about CDN$75 (US$50). Sugar, flour, and soap are not available. AIDS kills 10,000 people every month, leaving hundreds of thousands of orphans.

While visiting an ADRA project, I met a volunteer that I call “Special Lady.” This woman lives a very simple life in order to help as many as possible. Often her mornings start at 1:00 AM when people arrive hoping to work for food or clothing. Even four-year-olds come for a chance to earn something to eat.

One family’s story is an example of the need that she sees daily. The 74-year-old grandfather suffers from heart disease and is unable to walk. He is the guardian of 18 grandchildren because ten of his eleven children have died from AIDS. The family has no income, and their house is deteriorating. Touched by their situation, “Special Lady” pledged to help.

Laying her burden in God’s hands, she cried, “How can I make such promises, Lord? I have no way of coming through!” Her next visit to the post office yielded an unexpected letter with US$500 for a family in need. With this generous donation, a well was dug and food was provided.

People around the world are making a difference for Africa. People are pushing financial and political buttons. ADRA is a beacon for God’s love in areas where the darkness of pain and hunger prevail. I hope your heart will push a button or two to provide hope, life, and a future. Together, we are making a difference...one life at a time.

He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. ~Deuteronomy 10:18 (RSV)

In the summer of 1999, just over a year after we arrived in Kyrgyzstan, we received a shipment of more than 7,000 new winter coats from AmeriCares.

One of the sites we distributed them to was in Talas Oblast, the most western province of Kyrgyzstan. It has a lot of high mountains and is seriously under-served because of the difficulty of traveling there.

During the second day of distribution we were in the city of Talas distributing to pensioners, disabled adults, residents of a psychiatric institution, and those in a local hospital. At the hospital, we began handing out about 130 coats. Mr. Ashuraliev of the non-governmental organization (NGO) “Tilek,” began calling the names of the recipients. Near the end, one very elderly-looking babushka (pronounced BAH’ bash-ka) came for her coat. She began crying loudly as we gave her the coat, and speaking very fast in Russian. When I asked for translation, the translator and Mr. Ashuraliev were very embarrassed. I finally got them to translate her words: “I don’t want an old coat... I need food. I’m hungry! I can’t eat a coat!”

From that moment, I began to think of development in terms of what the people see as their needs and priorities. Yes, the winter weather is very cold there. Yes, they do need coats. But what good is a coat if they have no food? We gave the woman the coat, and I also gave her 200 som (about US$10) and all the local currency I had. That should have provided her with food for at least a month, if she had no other expenses, but I always suspected that she ended up selling the coat for food later.

Later, ADRA opened a “home kitchen” in Talas to provide hot meals at least 5 days per week to the very poor, pensioners, invalids, orphans and street children. That kitchen is still open, but will most likely be closing early in 2002, when the funding runs out. It costs about $120/month to keep a kitchen open, including ADRA’s overhead costs for management and supervision. We pray that God will help us find a way to continue to care for these people.

"…if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noonday." ~Isaiah 58:10 (NIV)

It’s easy to relate to darkness. It’s the thing we feared as a child and the feeling that sometimes envelopes us as adults. For the past year and a half, here in the United States, we’ve experienced darkness as a nation. We grieved the loss of friends and neighbors caught unexpectedly in the crossfire of terrorism one dark September morning, and we’ve lived through the darkness of uncertainty and insecurity that followed as we were caught up in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. I’m sure you’ve faced your personal darkness as well. Nationally and personally we long for the light. Even as we emerge from the winter months into spring, we’re reminded of the joy of longer days of sunshine. The light seems to bring life to the soul.

God knew we’d face times of darkness and gave us a road map with ironic directions to emerge from our darkness into light—spend yourself on behalf of the hungry and others who are oppressed.

If you’re hurting and stumbling through the darkness of a difficult experience in your own life, reaching out to help others and to better the world may seem impossible; but doing so brings the discovery that the healing you need comes in great measure as you help others.

There are many people around you and around the world who need help. For some it’s your time, a caring ear or your patience. For millions in ADRA’s world it’s food, medical aid, empowerment, shelter, and knowledge.

I’ve seen the unveiling of dignity in the eyes of women in Bangladesh empowered by ADRA to better care for their children and provide an income for their families. I’ve seen the sparkle in the eyes of children in Madagascar as they eat the lunch provided by ADRA at their school. Once lethargic, they now eagerly learn. I’ve seen the glow around a father in Nicaragua who’s learned new farming techniques and received seeds from ADRA. It’s the glow of hope for the next harvest, which will provide for his family. I’ve witnessed their emergence to light all because someone cared enough to spend themselves in support of ADRA’s mission.

If you’re searching for light, consider spending yourself on behalf of the hungry and oppressed that ADRA seeks to minister to every day. It’ll light up your life and theirs.

Heavy, humid air enveloped me as I walked onto the tarmac at Vientienne airport, in Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR). En route to Luang Nam Tha province, tucked into the northernmost corner of Lao, and landlocked against China, I climbed the stairs and scrunched down into my seat on a tiny, 12-seater plane.

The aerial view showed terraced rice paddy fields dotted with men, women, and children—knee deep in muddy water, and backs bent in the heavy labor demanded of planting rice. The rainy season had arrived early, leaving the land muddy, but the vegetation green and lush. It is here that generations in Luang Nam Tha have labored valiantly for their survival.

ADRA is present in this “land of friendship” because 40 percent of its nearly six million population live below the poverty line—73 percent receive less than $2 per day in income. Only 37 percent have access to safe drinking water and less than half the population have access to sanitation facilities. Many are hanging on, to economic and physical survival by a thread. Literally.

Ironically, it’s with a thread that ADRA is reversing those statistics. The villagers of Luang Nam Tha are widely known for their production and weaving of natural silk. Through moriculture (mulberry cultivation) and sericulture (the commercial breeding of silkworms) projects, ADRA aims to increase household income, reduce poverty, protect the environment, and provide employment for women while maintaining and reviving local tradition, identity, and pride.

As we slowly edged our truck up a steep, muddy road, I found Onkeo, a 33-yearold mother of four, weeding her mulberry plantation. She courageously tried a new hybrid of mulberry saplings that ADRA introduced. Feeding her worms the new mulberry leaves and using a new “out of pot” technique for pulling thread and a spinning wheel, has helped to make her thread stronger, thicker, and less sticky.

ADRA trained her in new silkworm rearing techniques and mulberry planting, fertilizing, and pruning techniques then gave her a loan for fencing around her plantation and the saplings. ADRA also provided loans for silkworm cabinets that keep insects out of the silkworm rearing baskets. Onkeo’s family income has increased due to the higher quality of thread, enabling her to meet her family’s needs and save money for a paddy-tiller.

Just before leaving, I stopped at the ADRA Training Center where women gather to learn the new silkworm rearing and weaving techniques. A woman was hunched over a loom, busily stamping out an intricate silk scarf. The loom ADRA is training her on is more efficient and offers greater pattern variety than the traditional loom. On hand is an ADRA weaving trainer to ensure that materials produced are high quality, and an ADRA marketing manager who cultivates markets for the women’s silk products.

ADRA is also targeting vital health needs in this province. Through the Luang Nam Tha Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project (LWP), ADRA is constructing latrines and gravity flow water systems, including maintenance training and a maintenance fund.

Targeting the same communities as the LWP, ADRA’s Responsive Education and Action for Community Health (REACH) project is reaching 12 villages with health education and a mobile clinic. Village health volunteers are trained to offer basic medical treatment and conduct health education activities in their villages. An ADRA-supplied medical kit enables villagers to purchase medical supplies quickly from the village health volunteer, creating a revolving drug fund.

These health projects are benefiting more than 3,000 people like Boua Kham, an ADRA village health volunteer. She has a deep passion for her work. Boua’s given birth to seven children, but she lost four to preventable causes. “My children would probably be alive today if I had known what ADRA has taught me,” she said sadly. She is an avid promoter of ADRA’s “3 Cleans!” campaign: eat clean, drink clean, and live clean. Every day, her work is dedicated to preventing other mothers from the loss she has borne.

In Lao, lives once knotted in poverty and illness now weave dreams of a healthy, prosperous and educated future because of ADRA. But more remains to be done. Many others wish to participate in the silkworm rearing and mulberry plantation project and many villages desperately need health assistance. “For many communities ADRA is their only hope,” the ADRA health staff stated. “When we have knowledge that can save a life, and the power to share it, we have a responsibility to share it.”

It’s a responsibility that ADRA and its staff carry courageously. It’s a responsibility we see demonstrated in the compassion and generosity of the faithful donors who make all of this possible.

And with your help today, ADRA will be able to do more to make Boua’s words come true for other mothers. “My children would probably be alive today if I had known what ADRA has taught me…”

Thank you for donating today!