This is Life for the Zafo Family

Teddy peers past his mud-covered fingers, amused by what he sees. A cloud of mud stirred up by his bare feet has risen from the murky bottom of the pond and now swirls between the leaves and debris on the surface. Astel, Teddy’s mother, clears the debris aside as she dips her 20-litre container into the muddy water to gather her family’s household water for the day.

Her container full, the daily ritual is over. Astel straps Teddy to her chest, heaves the heavy container onto her back, and then begins the arduous, one-hour trek back to her home.

Astel will use this water for cooking her son’s dinner. Some will be saved to drink, and some will be used to wash dishes. Any water that is left will be used to clean diarrhea off Teddy’s legs. Today, just like many other days, Teddy is sick because of the water he played in and drinks.

This is life for the Zafo family; Teddy, Astel and her husband, Fanikale. They live in Kole Zale, located in the rugged mountains of southern Ethiopia.

Kole Zale is downstream from other communities in the area. These communities wash clothes, bathe animals, and drop waste into the stream that eventually meanders down to the pond where Astel gathers water while Teddy plays.

During the dry season, the stream will thin and disappear. And with the drying of the stream, the men of Kole Zale will need to find work in nearby communities. With access to clean water, Fanikale can choose to stay in Kole Zale and grow his own food to sell at the market. Not only will he feed his family and earn an income, he will also be there to watch his wife Astel become self-reliant.

When water comes to Kole Zale next year, with it will come women’s self-help groups. When Astel joins a group, she will be given the opportunity to learn income-generating skills, money management, and start saving for the future. With a loan from her self-help group, Astel will be able to start her own business with the support of her community.

When a water system is built in Kole Zale, the change will not only transform the community, it will also transform Teddy’s life. Through your generosity, he will never have to know a life without access to clean water.

Change everything for the Zafo Family, donate now at give.hope-international.com.

Solving poverty begins with seeing what is present, not what is missing.

Words used to describe poverty often focus on what is not present: clean water, food, education, health care, and opportunity to name a few of the most common descriptors.

Describing poverty based solely on what is not present detracts from what is present: people.

People are central to a meaningful understanding of poverty.

Clean water, while essential, cannot love a family member, friend, or community, but people can.

Education, often a perceived guarantee of future success, cannot enable survival in impoverished circumstances, but the minds of people who have battled poverty their entire lives can.

People, including those among us who live with poverty, are capable, smart, and able to create transformation in their own lives and communities.

In short, to understand poverty and do something about it that is meaningful and long-lasting, we need to see what is present: people.

Focusing only on what is not present, especially in terms of resources like clean water or food, can inadvertently detract from what is present: people who will create solutions to their poverty.

In the end, people solve poverty – people like you who help, and people who are working hard to lift themselves out of poverty with the help you give.

We Can Only Be Human Together

“Your humanity is bound up in mine, for we can only be human together.” Said by Bishop Desmond Tutu, this statement is true everywhere in the world.

Humans are made to rely on each other. Congregation is the pulse of any community, but what happens when we do not gather? How are children raised when there is no village?

With the help of the Manitoba Council for International Cooperation, the Sustainable Urban Centres Project is responding to the growth of urban poverty in Hosur Town, India. With parents working long hours and for little pay, children are left to navigate a growing world that depends more and more on technology and globalization. As the world becomes more connected, these children are becoming less connected and are losing world-at-your-fingertips access that a globalized world promises.

The Sustainable Urban Centres Project creates a space for high school students to congregate while learning skills they can use in a globalized world.

Beyond what students are learning, they see opportunities for a future that exceeds what they believed to be true. For example, Talent Promotion Classes enable young girls to interact with role models who have made their passions into careers. School gardens have been established on campus, and students are learning basic agricultural skills to pair with nutrition classes. The program enables youth to support one another as they face and conquer obstacles. All classes are held after school, encouraging youth to spend their free time learning holistic life-skills.

The Sustainable Urban Centres program not only teaches youth practical and fundamental skills; it gives them the chance to be human together.

Have dinner with us this fall and witness an incredible transformation as families in the Philippines journey from despair to hope.

Join us for a wonderful meal, the company of friends, silent and live auctions, great music, a short feature film, and an important opportunity to transform lives through your giving.

View a brief update about how giving at last year's film premiere and dinner transformed lives.

VIEW DATES & LOCATIONS

HOPE International Development Agency has been helping families worldwide since 1975, enabling them to transform their lives as they gain access to clean water, learn new ways to earn a sustainable income and provide support to each other, grow more food, and restore the environment upon which they depend.

#NOMORETHICKWATER

In the remote communities of Kole Zale and Kanchame, perched in the rugged highlands of southern Ethiopia, water is doing far more harm than good.

Today, the 4,000 people who live in the two communities will drink water so thick with dirt, debris and even dissolved waste from animals, that just one sip can make them sick.

HOPE believes that water should sustain, not harm.

That's why we’re launching #NOMORETHICKWATER this week - we believe every person in Kole Zale and Kanchame should have water that is clean and accessible right in their communities.

Visit #NOMORETHICKWATER today. You’ll learn about the challenges people are facing and how you can become part of the solution by helping raise $400,000 in the next 60 days to transform the lives of 4,000 people.

Clean water changes everything!

Life is about to get much better for families in Kecha Senga now that two of the twelve water points in the remote community nestled in the mountains of southern Ethiopia became operational this month.

Clean water, sourced from underground springs protected by concrete caps, is now flowing through hand-laid pipes that link the springs to water points (taps) located right in the community.

For the first time in their lives, people in the community have access to clean water. The arduous and often dangerous trek to gather water from unprotected sources, such as ponds and muddy streams contaminated with parasites and bacteria, is no longer necessary.

Clean water is often the first step in the journey out of poverty.

Nearly 1 in 10 people worldwide live without clean water. Most live in rural areas and spend extraordinary amounts of time collecting water from wherever they can. Almost all this water carries disease-causing bacteria and parasites.

Wherever clean water initiatives are giving people access to a reliable supply of clean water in their community, water system maintenance and management training are also provided. Also, latrine installation, sanitation training, health education, disease prevention programs, education, training, and increased food production methods often accompany clean water initiatives, ensuring that families experience the full benefit of having clean water.

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HOPE International Development Agency clean water initiatives are transforming lives in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Afghanistan, India, Cambodia, Myanmar, Philippines, Ethiopia, and South Sudan. Learn more.

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Without you, HOPE is just an idea. With YOU, we are a transforming force for good in the lives of the neglected poor.

Today, you can help transform some of the poorest families in the Philippines. Jimmy, an Indigenous father struggling to provide for his wife and children, describes the need.

“The hardest thing is finding food. Two of my children died, and I feel it was my fault because I could not provide enough food for them.

“We gather banana blossom, but we don’t eat it because it is the only thing we can sell to buy rice. If we can’t buy rice, we eat cassava. It fills our stomachs, but I know it does not have good nutrition. Many times, we have nothing to eat. And the water we drink is not good either. It makes us sick,” says Jimmy.

The suffering that Jimmy and his family endure is relentless. His children suffer the most. His family and community desperately need food, educational opportunities, and clean water.

You can stop the suffering today with a gift that will help provide agricultural training, seeds, tools, education, and clean water.

It is not easy to transform lives, especially in the challenging areas where our partners are working. But it needs to happen, because the cost of doing nothing is losing lives to poverty.

Please help us transform lives today.

DONATE

HOPE International Development Agency Board of Directors Announces New Executive Director Kim Savage

 Kim Savage, Executive Director

It is our pleasure to announce Kim Savage as the new Executive Director of HOPE International Development Agency. Kim has a heart for marginalized and vulnerable people and brings to HOPE a wealth of experience, capacity and energy.

In partnership with donors, families living in extreme poverty, overseas partners, and staff teams, Kim will lead HOPE International Development Agency’s mandate to empower the neglected poor, building upon a 44-year foundation of enabling people living in extreme poverty to become free of life-limiting circumstances through their own efforts and solutions.

As incoming Executive Director, I am deeply inspired by the work of HOPE and stand in humble awe of the partnership we have with you and those like you who care deeply and give generously to people facing unimaginable need. Together, we will continue the tradition of tangible compassion and life-changing action. I look forward to working together and seeing lives transformed.

As Executive Director, Kim’s skills, honed through more than 20 years of non-profit executive leadership to organizations and initiatives, will further expand HOPE’s ability to meet its mandate of empowering the neglected poor.

Recent work and volunteer experiences include chairing a non-profit task force to address young women fleeing traumatic sexual abuse in Mexico and working to address homelessness through a collaborative approach with churches in an area of British Columbia’s lower mainland. In many of her previous roles, she was responsible for increasing the capacity of an organization and enabling them to define and reach their goals.

Kim will be working closely with staff teams, the Board of Directors and donors to collectively hone our vision and look for new opportunities to expand HOPE’s ability to empower communities facing dire need. Her desire is to collaborate with all of us and build on our solid foundation of trust, respect and impact within the countries we serve and those who support our work.

Please join us in welcoming Kim to HOPE International Development Agency.

Barb Coyle
Chair, HOPE International Development Agency Board of Directors

Contact Kim Savage

Marie Finds a Solution to Her Family’s Poverty

For Marie, a mother in the Ubangi Mongala region of Africa’s Democratic Republic of Congo, hope arrived in the form of tilapia, a small fish.

Marie and her children were descending deeper into poverty. Fortunately, everything changed when Marie learned about tilapia and fish farming for food and income.

After participating in a training session and witnessing the success other families had achieved through fish farming, Marie took the first step and moved her family to a piece of land on the outskirts of her small village, built a new thatch hut, and hand-dug a large pond for the tilapia that would transform her family.

Having achieved success, Marie received additional support to increase the productivity and sustainability of her pond which now produces twice as many fish as it did before.

Today, Marie’s family, and hundreds more like hers, are enjoying the benefits of their labour with large harvests of nutritious tilapia for their own use, and for sale at local markets, generating a sustainable income.

More than 23 million lives transformed since 1975

Having a global impact on poverty starts with the courage of families struggling to overcome poverty and the compassion of donors who believe every person should have the opportunity to be free from poverty and live with dignity.

The support of donors, along with an integrated approach driven by the ingenuity of our long-term partners in the Americas, South Asia, South East Asia, and Africa, enables families to develop and implement local solutions to poverty that are effective, replicable, and sustainable.

This ensures that the life-transforming outcomes of every dollar given to HOPE International Development Agency are multiplied as families access clean water, grow more food, increase their income, restore their environment and health, and learn new skills that ensure their well-being.

The journey out of poverty often begins with access to clean water

The Tejeda family is a wonderful example of the transformation that happens when clean water becomes available in a community.

Prior to the completion of a community water and irrigation project, the Tejeda family struggled to make ends meet; there was never enough food on the table and no prospects for a better life.

After participating in an irrigation project in their community of Cazuela, a remote village located in the mountains of the Dominican Republic’s San José de Ocoa province, the Tejeda family irrigated their farm land for the first time and are now planting and harvesting 3 crops per year.

Today there is ample food on the table each day, and the income earned by selling a portion of each harvest of cucumbers and other vegetables has enabled the family to purchase necessities, including medicine when needed. In addition, their children are now in school and the family is improving their modest home.

Lucinola's community pharmacy treats more than 70% of health ailments faced by families in Los Naranjos, Honduras

In the final post of a three-part series on community pharmacies in Honduras we meet Lucinola Bustamante, a volunteer community pharmacist helping families in her rural community of Los Naranjos.

Lucinola plays a vital role in providing basic health care to families in remote areas of Honduras like Los Naranjos. She meets community members in their homes or at her home-based pharmacy, building a relationship with each family she serves. This relationship is crucial to improving health outcomes among families struggling with poverty and serves to strengthen bonds within the community while providing a sense of security and well-being.

Lucinola begins her week by visiting the local supply warehouse and picking up medicines and other health care products to stock the community pharmacy located in her modest home. After returning home, Lucinola begins visiting her patients for the week. Depending on the time of year, Lucinola will treat three to four patients per day. In the rainy season, when weather-related illnesses are more prevalent, the number of visits increases. Each consultation is free to the patient, and any subsequent treatment is provided for a pharmacy dispensing fee.

The majority of Lucinola’s patients are mothers and children. The most common health concerns are colds and flus, head and body aches, diarrhea, minor infections, and respiratory problems. Lucinola is trained to take blood pressure readings, temperatures, check ears, eyes, and throats, and enable patients to use a nebulizer which helps all types of respiratory problems.

Drawing on the training and health manuals provided to her by local staff, Lucinola administers basic over-the-counter medicines including pain killers like acetaminophen, allergy medicines such as diphenhydramine, vitamins, including Omega-3 which helps prevent and manage heart disease, and prenatal vitamins for women who are pregnant. While Lucinola cannot prescribe advanced medications, she is still able to treat more than seventy percent of the ailments families in Los Naranjos experience. Complicated health concerns are rare, but if they do occur Lucinola refers patients to clinics that have advanced health practitioners.

“I am so happy to be a volunteer pharmacist and help my community,” says Lucinola, who has seen a substantial improvement in the health of families in Los Naranjos since the introduction of the community pharmacy she so proudly manages.

Lucinola takes great pride in her volunteer work and recognizes the immense value her little pharmacy brings to the community of Los Naranjos. To ensure Lucinola serves her community well, she makes her pharmacy available to patients all week, day or night.

By providing medicines and medical supplies that support a variety of health facilities in Honduras, including more than 500 community-based pharmacies in remote areas of the country, HOPE International Development Agency is helping address a chronic lack of health care in the country.

Join us for dinner in April and May and help transform lives in the Philippines.

View dates and locations today and make sure you reserve your seats soon. Join us for a wonderful meal, the company of friends, silent and live auctions, great music, a short feature film, and an important opportunity to transform lives in the Philippines through your giving.

View a brief update about how giving at last year's film premiere and dinner transformed lives.

HOPE International Development Agency has been helping families worldwide since 1975, enabling them to transform their lives as they gain access to clean water, learn new ways to earn a sustainable income and provide support to each other, grow more food, and restore the environment upon which they depend.