Hands at Work

Before Lou and I came to Africa I reached out to two organizations to see if we could get involved in some service work and as possible Dustin’s GreenHouse destinations. The first was the Vipingo Village Foundation (VVF) in Kenya and the second was an organization called Hands at Work www.handsatwork.org here in White River. Both work with AIDS affected children.

I didn’t really have anything concrete set up with Hands, I just hoped I could get up with someone when we got to White River. On the flight from Nairobi to Johannesburg, Lou and I were not able to get seats beside each other. It was the only flight in the 19 flight segments we have taken on this trip where we were not beside each other. I asked the flight attendant if there were any extra seats if she could try to get us seats together.

The gentleman beside me, said he would be happy to change places once the plane got up into the air. We started talking about our trip and I mentioned that we were hoping to get up with Hands at Work. He almost fell out of his seat, because he was the director at the bible school where Hands at Work originated and is best friends with one of the directors, Marc Myburgh. Amazing!

Through him we were able to set up a meeting with Marc and Vivienne (his wife) to learn about the amazing things they are doing in Africa. What started as a local outreach program to help the community has grown into an organization that is in seven African nations and helping over 20,000 AIDS affected orphans.

Hands at Work works in villages where the incidence of HIV/AIDS, orphans and poverty is the highest and the support structure is very low. In such areas, institutional models of care, such as hospitals and orphanages are overwhelmed and unable to cope with the sheer volume of needed care. There are 2.5 million orphans in South Africa. In the war torn country of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) the population is 55 million over 4 million people have died leaving an orphan population of 4.2 million children. That means orphans make almost 10% of the population of the DRC.

Hands at Work goes into communities and teaches the community how to provide for the orphans within their area, providing them a safe and secure environment. They do not feel their mission is accomplished until the can provide three basic services for the children, food, shelter and education. Most of these homes have children as the head of household with younger siblings under their care; children taking care of children. Many are taken advantage of by men, trading sex for food or shelter.

Hands at Work sends community volunteers out to orphan homes to feed and check on shelter and heath care needs. They work to have community centers built in these areas so younger siblings can be cared for while the older children go to school.

Hands at Work, like VVF have no paid administrative staff so over 90% of all donations go to helping children. By 2010 their goal is to have 100,000 orphaned children under their care. Next month they are launching a program where you can support a child for a month with just a $15 donation. This is a wonderful organization that is doing incredible things to address a problem that is a true crisis. This is a crisis of momentous proportion and to stand back and watch while millions of people die is not an option.