Dear friends,

We hope this letter finds you all well. As it is spring in Canada, this is the only time of the year we miss the weather in Canada. So we thought it was a good time to send you an update on us in Africa.

The past year has been a challenging one for both of us, and for Hands at Work, the organization we work with. But it was also a year of excitement and increased impact on kids in Africa. As most of you know, we are part of a goal to reach 100,000 orphaned and vulnerable children by the end of 2010 across Africa. So we spent much of the past year traveling throughout the continent: Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Swaziland, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and of course South Africa where we are still based at the Hands at Work main office.

We continue to work in villages where HIV and poverty are the highest and support is very low. This led us to villages like Orile: a slum community in the enormous city of Lagos, Nigeria where we found an entire community that had been turned in to a brothel and where the many children born from prostitution are abandoned, sometimes at birth or when their mothers die due to sicknesses like HIV/AIDS, to fend for themselves. We are working with local leaders in Orile to care for these incredibly vulnerable kids by getting them in school, feeding, and arranging decent home situations and living conditions.

 While the two of us are off in villages all around Africa, Forward Education, the education project which most of you generously supported in 2006, continues to be run by a combination of African and International volunteers. Currently 7 orphaned students from the Masoyi village in South Africa are studying in Colleges or Universities in South Africa, while others have gone on to various leadership positions or roles in their community.

For example, Stanley who was part of the 2007 class, spent 2008 as a Youth Coordinator, running programs in his community for other orphaned children age 12 to 20. It wasn’t an easy job for him, but it helped him realize he wants to continue to use his life and the tough lessons he learned losing his parents at a young age to impact other kids’ lives. So he applied to study in an African ministry training program and was accepted to attend a school for 2009.

Patricia, who was part of the 2008 class, is enrolled in a college program studying Social Work. She travels home every 6 weeks to do practical work for vulnerable children in her home community. It was her dream to work with kids who face the same challenges she did growing up. Because she understands their struggles so well, she can make a bigger impact in their lives than anyone else can.

We hope you realize that these lives have been changed forever because you helped us and others to invest time, energy, and money into these students.

The rest of this year will bring more of the same to us and Hands at Work. To reach the goal of 100,000 children, we are expanding our work at a rate of more than one village per week throughout the entire year, training and equipping local leaders to care for the most vulnerable children in those villages.

As for our specific roles, Jayme will keep managing the Hands at Work website and all the print, video, and promotional materials. And Lynn will help to manage the expansion to new villages and new countries.

If you want more information or want to find opportunities to get involved, you can visit handsatwork.org. At the website you can sign up to receive a regular newsletter. Please continue to follow us here too, comment on our blog or send us an email anytime. We’d love to hear from you all, sometimes it gets lonely out here! And don’t forget that without your support and encouragement we wouldn’t be here.

Take care and God bless you.