Donna Thomas had the winning bid on this beautiful piece of cloth from DR Congo.

Wherever we go in the world,
we will look for the persons in that area
who can become a role model for their world.
– from Del Anderson’s Dream for Spirit in Action, 2004

This past weekend we celebrated sixteen years of sharing Del’s dream with the world through Spirit in Action. The gathering of twenty-three people was a special time to celebrate our work, bid on handicrafts from SIA partners, and meet friends old and new. Thank you to all who attended and all those who donated time and items to make the day a success!

At the event I shared about the exciting work of the Manyamula Village Savings and Loans group (MAVISALO) in Malawi, which is working to expand their reach. In the process, they are developing into national model!

MAVISALO recently hosted a delegation team from the Malawian Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Community Development, and COMSIP. The team interacted with all the members, learning about the group’s operations, systems, and finances.

Canaan Gondwe, the local coordinator shares of the visit, “it was again superb for us.”

Like Boyd and I, the delegation met with group members that have received loans from MAVISALO. “The comment they left with us,” says Canaan, “was that our group is a success story! Our future seems very bright.”

Not only is Canaan Gondwe a role model, all MAVISALO members are models of people who care about others and share their expertise with others for the benefit of all. This is just one story showing the way we are still following Del’s dream for Spirit in Action.

Thank you again to all who joined us on Saturday and who contributed to help support further growth of MAVISALO.

Click here for more photos from our visit with MAVISALO members last summer visit.

SIA supporters from all over gathered to celebrate 16 years of compassionate service.

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A Day Without Dignity is a movement started last year as a counter-campaign to TOMs Shoes One Day Without Shoes event. The day is about honoring the dignity of each person and supporting aid projects that honor that dignity. This year’s focus is on local champions – those leading local projects to address local needs. At Spirit in Action, we know that local leaders are the heart of change and it is our role to support these already active leaders!

One champion I met last summer was Margaret Ikiara, of Community Initiatives for Rural Development (CIFORD Kenya). I was so inspired by the work she was doing in her community to support other women and people with HIV/AIDS and now SIA is proud to support this vibrant organization, doing good in their own community. I asked Margaret to tell us about their work in her own words:

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(L to R ) Tanya, Guardian, Margaret, and children in guardian's care

Encouraging and working with people affected by HIV/AIDS

In Kenya the HIV/AIDs was declared a national disaster. This is because we are all affected or infected. This pandemic has continued to impact on the lives of Kenyans both socially, psychologically and economically.

The people affected directly are the ones who suffer most. These are people living with HIV/AIDS, orphaned and vulnerable children (OVCs) and the grandmothers caring for them. This is because the people who are dying of HIV are those who are in the productive age group. This has left the families and the whole country economically affected.

CIFORD Kenya is a community-based organisation working in Meru, in the north region of Kenya. CIFORD Kenya realised the challenges the people affected and infected by HIV/AIDS were facing in the society, including stigmatisation and discrimination. These people were left out in the community development agenda. This made most of the people lose hope and self-esteem.

Support and Working Groups

Margaret (center) talks with one of the support groups

With my leadership, CIFORD Kenya mobilised the people affected by HIV/AIDS into working groups. These were formed into: People Living with HIV/AIDS, and Guardians caring for the orphans. CIFORD did not have any resources to support the women. We brought them together and started training them the importance of self-reliance. We committed our time to capacity building where we encouraged the members to come together to mobilise their own resources.

CIFORD Kenya believes that the communities have the solution to their problem and understand best way to address them; all they need is encouragement support and some resources.

For the people living with HIV, we embarked on training them on positive living, nutrition and antiretroviral treatment (ART) adherence.  We also trained them on gardening for better nutrition and increased household income. This has made these people change their lifestyle and have self-esteem and then they become leaders in the campaign on positive living.

Some of the guardians at their weekly meeting.

Guardian Merry-Go-Round Loans

For guardians, (the elderly women who are caring for children), we are aware they have a burden of supplying basic needs for children and there was need to make the guardians come together and start “merry-go-round” and savings group. There is no other way they can help one another other than to bring their resources together. The women have been meeting every Monday at 3.00pm and they have been contributing 20 Kenyan Shillings (Ksh) ($0.25), which is collected and given to one member. The impact of this money is clearly seen in the sense of relief of these women feel when it is their turn to get the collected amount.

The women have been starting small businesses with the money from the group to enable them support the vulnerable children they have welcomed in their households. The guardians are also trained on agriculture skills and livestock-keeping to improve their food security. The surplus food is sold to supplement the family income.

Through a gift, CIFORD Kenya brought in USD $24, to use as principal for loaning among the women at a 10% interest rate. The money has been of great value and many guardians have used the small loan to start small businesses. Most of them have been buying bananas and avocadoes to sell in the local market. The profits are used to support the family. After one year the $24 has grown to $66 as the interest is building on the principal. Women take loan for a maximum of $6 and as little as $0.60!

Solutions from Within the Community

The local problems in Africa cannot be addressed from the top but from within the community. The beneficiaries have to address their own problems in their best way possible. This is the only way that brings positive and sustainable change.  Little resources can mean a lot with full participation of the people in the problem.

There is need for partners to appreciate the inputs of the community members in the intervention strategy, in order to enable a sustainable development.

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Visit CIFORD’s Facebook page for regular updates and more photos.

More posts about CIFORD: 

• CIFORD Kenya: Compassionate Community Action
• A Better Way to Grow Food

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A round-up of some of the exciting things to cross my desk in the last week:

1. Empowering Women at CIFORD – I finished making a video (with Boyd’s narration!) about this great community organization, which we visited last summer. Spirit in Action, with support from the Charles Wentz Carter Memorial Foundation, awarded CIFORD a grant to hold more girl’s empowerment workshops this year!

2. Community Involvement in Uganda – This article tells an encouraging story about a conference that (gasp!) included local leaders in the discussion about rural electrification, access to capital, women in business, and access to technology for youth. “While the panel topics were nothing new for a ‘development’ conference, the panelists were not your usual invitees. They included primary school students, village brick makers, local farmers, and young “tinkerers” who had built their own home-made radio.” Full article here: Uganda: Villages in Action Bringing Poor People’s Voices to the Forefront

3. New digital camera made it safely to Malawi – Canaan Gondwe, Small Business Fund leader, wrote, ‎”Tanya, We are overwhelmed with the performance of this new camera. We are witnessing quality pics. Connecting them to computer and importing them is also easy.” We can look forward to many more photos of the exciting progress in Manyamula Village!

4. News from Balayiro Women’s Self-Help Group – I got a wonderful letter in the mail from this thriving group in Kenya. They received a small cash grant to buy local seeds for the group. “We prepared the seeds in the seedbed. Luckily enough there was moderate rainfall and warm weather. Now we are expecting a good harvest! Traditionally, in Luhya community, farmers do save the indigenous seeds from year to year in crop recycling method, covering them with ashes from the burned firewood.” They grew:

Jute Plant – A leafy green, rich in betacarotene, iron, calcium, and vitamin C, eaten with Ugali (maize meal).

Spider Plant – The leaves, stems, pods, and flowers can all be cooked and eaten. The leaves are bitter, but the bitterness can be bleached out with boiling water. A group of farmers are growing this plant in Minnesota for the Kenyan diaspora here!  

Black Nightshade – This nightshade is not poisonous, as we tend to imagine here in the West. The barriers and the leafy greens are eaten and are highly nutritious.

5. Quote on compassion – (from a women’s retreat I attended last weekend): “Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant wit the weak and wrong…because sometime in your life you will have been all of these.”

This basket from a small business in Uganda will be one of the auction items!

P.S. Save the Date – May 5^th Celebrate Spirit in Action’s “Sweet Sixteen” Anniversary! We booked the Islandia Clubhouse in Alameda, CA and I began pulling out some of the silent auction items that we brought back from Africa! More details to come soon.

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Our work is in the world. Our mission is to be a “worldwide network” and sometimes, holed-up in my Spirit in Action home office in Minnesota, I forget the truly global nature of SIA.

I choose to see the the wide national and international reach of SIA as a positive characteristic of our organization. We bring people together from across the United States, North America, and the world – each sharing their perspective, traditions, and experiences with our strong network.

**To really understand our reach, scroll to the end of the post for a map showing the location of each individual connected with SIA around the world.**

Spirit in Action is right where you are

I wrote about the rootedness of our community partners in Africa. They benefit from living and working with their neighbors. Does of our lack of a street-front office show a lack of rootedness? No! Having a “worldwide office” means that for each member of our organization Spirit in Action is right where you are!

Rooted in the whole world

This summer I saw that SIA is deeply rooted in each community where we support projects. With me in Minnesota, SIA is rooted in the non-profit community here. Many SIA Board members live in California, giving us strong roots there. Each root of our large tree network brings local flair, regional understanding, and commands a respect for differences. 

God calling us

“A dream has no dimension, no boundaries, no limitations,” wrote Del Anderson in his Spirit-led writing, God Calling…. He encourages us to dream large for a SIA network that ignores geographic limitations. Although Del didn’t personally use a computer, he reveled in the miracle of the Internet, or “worldwide web,” to break down boundaries and connect us across the globe.

Del goes on to write, “In Me [God], you have the wisdom, love, and power to be My instrument in bringing My Kingdom into manifestation here and now.”

May we also embrace this call to bring SIA into our lives here (wherever that may be) and now (whenever we receive that special inspiration). In doing this, we fulfill our responsibility to put Spirit and love into action in our world. Let me know if you have ideas for rooting SIA in your community!

Spirit in Action is International! Map
View full screen map

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Women with fuel-efficient stoves in Ghana.

“Even though you might not see face-to-face how lives are changing, I want to let you know that your support is transforming so many lives in our community,” began Alexander Kedje of Shape Lives Foundation, Ghana in a recent email to me.

When we think of charity in Africa, big name organizations are probably the first to come to mind. We hear about World Vision, UNICEF, and Heifer International but it’s the small, unknown, local organizations like Shape Lives Foundation that are perfectly situated to help people in their own communities.

These local organizations, as the blogger Jennifer Lentfer points out, are able to best understand the situation on the ground, and are already rooted and integrated into the community. Where the large international organizations have to work hard to meet people and promote projects, local leaders like Alexander are already known and respected by the people they serve.

I’ve been in contact with Alexander and Shape Lives Foundation for two years now and I am always so excited to see the progress they are making toward empowering the poor and raising the standard of living for the women in their area.

Part of Del Anderson’s mission for Spirit in Action was to encourage and promote local leaders and so, although we have not given a grant to Shape Lives Foundation, I share with you a few highlights from 2011 so that you too can appreciate their local work and service:

* Twenty-five women are now employed in their Moringa Processing Center, plucking the leaves and grinding them into a powder. This great video shows how they process the Moringa leaves into a highly nutritious dietary supplement.
* 1200 Moringa trees have been replanted to grow more leaves to process in 2012.
* Seven women received fuel-efficient stoves and training. Not only will the stoves produce less smoke, they also make it so the women do not have to gather or buy as much wood to cook meals.

Congratulations, Shape Lives Foundation! And we stand with you as your continue your important work in 2012.

Take action, for it is your duty, and we are with you; be strong, and do it. –Ezra 10:4

Related posts:

• Moringa in Prison
• Moringa = Miracle Plant
• CIFORD Kenya: Compassionate Community Action
• Local Realities, Local Adaptation (On How Matters blog)

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