Let's Finish It

Hello Everyone! We hope you have all had a wonderful fall and are ready to take on another winter. Last year this time Mollie and I were living in Ndejje, Uganda working with Hope Primary School and the refugee community. This year we are excited to be making things happen back at home in Athens, GA. Thanks to all of you we were able to do some incredible things for Hope Primary School and the refugee community of Ndejje. The director, Jacques, of Hope Primary School wrote a report on the progress that was made and we wanted to share it with all of you.

"During their six month stay with us, Global Ties was able to come up with the following realizations thanks to a successful fundraising campaign:

1. Access to water was developed along with the construction of a water harvesting system next to the toilets to allow for good toilet habitats  at school.

2. A school canteen was constructed adjacent to the 4 classroom building to supply the children and the surrounding community with food supplies and other goods, which gives the school an additional stream of revenue.

3. The much needed remaining three classrooms were constructed finally making Hope School a complete school since it's creation in 2001.

4. The original 4 classrooms were nicely floored.

5. An order was placed at Kamba Cooperative to sew different types of bags, napkins, and bowties made of 'Kitenge' fabric from the D. R. Congo. 

The amount of money invested in the above projects is more that USD 10,000. Obviously it is an unimaginable amount of money for our school to realize and more so all the above mentioned to be realized in just six month."

These are amazing improvements, and as Jacques said, an unimaginable amount of money in just six months. Working with Hope School and the refugee community has been such a gift to us, and we are excited to carry our mission forward. This year we are launching our second annual Christmas Ornament Fundraiser and the proceeds will go to finishing what we started. We still need windows, doors, and cement to plaster the walls to finish the classrooms. I know we can do it! Let's finish it!

We are selling our ornaments again this year for just $5. These were hand made by the Kamba Shop Cooperative. We have a limited number so if you are interested you can comment on this post or you can email me directly at jimbograves@gmail.com.

One Way to Help

 http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1379306641249&ref=mf

 Jean Luc and William

Refugees from North Kivu, Congo

Since we have been working with Congolese refugees in Uganda, we have been learning more about the activity going on in their home country, the Congo. We were able to do a few personal interviews with the help of Jacques who speaks fluent English, Swahili and several other languages, which we will write about at a later time. We were able to learn from the interviews that most of our Congolese friends ran from their homes, their lives, and their families because militias in North Kivu Provence, eastern Congo, were raping women, killing men, and stealing everything there was to steal. 

It is amazing that we have had the chance to live side by side with people that have witnessed the atrocities that have occurred in their homes and in their neighborhoods. It is even more exciting to be able to respond to the need that these people face in their efforts to rebuild their stolen lives. Many factors play into the brutal conflict that plagues this isolated and forgotten part of the world. Attention from the international community is one, attention from leaders of the most powerful nations in the world is another, and a slightly smaller but economically responsible party is the entire electronic industry from supplier to consumer. There is a very cool video spoof of the "I am a Mac/I am a PC" commercial that has just been put on facebook and youtube. It is straight forward and helpful to those that don't already know about what's going on.  Check out the link at the top of the post. 

We can do something.

Greasing the Wheels for Global Ties

I have not fully described the on-going relationship that we are working to sustain with our friends in Uganda now that we are home. When we were there, we saw very clearly that the members of Kamba Cooperative were very skilled tailors. The CoOp's main members are all refugees coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and it is widely believed that the Congolese are in fact the most highly skilled tailors in eastern Africa.  That being said, after we finished our Christmas ornament fundraiser, we got to work designing a few items that we thought might be attractive to people living in other parts of the world. 

Here are a few examples from our first product line.

Bow Ties 

Beach Bags

Shoulder Satchels

Napkin Sets

Tote Bags

 Yoga Bags

All of these items are being sewn by our friends at the Kamba Shop, and we are committed to reinvesting the money generated from this partnership back into their community to develop more opportunity for more people. These products represent an opportunity for consumers all over the world to get involved in educating the poor and disadvantaged youth of the developing world.

Education is hope. Education is progress.

If anyone is interested in learning more about our product line, please email us at jimbograves@gmail.com

Hello Again

I just kind of stopped blogging. Sorry. It was way to easy to just stop. When you get home from an adventure like going to Uganda, it is easy to think that your writing is over, and it certainly could be, but I kind of want to keep writing. I'm curious where it might lead. Plus, I'm not finished.

Our time in Uganda is still shaping the decisions we are making for our future. We have been asked on a few occasions, "Now what?" Well...

I don't know! What do you do after a trip like the one we just shared? Where do you go from there? The big question that I keep asking myself, and have been asking since maybe forever, is the very practical and seemingly endless, "What do I want to do with my life?" Well for me this is like arm wrestling with the Hulk over and over again. Slam, Slam, Slam. This question is entirely too broad, too big. It's perfectly fine to ask. I need to ask because sometimes I need to hear myself think, but I have to remember that it is highly unlikely that I'm going to think my way to the answer.

So instead, why not ask, "What do I want to do today?" Does that change things? Yes. I read the other day in a cool little devotional handbook, "The most important thing to determine is what to do right now." The wise ones say live in the reality that you want to live in because that is where reality comes from...within. When I ask myself what I should do with my life, I'm guessing, creating a reality that doesn't exist. It's stressful.

I love when I work myself up. I do it so easily. "What should I do" runs through my head like mice in a cage and the fear wells up in my eyes. I can't be anywhere. I feel over caffeinated but blank...crazy. I'm obviously stressed. Anybody can see it. It doesn't last too long. Sometimes minutes, sometimes a day or two. And then I let go. Something shifts inside and I readjust my thinking, or maybe it's just that I stop all the thinking. What do I want to do today? I can get there.

So I went down the street to a place I had thought about going to for days and simply asked if they would like any help. They said of course so now I'm volunteering at Hope for Haiti. I'm calling it interning. I don't have to feel like I'm waiting for the next thing. Every step counts.

Luckily since I've been back, I've been able to snatch up a few gigs working for my old employer, You've Got It Coming, a catering outfit for Naples' well-to-do. The job paints an interesting reality for me. On one side you have multimillion dollar mansions, fancy cars, and face lifts and on the other side you have malaria. Just to run the point home, here are a few pictures juxtaposing what two very different worlds look like.

 

Back Patio.

Front Patio?

 

A house.

A house.

A kitchen.

 

A kitchen

A living room.

A living room.

The world is certainly a crazy place. Having the chance for a birds eye view into these very different scenarios has been an immensely humbling experience.