Since February is the month of love and love drives what we do, we wanted to focus on some of the hightlights from 2011. In 2011, we saw many successes among our families in Mozambique and we are excited to share them with you. Below are just a few of the past year’s highlights:

- Our families almost doubled the rewards they received, which stems from their increased commitment to the teachings of the Family Preservation Program. The top rewards were cement bags with an increase from 3,604 bags in 2010 to 5,769 bags in 2011. Cement bags are given as rewards to build latrines or improve homes.

There are countless stories of families that are witnesses of this change. Please visit our website to read about some of these stories. Here is an excerpt of one of these success stories:

“With the arrival of Care for Life, life in Chiverano started to take a turn. We no longer have cholera, because Care for Life taught us how to put a stop to preventable diseases by teaching us the proper use of sanitation and how to take care of our ill members.” Mr. Estacha

Mr. and Mrs. Estacha in front of their home in Chiverano

Share with us our dream and be anxiously engaged in the well-being of the poor – in the world and especially in Mozambique.

Sozinho with his Zone leader António in front of his old house

Living in Mafarinha I, Antonio Jose, used to see many people dying every day. I felt like there was nothing I could do to prevent it. But when I became a leader for Care for Life, I was trained to help the families in the village set goals to improve their lives and prevent death. If we achieved the goals we set, Care for Life would reward us. With these rewards we would be able to set our next goals.

In order to help all of the 34 families in my zone reach their goals, I visit them every week and follow up on their progress. In November 2010, each family in my zone received rewards for achieving their goals. Because they reached their goals, every family has a better life now. One family in particular was Mr. Sozinho Lenço and his mother. They lived in a house that desperately needed to be fixed; they didn’t have a latrine/washroom or a way to dispose of garbage. So I spoke with him about why it is good to have a latrine or why it is important to dispose of garbage. Based on his needs, I helped Sozinho make the following goals: to build a latrine, to bury the garbage, to clean his yard, to use certeza to treat his drinking water, and to take his mother to the health center. Over the course of a few months, Sozinho fixed his house by adding a new roof, built a latrine and dug a garbage disposal. Since the building of the latrine, no one in his family uses the bushes any longer. After doing all of that, Sozinho has started building a new house using bamboo, rocks, and other cheap materials available locally.

Before Care for Life, I felt like there was nothing to look forward to in my village, but now we have
opportunities to improve our lives.

António, when asked what his objectives as a leader are, said: “We see many people dying here every day. Now I learned that we can stop that.”

Sozinho in front of his old house, where he lived with his mother for 20 years.

Mr. Sozinho in front of the new house that he is building

Mr. Estacha and his wife Helena in front of their house

Mr. Estacha is one of the Care for Life Zone leaders in Chiverano, where he is well respected by his neighbors and is known as the “Father and Mother” by the families in his Zone. This nickname was given to him because, according to the Zone families, Mr. Estacha has the authority of a father and the love of a mother.

Mr. Estacha grew up in Chiverano and has witnessed many changes in his village over the years. In his own words he recalls the transformation Chiverano has gone through over the past three decades.

“Life here in Chiverano used to be difficult when the Portuguese (Mozambique used to be a Portuguese colony) were here, but when the civil war started (in 1975), it got even worse. We were always on guard and made sure we would not get killed. But once the war was over, it wasn’t much better, because rampant diseases such as cholera and malaria would kill many of us. Those were the most difficult years.”

“But then, a few years ago, with the arrival of Care for Life, life in Chiverano started to take a turn. We no longer have cholera, because Care for Life taught us how to put a stop to preventable diseases by teaching us the proper use of sanitation and how to take care of our ill members. For example, before Care for Life, this community was filthy, because we did not know the proper use of sanitation and so there were feces everywhere. But now, the village is clean and we have our own latrines and know how beneficial they are to our health.”

Mr. Estacha and Rachid

Rachid, the Care for Life Community Participation Coordinator, credits Mr. Estacha as being an example of positive change in the village and as a leader who takes initiative and makes things happen. Further, Care for Life Field Officer Pombo notes that Mr. Estacha “follows up on the conditions of each family with zeal and intervenes when necessary.” Intervening and knowing how to resolve a crisis makes Mr. Estacha one of the best leaders in Chiverano. Below are some stories that illustrate Mr. Estacha’s great leadership and care for his community:

Lucinda Ferro lives in Chiverano. Like so many widows, she lives alone and does not have anyone to take care of her. Last year, during heavy rain fall, her old house started to collapse, Mr. Estacha collected some money from the other families in the Zone and bought stakes and grass. With the help of other Zone families, he built a new house for Lucinda.

Lucinda’s old house

Mr. Estacha building Lucinda’s new home

Antonio Zava, one of the members in Mr. Estacha’s Zone, was known to be a womanizer in the village Mr. Estacha and another member of the community Lucinda and Mr. Estacha in front of her new house and spent his money on other women, rather than working on Lucinda’s new home on his wife, Dona Gina. When Dona Gina, confronted him and asked him to change, he refused. Because Antonio refused to be involved, Dona Gina would work on all the Care for Life family goals on her own. Although she was hard-working, she could not continue to carry the burdens on her own, especially with five children in their home. So she made a very difficult decision and decided to leave her husband.

The new latrine of Miquelina Antonio built by Mr. Estacha and her five children and return to her parents’ home. Mr. Estacha employed the conflict resolution techniques he learned from Care for Life and encouraged Antonio to change his ways and to ask his wife for forgiveness and return home. Antonio followed Mr. Estacha’s advice and asked for Gina’s forgiveness. She returned and they are still together.

Thank you for helping Mozambican families in this time of need.

Your Care for Life family

In 2011 seven (7) more villages completed the Family Preservation Program and have reached their goal of becoming self-reliant. That makes a total of 11 villages completing the 30-month program, equating to over 12,000 individuals whose lives change for the better forever!

In many families it is a tradition to go around the table and express thanks for the many blessings we have, and will continue to receive, and our thoughts are turned to the more meaningful aspects of our lives.

One of the many blessings so many of us enjoy is to have plenty, even during difficult times. With the current global financial down turn, we may have to make adjustments to our lives – tighten our budget, consider our expenses – but overall we are still abundantly blessed.

Many of our fellow citizens of the world cannot say the same. They lack the basic necessities in life – clean water, an opportunity to read and write, three meals a day, education, sanitation and health facilities. The very basics indeed.

How can YOU make a difference? See some very basics ideas of how to help below. Remember these families on the other side of the planet, whose lives will be changed because you give THANKS this Thanksgiving!

A Mozambican child smiles during a village celebration to thank Care for Life for helping the community.

A Mozambican child smiles during a village celebration to thank Care for Life for helping the community.

The funeral doesn’t take long. Friends gather around as the men of the family take turns digging the grave. They sing as the casket is lowered into the ground along with the child’s few belongings — a bundle of frayed clothing, a few handmade toys. The melody is heavy with the tears they don’t shed.

When they’ve patted down the dirt and erected the homemade monument, two friends lift the mother, wailing now, from the ground. She claws at them, kicking as they drag her from the grave site. The father stays by his baby girl a minute more before turning to nearby grave and listlessly tracing his finger over another hand-made cross, remembering. Another daughter. Buried just a few months after birth. His friends offer to walk with him, but he waves them away. He makes his way back to his village alone with his thoughts. The sky is as gray as his mood.

Far from home

There was a time when Cindy Packard lived her picturesque life in Gilbert, Ariz., the wife of a well-to-do physical therapist, blissfully unaware of such pain. Statistics about disease and dying babies in Mozambique had little bearing on her daily dealings as a part-time midwife raising six children in a powder blue, clapboard house straight out of the iconic television series “The Waltons.”

But today, Africa’s troubles are very real.

Wearing a T-shirt and capris, feet slathered with DEET to discourage flesh-eating bugs from burrowing their way through her TOMS, the 60-year-old is 10,000 miles from home in a mud hut village outside of Beira, Mozambique. She has a naked baby in one arm, tugging a harness up over his legs with the other. Once secure, she hefts the infant up onto her hip and clips him into a hanging scale. He fusses when she lets him down, kicking his legs at the empty air. Packard coos. A nurse in a white coat scribbles down the baby’s weight.

Through Care for Life we can change these images of desperation and bring about real and permanent change through Care for Life’s whole person approach to ending poverty!

One local family works with Care for Life to help make a difference in Mozambique.