LIA "summary"

I am privileged-beyond-words to serve on the USA board of directors of a really innovative, unusual, and inspiring African organization, Life in Abundance International, www.liaint.org . LIA serves the poorest of the poor in Eastern Africa, now operating in seven countries. The organization is founded and led by a Kenyan doctor, Dr. Florence Muindi. LIA is distinctly founded by Africans, envisioned by Africans, led by Africans and staffed by Africans – all graciously serving under the ultimate and literal day-to-day leadership of one Palestinian Carpenter and Rabbi who lived about 2000 years ago! The top LIA leaders in each country are, generally speaking, physicians who are native-to and residing-in that country. The USA organization is organized for the purpose of raising funds to support LIA work.

What is unique about LIA is that it does very little direct work with individuals. It doesn’t do its work by establishing or operating a new aid station, medical center, or mission complex. Instead, it works directly with and through small churches that already exist in the slums and the poorest African communities to “empower” and train those churches to, in turn, “empower” and train the “poorest of the poor” individuals in those communities to pull themselves up “by their own bootstraps” and become healthy, self-reliant, productive, self-supporting and contributing members of the community; and bring “wholistic transformation” (intentionally misspelled to emphasized the ideas of “whole person and whole community -- physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wholeness) to the individual and the community. The motto of the organization is “Serving to Empower.”

To make a very long explanation as short as possible (and, of course, to completely oversimplify), LIA helps existing churches work with their immediately surrounding communities to identify and attack the most pressing and apparent need or needs in that community. These churches, which are themselves comprised of the poor, most often saw themselves – prior to involvement with LIA – as incapable and “too poor” to do anything about their community situation, and they subsist in a mode of awaiting someone else from the outside to come in and fix the problems of their communities. Often, the root problem for lot of African suffering is HIV/AIDS infection and a deeply-rooted stigma that goes with it. When the father learns of having HIV/AIDS, he often splits in shame, leaving the mother as the only means of support for herself and the children. She, in turn, continues to decline into poorer and poorer health and well-being, ultimately becoming completely unable to offer support to herself or her family. The result: orphaned and vulnerable children (referred to in relief-agency circles as “OVC”), often street kids.

In a typical LIA project, LIA will place a professional project manager alongside a local church for 3 years to facilitate, train and empower the local church (referred to in the world of relief agencies as an existing “community-based organization”) to do, for example, the following: 1) Administer AIDS drugs and teach mothers where and how to get medical treatment (that is available – the US provides the AIDS drugs to Africa, thanks to a Bush Administration initiative). 2) Within is fairly short time, the mother is up and physically able to function; and then the effort turns to teaching micro-enterprise to her and making a micro-loan to get her going with a self-reliant business (with some assistance for food as she gets the micro-enterprise off the ground. A micro enterprise may be a simple as a loan to obtain a large bag of grain that can be broken down into individual retail-size containers and re-sold on a retail door-to-door route; or a loan that buys a oven/griddle upon which a mother can begin to prepare the local bread (injera) for sale to her neighbors. 3) There is an element of the project that is like a micro-credit union where the beneficiaries contribute part of their earnings to create a self-sustaining cycle of micro-lending funds.

As I said, this is a gross oversimplification, but you can get the basic ideas: Africans solving African problems (and not depending upon the westerners to come in and “fix” or “westernize” Africa); Africans serving and empowering other Africans, self-reliance, sustainability, and true community “wholistic” transformation.

Our trip will be to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Our team will be working with the street children project in the Mercado district. Most of these kids are teens who have been living on the streets for more than 8 years with NO means of support; no family, no school, no shelter nor place to lay down except a sidewalk. Because they have been on the streets for so long they are referred to as “hard core.” As a result, these “hard core” street kids have been written off by the govt as being beyond help or hope. Similarly, there is literally no other international aid or relief agency who is working on behalf of the “hard core” street kids. LIA is literally trying to establish a small-scale, pilot model of “wholistic transformation” in these kids that can be held up to other “deep pockets” relief agencies to say “these kids can indeed be helped and transformed; they are not beyond hope.”

You can find out more about LIA, if you are interested, at www.Liaint.org If you are REALLY interested, there are three informational banquets being held over the next couple of weeks (Phoenix, Chicago, Louisville) where Dr. Muindi will be speaking and a documentary is being premiered that tells the story of the Mercado Street kids project and other work of LIA. She is one of the new generation of African leaders and one of the most inspirational speakers you will ever hear. Details are available at the website or I’d be more than happy to connect you with the right folks to get you to one of those banquets.

If you are interested in the specific details of our team and our trip, one of our team members has set up a blog: www.moved.africaedition.blogspot.com


Thanks for your interest. If you’ve read this far, you must either be very interested or you are very, very polite! I look forward to sharing some stories of our experiences when we return.

Best,
Doug Hansen