News

Update from Malawi

In June and July our Community Impact Team of 22 Americans and 21 Malawians spent four weeks building community in Malawi!

They visited the homes our children and surveyed the families to learn about their needs. They prepared gardens, built a sign, dug foundations, moved rocks, and taught lots of health and English lessons and shared their faith. They sang, danced African dances, beat goat hide drums, ate strange foods and learned words like chifwilimbwiti (very, very dusty).

As you read stories from our team members below, we hope you catch just a little glimpse of the amazing ways Circle of Hope International is growing with your help.

Brush, Brush Your Teeth

By Melissa Beckley, 2007 Community Impact Team Member

My involvement with Circle of Hope International is so exciting to me, because I know that the wonderful men, women, and children that I met in Malawi are now a part of my new family. I truly cannot wait to go back and see them again.

In preparing for the trip, I helped collect toothpaste and over 1,200 toothbrushes so that we could educate the children about dental health. The first day I began teaching about how many times you should brush your teeth, the parts of your teeth, and reasons why you should brush your teeth.

We finished with a fun song in English: (to the tune of Row Your Boat) Brush, Brush, Brush Your teeth Once or Twice a Day Brush Your Teeth to Keep them Clean Rinse, and Spit, Hooray!! It was so fun to hear the children sing this in English with their wonderful African accents.

The best part came the next day when we lined the children up, and handed them a new toothbrush and toothpaste. The children brushed their teeth right then. This was the first time many of them had ever done so. It was one of my favorite experiences because the joy of these children with their new toothbrushes was just so humbling. I could see God through the beautiful smiles of the Malawian people. I have never seen such warm smiles before, and brushing their teeth made them smile even more.

More Pictures from the 2007 Community Impact Team

Building Community

By Karen Roller, International Director, Team Leader

One of the best times for me was the day we started working on our new property, the Namanda Community Development Center. We started out at 6:00 walking all over the site planning where to put the gardens, the kitchen, the football field, the textile workshop, the pig barns, the fish pond and much more.

By 8:00 we were all ready for work. We started by marching around the whole property, beating our drum African style and singing a Malawian chorus. Then the 19 Americans and countless Malawians spread all over the Namanda Community Development Center property. Some people carried rocks to place around our sign. Others cleared the first garden area. Another team built composting bins while others cut grasses to fill the bins. Others began clearing stones to create the football field. Meanwhile, the foundation of the first house was being dug and bricks were being molded. The property was coming alive!

It was a great start to the incredible things that will continue to happen at the Namanda Community Development Center. The Center will become the home to community development through agricultural training, micro-enterprise projects and education. With your help we can impact more than 20,000 people living in the Namanda area.

Find out how you can get involved.

What's Next?

After such a busy couple of months, you might think that we are ready for a rest, but we are excited about the future and working on plans to continue growing the community of Circle of Hope International. We need your help to continue moving forward. You can get involved in one of the following ways:

We are now ready to move forward with building on the Namanda Community Development Center. If you would like to be part of building this exciting development center, please contact us.

We will need to raise approximately $20,000 to prepare the facilities and programs which will include agricultural training, micro-enterprise projects, literacy programs, a library and more.

We are now beginning to form teams for our 2008 Community Impact Trip. Contact us today if you are interesting in traveling to Malawi during the summer of 2008.

Please contact us for more information.