Enable 50 Women in Angola to Generate Income

Greetings to all! The team at Hope For Our Sisters Inc., in partnership with the Aftercare team at CEML Hospital in Lubango, Angola, is pleased to bring you our latest impact report for our project to "Enable 50 Women in Angola to Generate Income". As always, we are so thankful for the support of each of you in bringing this program to our sisters who have suffered from fistula and are living at the patient villas in CEML, either awaiting or recovering from surgery. This program equips them with literacy, numeracy, and language classes and teaches them marketable skills such as gardening, sewing, and crafting that they can take forward into their lives outside of the hospital to support themselves and others in their families and communities. These women are able, and amazing, and so deserving of these opportunities. We cannot thank you enough for helping them to realize dreams to learn new things and become more self-sufficient. The growth of this program has also enabled it to become entirely self-sustaining - the sales of products made cover the costs of new materials for the subsequent projects!

From January through March, 54 women attended these courses - some were staying at the hospital for a short time and have left, but others are enjoying Aftercare's offerings while between surgeries. The team was excited to tell us of three new developments:

• First, they are working on some kitchen products for development and sale. We hope to have an update on that with our next report.
• Second, the team has begun to sell in a very large area "mall", the Xyami Mall. This is a welcome challenge, in that it receives a high level of foot traffic and therefore will increase sales, but also requires an increase in product output.
• Third, in addition to sewing, the women are now knitting! A woman who came to meet a group of fistula patients with her church found a call on her heart to join the Aftercare teachers with her gifts in knitting, and this has been a welcome addition to the program. 

We also have two beautiful patient stories to share with you! Merita is an 18-year old sister who lives in the province of Huila. She spends her days subsistence farming, meaning she works essentially to feed her family but with little left over for sale or trade. When she went into labor with her first baby, things failed to progress normally. She was given a traditional tea to speed things along, but this did not work, and after three days of labor, she finally presented at the local clinic for help. Alarmed, they sent her by ambulance to the nearest hospital capable of providing a cesarean section, but it was too late. Her baby was stillborn and she was left leaking urine. When she returned to her local clinic, one of the nurses recognized her symptoms as abnormal and likely related to an obstetric fistula. The nurse had been educated through the Fistula Prevention & Awareness Sessions our partners at CEML Hospital in Lubango, Angola, take to remote areas for the purpose of connecting women in need to preventative and curative care. The nurse encouraged Merita to visit CEML, where she was healed and was also able to participate in Aftercare, learning exciting new things that have given her hope for her future. 

Willimina suffered from her fistula for 23 years. She had endured a labor that lasted four days, thankfully ending in a cesarean birth instead of maternal death, but with a fistula after spending so much time in obstructed labor. She has had twelve pregnancies over her life, but only has two living children. Her husband left her long ago, and her life has been marked with grief and hardship. When she heard about an opportunity for treatment of her condition at CEML, her family discouraged her - they were concerned about the costs of care at a private hospital and had probably at that point accepted her condition as a way of life. But Willimina did not accept this. She journeyed to CEML and was happy to learn that her care would be free of charge. Used to being alone, when she first arrived at the hospital, she mostly kept to herself. But the warmth and welcoming of the other women and the staff won her over. She established wonderful connections and had a successful surgery! When she was told she was dry, she was astonished and overcome, simply repeating "23 years" to herself, over and over. She also enjoyed Aftercare offerings during her stay. Willimina had never attended school and was astonished to learn that books were made in her native language of Nyaneka. She learned sewing skills, some basic reading, and how to write her name. Our team stated that she went home "a changed woman, full of joy!"

We hope you are continuing to enjoy receiving these reports every four months. Feedback and questions are always welcome via email, sent to Cara at cbrooks@hopeforoursisters.org. To learn more about Aftercare between reports, or our other programs, visit the link below to our website or follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook (Hope For Our Sisters, Inc.) or Instagram (@brookehfos). Thank you again for your generous support of this project and these precious women. 

Links:

• HFOS Homepage