As the school year begins, we want to celebrate the ones who lead our sister schools in Zambia! Pictured are head teachers, school board members, and Kafwa leaders who help feed, nurture, and empower students each school day. 

Many of our teachers grew up near the communities they serve today and were orphans and vulnerable children themselves. Several have graciously written their stories, highlighting their journey to teaching, challenges they see the students facing, and what they love most about serving at the schools. As we share these over the next week, we hope you will read their stories and leave comments of encouragement.

To support their work and the education of vulnerable children at our schools, you can donate here.

Thank you for uplifting our teachers, community health workers, and students!

As we start to close on summertime and look to the upcoming back-to-school and fall seasons, we invite you to also look "Toward the Peaceful One" with Dr. Sherri Kirkpatrick!

This podcast episode was part of an ongoing series done by the Community of Christ Church and focuses on volunteer community health workers and lessons we can learn from their experiences. Sherri talks about HealthEd Connect's community health worker colleagues, their servant leadership, and the joys and challenges they face in their work. This is a special opportunity to hear firsthand accounts from one of our founders, and we hope you enjoy a deeper look into HealthEd Connect's history!

P.S. Unfortunately, since this episode was recorded, the COVID situation at our program sites has worsened and is directly impacting some of our health workers and putting a few programs on temporary hold.

Project Zion episode with Dr. Sherri Kirkpatrick:

http://www.projectzionpodcast.org/361-toward-the-peaceful-one-sherri-kirkpatrick/

Article written by Dr. Sherri Kirkpatrick:

https://www.cofchrist.org/mission-stories#/356/toward-the-peaceful-one-a-path-less-taken

Construction worker clearing trees.

Over the last two weeks, work at the Mulundu community center (in the Luapula province of Zambia) has taken off!

From digging trees out to make room for the foundation to clearing a path for trucks to bring in supplies, the construction workers on the job have made huge progress as this center starts to take shape in a big way! The coordinators of this project include the team lead for the Luapula Kafwa, Jane Chibwe, and volunteer, Leo Musans A’kapend. Both have put hours of preparation into seeing that Mulundu will have a beautiful new Kafwa community center.

With hard work on-site and your support, new progress is made each day. Thank you for making these life-changing projects possible!

Bricks, sand, and gravel have all arrived on site!

Baby Jane

Our Kafwa team lead for Luapula, Zambia, Jane Chibwe, recently shared some joyful news with us!

After caring for a local mother throughout her pregnancy, Jane and a fellow Kafwa helped deliver a sweet baby girl last week. While the parents were choosing a name for their daughter, they decided to honor the woman who had helped them so much during their experience. Now, there are not one but two Jane Chibwes in Luapula!

Our friend Jane is delighted to have a little girl named in her honor and is excited to look after this sweet baby as she does so many others in the community! Here is a quote from Jane sharing her joy:

“[I] am very happy that I have my namesake now in our kafwa HealthEd Connect program. I hope you will be happy too!”

Your support makes these special moments possible- may you share in this joy as well!

Faith Songwe, BSCN

We are so proud to announce that one of our PNA nursing scholarship recipients, Faith Songwe, has graduated and passed her licensure exams! She is officially Faith Songwe, BSCN.

When notifying us of her achievement, she had this to say:

“I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you and the team that I have completed my studies at the Lusaka apex Medical University and I have passed my exams am now a confirmed degree nurse. I don’t how I can say thank you to you, had it not being for you I would have not completed my study. I thank God for you people, thank you so much.”

Join us in celebrating Faith’s accomplishment! She is joining the ranks of compassionate, healing nurses around the world!

In Lubumbashi, D.R. Congo, coordinator Josephine and her team of Wasaidizi have been chipping away at local misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine. Concerns regarding efficacy and safety have spread quickly. Many families in the area believe that the vaccines being distributed in Africa are meant to kill them; a rumor that would make anyone think twice before voluntarily taking it.

Josephine and her team have visited 325 local families in the last month in order to combat these rumors. While assuring that the COVID-19 vaccine is safe, the Wasaidizi also encouraged the families to watch news stories about other African countries that are vaccinating.

Times like these are when it is most important to be grassroots-led. When local communities fear the worst, people they know and trust can work with them through misinformation and doubts. We are proud to partner with advocates like the Lumbumbashi Wasaidizi team!

Our community health worker colleagues make BIG impacts! From prenatal to palliative care, the Kafwa in Zambia work tirelessly to help their community members.

In Mapalo, a 37-year-old woman named Tanti is living with tuberculosis and HIV. Due to her conditions, she has to travel to the local hospital regularly- an expensive and exhausting routine to receive treatment. After being “adopted” by our Kafwa friends, she has received food to keep up her strength and financial assistance to continue traveling to the hospital. After realizing that the woman was not taking her medications correctly, Kafwa women set up counseling sessions for her. Since becoming a client of the Kafwa, Tanti’s health has vastly improved, along with her quality of life. 

Tanti’s story showcases the life-changing impact that advocacy can have! Because of the love and support shown by the Kafwa, Tanti’s life improved significantly. Thank you for making their empowering and healing work possible!

We hope you enjoyed our first post sent through Follow.It! To learn more about their service, go to: https://follow.it

As a nonprofit in the digital age, we are constantly evolving the tools we use to share our uplifting stories of empowerment! After our recent website update, we are going a step further to improve our blog distribution. If you receive our blog updates via email, nothing should change on your end - only the format may look a little different.

If you have no idea what an RSS Feed is, you can skip the rest of this post. We will look forward to sending out a blog post next week through our new blog service! However, if you have been using our existing RSS Feed to view our blogs, you will need to make a change. We are changing our RSS service from Feedburner to Follow.it, and the identifying links can be found below:

Feedburner RSS Feed Address: http://feeds.feedburner.com/healthedconnect

Follow.it RSS Feed Address: https://follow.it/blog-healthed-connect

If you prefer to use the native RSS Feed on our website rather than a syndication service, it can be found here: http://www.healthedconnect.org/blog?format=rss .

We anticipate making this change next week. Please reach out to regan@healthedconnect.org if you have any questions or issues. We look forward to sharing our stories through Follow.it from now on!