To take risks with our comfort, so others may have comfort...
"Poverty is not natural. It is man made. Therefore we can affect it" Nelson Mandela
"Do something wonderful. Others may imitate it." Albert Schweitzer
The Pebble Hill Church Africa Fund was established in 2004 as a non profit charitable sponsor to our adopted Herero family living in the Southern African desert country of Namibia, the youngest country and democracy in the world. We are committed to three primary goals: sponsorship of basic needs and education for 3 school age children, career and job training assistance to 4 young adults, two of whom are parents of preschool age children, and assistance with fundamental health and medical care for these folks, and close family members.
We are aligned with the UN Millennium Goals for 2015, to end extreme poverty and hunger, provide basic education as a right for every child, substantially reduce preventable disease, and support worldwide effort for truely sustainable development. We are living Martin Luther's dream of The Beloved Community, worldwide.
Donations to the PHCAF are tax deductable and processed through the Pebble Hill Church general fund into the PHCAF account for distribution by decision of our active board of 4 church members. All of our work is 100% volunteer, and our overhead costs are strictly limited to costs of communication, shipping, and costs of international tranactions. In time we hope to fund transportation for on the ground assistance. This is truely an effort to show what one church can accomplish by embracing one family in a developing country where average income is less than US $3/day, emerging from 100 years of colonial domination and rule by Apartheid South Africa.
We have funded school tuitions (there are no "free" schools in Namibia), provided uniforms, shoes, clothing, food, clean water, school trips, books and supplies, medical care and now, a computer in the home. We have medically assisted a young sister living with HIV, provided urgent care for a younger sister who we lost to HIV in 2007, provided medications to an elder grandmother living proudly in a remote village, and assisted with recovery from child illnesses. We have sponsored a young man apprenticing for a year in a bicycle repair Non Profit, and have helped a startup of a taxi business. We plan to assist with software and computer use training, and sponsorship of vocational education in a country where 50% of all young people cannot afford to complete the equivalent of a high school degree.
We are unafraid and untiring in our effort to understand and help in any way possible with the extraordinary challenge our family faces living in the epicenter of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. From our experience with our friends we will progress to be of assistance to the community of people affected by HIV in Namibia. We have saved the life of a sister by partnering with AIDS Care Trust Namibia simply by virtue of our access to broadband internet, allowing us to appeal by searching and emailing from here for urgent help interfacing with the overwhelmed Katatura Public Hospital in Windhoek, Namibia. We are seeking partnering with HIV/AIDS support organizations here to connect resources from the USA to Namibia for information, empowerment, advocacy, immune system strengthening, and treatment options.
We are taking the interpersonal story of the struggle for health, education, decent compensation and opportunity for work, and the reality of HIV/AIDS in Africa on the road through educational presentations to all interested organizations. We will help lift the veil of ignorance over how our action and inaction here impacts the lives of our brothers and sisters in Namibia and Africa.
We use text messaging, fax, email, and VOIP phone contact to maintain and develop a long term committed relationship of love, compassion, mutual encouragement and understanding with our family in Namibia. And we use these tools to help them connect with the resources we now take for granted, but were formerly out of reach to them.
We are an example of what we call The Handshake Project, whereby we use our new connectivity to reach across all former barriers to communication of geography, climate, history, language and especially concepts of race. We are an creating "foriegn policy" out of committed deep friendship and trust with friends across our shared Atlantic Ocean.
We believe all teaching and learning is by example. We bring no requirement to join any faith or covenant. We value friendship, inspiration, spiritual abundance, creative problem solving, mutual education and shared aspirations, humor and decency, and the respect of culture and individual experience as our path to freedom, sustainability, shared opportunity, health, and peace.
