Village Voices works to foster resilience within communities by empowering individuals and families so every person can live healthy, productive lives with dignity and hope. We concentrate our efforts on one village at a time by investing in resources that support multi-faceted programs (versus projects that only address a single driver of poverty such as water or education). We believe an all-inclusive focus within a single community is the key to sustainable development. By supporting an environment that promotes healthier living and skills training to generate income, villagers are better equipped to live, work and succeed within their villages; and educated young people are more likely to return to their rural homesteads to contribute their knowledge for the greater good. VVI provides leadership training and support for local leaders to assist them in making strategic choices that can positively impact generations of villagers without on-going support from VVI.

In 2011, I began a relationship with East Africa that would change my life forever. My first trip there was primarily to photograph the wildlife –  but it soon became clear that it was the people I was drawn to –  particularly the women and girls living in very remote villages in the bush, without any of the things I used to consider necessary for survival in my life like hot showers, and toilets and the internet.   Over the next few years, I had the privilege of returning numerous times to meet with young women from pastoralist tribes being sponsored to attend secondary schools.  I came to learn important lessons from these young people about what scarcity of basic needs really looks like, and what it truly means to be rich.

Women in East Africa experience lives unimaginable to most of us – think of Rosemary whose mother endured violence at the hands of an uncle and eventually succumbed to her injuries, simply because she insisted her daughter go to school.  Rosemary, at the age of 14, is determined that her mom’s sacrifice will matter.  She works hard to get good grades and despite her grief and frequent bouts of typhoid and malaria, she lives her life with hope. I remember one afternoon sitting with her on the steps of her school.  She was experiencing vision problems caused by a parasitic infection from drinking contaminated river water.  This affected her ability to read and study, and she was scared her grades would suffer.  But someone gave her a pair of second-hand glasses, and she was thrilled.  Of course, my western mind immediately focused on the splintered, pea-sized hole in the center of one lens. I asked her how she could see with a hole in her glasses… She looked at me like I had two heads.  “I can see perfectly fine all around it,” she told me.  Can you imagine feeling this way?  Despite her situation, she sees her glass as half-full.  Her wise lesson in gratitude still impacts my way of looking at the world.

For most girls like Rosemary from marginalized cultures, even if they manage to finish school, there are no opportunities or support systems available to them when they return home to their villages.  They are thrust back into the cycle of extreme poverty. early marriage. having babies. and fetching water for hours a day to contribute to the survival of their families and their community.  I assumed it must be hard for them to maintain their hopes and dreams under these circumstances.  Then I met Patience.

 Patience wants to be a veterinarian.  She read about vets in secondary school and decided she could help her home village keep their livestock healthy if she had this knowledge. But there’s no money to attend university; and no loan or scholarship available for a woman from a marginalized, minority culture despite her exceptional record in school.  Her only alternative –  remain in her very remote community where she helps her mother with chores and fetching and performs manual day-labor in the fields, in exchange for vegetables for her family’s table.  Nevertheless, she has devised ways to stay focused on her goals –  shaving her legs with a sharp rock which makes her less desirable to the men in her village; and even allowing the falsehood that she has HIV to spread so to delay marriage proposals.  Patience is a lesson in resourcefulness and determination which I admire.

She walked three days to see us when she heard we were coming to visit her old school – not to ask for a hand-out but to discuss options.   We talked about having dreams and sometimes needing to break our goals into smaller segments to achieve the larger one –  about building her capacity to become self-sufficient; to have the ability to make her own life choices; to be a mentor to others in her village. We talked about what it would take for her to be empowered and have a voice.

It was at that moment that the idea of Village Voices was born –  an approach built on incremental changes that build capacity within the remote village so women and men can be supported to be all they can be – to not only survive but thrive.   It was around this time that I met my friend, Caroline Lentupuru, an Ilchamus woman in the village of Kailer.  It was a meeting of like minds and souls.   We talked of our dreams –  empowered women, no longer bound by their gender-role to meet the need for finding water; women now able to go to school or start a small business or learn a skill to assist in strengthening their villages; and young girls like Rosemary being celebrated for their contribution to the greater good –  not orphaned out of fear of change.

Patience left that place filled with ideas and renewed hope for her future. I came home in awe of people who have so little in the way of material things –  things we think we must have to be happy – but who are so rich in joy, gratitude, courage and determination.  Village Voices is passionate about helping people transform their lives by building on the dreams, hopes and wisdom inherent in these amazing people.   We hope you will join us in this effort.  It might change your life forever, as it has mine.

Jackie

Co-Founder, Village Voices International