By Cara Brooks | HFOS Board of Directors Member & Clerk
Warm greetings as the holiday season is upon us!
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!
Over the last few months, 57 women staying the patient villa at CEML have had the opportunity to attend Aftercare classes. The team reports about 26 women at a time are utilizing the program services. Many of these women have been healed of their fistulas after a single surgery, which is a huge blessing, though the team said it was even more heartwarming to report that so many women are in a better, brighter place before they even have their procedures. The welcoming community of other fistula survivors is having a huge impact on their outlook before they even know if they will be fully healed.
One beautiful story of hope is that of Antonietta, a 17 year-old girl who suffered from fistula after a four-day labor with her first pregnancy. Her obstructed labor was eventually relieved by a cesarean birth, but by then, the damage to her body was done. She was leaking urine and feces. Several family members wanted to take her to a traditional healer, but one of her uncles recalled a presentation done by the Fistula Prevention & Awareness Outreach team from CEML, and Antoinetta was taken to a nearby hospital instead. A few months later, when she came to CEML, she was extremely malnourished. Her family told the team that she had been unable to eat due to her overwhelmingly depressive thoughts. After three months on a fortified diet, and with treatment for malaria and parasites, Antoinetta regained her strength and was able to have a fistula repair surgery. She is now DRY! While awaiting her procedure, she took great comfort and found joy again through the Aftercare program and its craft offerings in particular, as you will see in the photo of her above.
We hope you are continuing to find inspiration in these reports every few 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.
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