Well, as we all know...there are so many big things that are indeed out of anyone's control. We've missed Christina and the many LiA members, but hope to be on a path the help let everyone participate and collaborate online at Ned again very soon. Thank you for sharing the report.

Thanks Mark. No one can ever know how much we at LiA miss Christina. I am seeing her soon (she and the boys arrive in Seattle on Friday!!!!) and I am so looking forward to talking with her face to face and getting some input. I say that both as the director of the organization and more importantly....her mom. Any time I can actually be on the same continent with her and my beautiful grandsons is a great time indeed.

Sending love hugs and prayers your way Evvy and the same to Christina and all the Lia members.

Let us know if we can do anything to help, don't be afraid to ask.

If there is any way I can help, let me know. The 501c3 thing should be something you pick a day and just do. You dont need to make it complicated - it took us probbaly 3 hours of work followed by 3 months of waiting for the IRS.

Re the beads, I have seen several more groups competing with the same beads at a lower price. Either you have to go a highr volume lower price model or you have to add designs that seperate you from the other. Id be happy to help with any of that.

Life In Africa indeed as the name states . We all are just recovering from all the that has been taking place here.Evvy has put it very clear in her report and thanks Evvy for getting this done . We really have been very quiet and looks like we are no more , but we are very much there and now that our minds are a bit clear , we shall be more on line. Total nightmare , but we are fine and pushing on, after all it's Life in Africa and we all have to live by it.

It's also very unfortunate that the kampala team who are still the only people we are working with, have no internet connection and this makes it very difficult for them to get on line frequently.

CJ, how we really miss you you, I know we are trying , but we shall never be anywhere close to what you were doing for us, but anyway that's life , I know you also needed some rest, I know you have always been with us and me in particular whenever I needed your help, and sure ofcourse you have never left us, just taking a rest.

Hello all,

Haven't been here in a really long time, but I did want to post and let anyone who might be in the Southern California area that I am hosting an Open House/Jewelry Party at my home on Sunday, August 3, from 3 to 9 pm. Christina and Evvy will both be here to meet and greet everyone, so if you are interested in attending or know anyone at all who might be interested, post here or PM me and I will give you all the details. The more the merrier, so pass it on!

Thanks, Shawn

Great! Wish I could be there. Here is a story from the SF Chronicle I hope you find inspirational.

Bead-making helps Ugandan women shed poverty

Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer

After work one Thursday, a group of women friends gathered for Chardonnay and goat cheese at a posh home in Los Altos.

A veritable pirate's booty of colorful beaded jewelry was piled on the dining room table, where the women spent most of the evening trying on bracelets and necklaces.

Welcome to the Tupperware party of the new millennium. In the Bay Area and across the nation, women are gathering in homes and churches to buy colorful beads made by women from an Ugandan village.

The women of Kampala make the beads out of magazine paper. BeadforLife, the Colorado nonprofit behind the movement, imports and sells the beads at bead parties and online, and the money goes back to Kampala to buy land and build homes, send children to school, and help the women start businesses and improve their health through malaria treatments and mosquito nets. And at the bead parties, guests are discussing how to use their buying power to lift an entire Ugandan village out of extreme poverty.

"The draw is the beads, but really, it's an opportunity to get a discussion going about extreme poverty and how if we work collectively, we can change people's lives," said Julie King of Redwood City, one of the first handful of BeadforLife "ambassadors" in the United States.

Many of the beadmakers have been widowed by AIDS and war. Before BeadforLife started, they lived in mud huts on less than a dollar a day - not enough to feed their families or afford school uniforms so their children could get an education.

Today, BeadforLife is raising $3.5 million annually, and sends the bulk of it directly to Kampala. Now, the women earn $5 and $6 dollars a day, on par with a Ugandan police officer's salary. They have bank accounts now, and the average balance for each woman is $436.

The first Kampala beads arrived in the United States in 2003, in the luggage of two Colorado women who bought the beads from an African woman making them outside her hut, and selling them to the rare passers-by for $1 a strand. Torkin Wakefield and Ginny Jordan gave the jewelry to friends and wore it themselves, and noticed an immediate reaction. The jewelry was such a hit, the women returned to Kampala to buy bagsful. They met with 100 women in Kampala, and talked about starting a supply chain.

"They met the women and said, 'I think we can do much better for you,' " said King.

There are 300 women making the beads now, and 100 more enrolled in a training program to learn how. Using long, triangular strips of magazine paper, the Ugandan women roll the beads, glue and shellac them, and string them into necklaces and bracelets that have made it into the fashion pages of such magazines as InStyle and O.

Beads to boarding school BeadforLife bought 18 acres of land in Kampala, and teamed up with Habitat for Humanity to help the women build 80 homes and pay for them with their earnings and sweat equity.

The women are no longer sharing latrines with 10 other families. Where before they would eschew free AIDS antiretroviral drugs because the medicine made them hungry and they couldn't afford food, now they don't have to make such choices. Many have vegetable gardens.

BeadforLife also pays for a hospital bed at the local hospital's charity ward so if anyone from Kampala has an emergency, there is a place reserved for them to get care.

The nonprofit is changing lives like that of Joan Ahimbisibwe, an HIV-positive beader, who bought a piglet with her jewelry earnings. With the money she made from selling the pig, she moved her three children from a hut to a storefront. During the day she sells sugar and vegetables. At night the family sleeps on a mattress behind the counter. Today, she has enough income to put her daughter through private boarding school.

Word-of-mouth success BeadforLife doesn't do any grant writing, and donations make up just 5 percent of its revenue. The overwhelming majority of its money comes from women buying beads, a strand at a time. It's a female word-of-mouth phenomenon. Founder Wakefield is now living in Uganda the majority of the year to oversee the program.

"We've tapped into this incredible desire to participate in helping people overcome poverty, and there's something so tangible about the beads," said Devin Hibbard, North America director for BeadforLife.

Colleges have started BeadforLife chapters, churches are getting involved, and a chiropractor in Los Altos is selling them in his office.

King brings her book of Kampala snapshots to bead parties. She shows guests what extreme poverty looks like - the mud huts, the charcoal fires burned inside for warmth, the dirt rivets of sewage running between homes.

It's not a tough sell.

"It's a neat thing to be able to dress and wear something with intention," said Cristina Spencer of Palo Alto, who attended the Los Altos party and plans to give several hundred of the necklaces to participants at an upcoming women's retreat she's planning.

"It's a win-win," said Alex Mayer, who hosted a bead party at her Palo Alto home. "For such a small outlay of our time and resources, you can really help women in Uganda. And you have something tangible to wear that allows you to spread the message."

To Get Involved

BeadforLife, (303) 554-5901; www.beadforlife.org

Jewelry and bead party kits can be ordered online.

Thanks, Mark!

Also, just saw this: On PBS

Wide Angle

Lord's Children

The stories of three Ugandan children who escaped from the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group that kidnaps boys and girls to use as soldiers and sex slaves. Included are clips of the victims as they receive counseling at a rehabilitation center.

Out site does not mean out of mind! indeed we feel we should do some thing however hard it looks. Thanks for every ones input and hope we shall get back to normals. what is needed is putting sources together, those who have strenght shall, and those with knowlege and technical know how shall too and many more. Hope Cj arrieved well.

Thanks to Evvy for all she is doing and hope with Mark,Christina, Evvy Shawn and others puting their heads together will be of great importance

Thanks

Hi All I just APpreciate you all I ahve just landed on this wish to be here always

I am sure August will be a month of great change with us , we are hoping to do our best to see that things start moving the positive way and your prayers for us will be highly appreciated.We are hoping that at least one of the programs planned will be started at LIA Kireka.

As August has started running very fast, we decided that we could begin very few simple things with the few resources that we are having. After our usual Tuesday meeting this week, we thought we needed to have something in place immediately, lest we shall be counted no more existing. We have two good proposals. As we wait for funds to start the soap and varnish projects, we have decided that we could try and put up a computer training center with the computers that we have at hand. Our main draw back would be the internet which many people may need at the training. We feel that if we open it up even to non members who are in the community ,it would be of great benefit to us all.When we are set to go, we shall need all your input on how best we can have it done.

In line with our above plan, last year around December we ordered for some computers from an organization called Computer Aid and we got positive response from them, but our challenge was that we needed some money for clearing and something else that I do not remember very well.Now that we may have to put them to use , I think we shall need ways of raising this money so that we can secure these computers. I had asked for 50 of them and each is about $35.0 in total.

I am looking at starting a separate discussion for this and hope with everyone's help we shall find a solution to all these.

Thanks Grace for putting this here and I think you should start a discussion so that we we may more people involved and how they can help. Good time.

It has been like we haven't fully recovered from what we have been through , and LIA is still very quiet as was for the past few months.

Well , to get things started, I am sure live is restarting for us. Everyone must be wondering what the whole plan is like. As for Gulu,I felt that they needed me in all they were trying to do. After being betrayed by their former "bosses", the ladies thought they could still go on on their own, and all along they have been struggling to register under a different name as a CBO, and last week they called to tell me that all was done and they now have their certificate of registration., brave ladies that they are! I am also struggling to get get them a website and soon a link to it will be here on Ned.

Soon we shall have to start a discussion in their new names and this is just to let all friends know what is taking place in Gulu.

Meanwhile in Kampala, a few things are brewing as you might have seen Evvy talking about at the beginning of this page, thanks Mark for chipping in to set the ball rolling again. Hope this will get the center busy again.Please check here Ned Part-Time Staff (Beaders First). to see what is going on

More news soon.