In Africa, lives are improved without handouts
US-based charity Care For Life helps Mozambicans by supporting the goals of community leaders.
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(There is a longstanding debate about food aid – World Food Programme officials believe that alleviating hunger is necessary to reduce poverty.)
How one village was transformed
The first village Care For Life approached with its Family Preservation Program was Mbatwe, a low-lying village of about 240 families in the flight path of the Beira airport.
Today, a walk through Mbatwe shows a transformed place. Unlike most of the impoverished communities nearby, there is hardly any trash or overgrowth around Mbatwe's small huts. Many of the roofs have been changed from thatch to aluminum. Almost every home has a tarimba – a sort of counter where families can store their cooking pots off the ground – and many have separate kitchen buildings. When Care For Life first started working in the village in 2005, there were only 15 latrines for the entire population. Today there are 119.
"You have to accept that people can change," says Celestino Fombe, a Care For Life field worker. "When we first visited Mbatwe, people were going to the bathroom on the road. It smelled very bad. Now it is paradise – once they accepted that change was possible."
Some Mbatwe residents, such as François Moliowa, have even built flower trellises around their properties – something almost unseen in most struggling communities here.
Mr. Moliowa, a tailor, moved to Mbatwe five years ago, and now lives in a small plastered house with his wife, son, and nephew, an orphan they took into their home last year. Moliowa ducks into the house to grab a piece of paper on which he had written his goals for the past year: Build a kitchen hut; treat drinking water; improve roof; help a neighbor. He shows the check mark after each goal.
"It was a change after Care For Life came here," he says. "Before, there was garbage everywhere, there was no unity. Most of the houses had no doors. We never drank treated water."
Today, he says, the village is much healthier. And at this point, he adds, it doesn't matter whether the Care For Life field workers come or go.
"This is how we want to live," he says, "It is habit now."
Some other small nonprofits – such as the India-based Rising Star Outreach – have contacted Bueno with questions about how to use Care For Life's methods. And even the government has recognized the changes.
Maria Semedo, the Sofala director of the National Council for Combating HIV-AIDS spoke in Mbatwe in June and praised Care For Life.
"I would like to ask an applause for CFL," she said, according to a statement she released after the event. "I would like also to ask an applause for the community of Mbatwe that accepted the challenges. The community of Mbatwe accepted CFL proposals, and the government has no other thing to do than to keep encouraging you, as you do everything that is needed to support Mbatwe and other communities so they can find a better way to live."
