To bring hope to orphaned children by providing resources to meet their physical, emotional and spiritual needs to build for a better tomorrow.

Kamaila is a community comprised of four villages,about 7000 people, in the rural area 21 miles northof the capital, Lusaka. In 2004 Africa Hopepartnered with this community to support theorphans in their area and to construct neededfacilities while working towards self-sustainability.The community leaders named the project “Upeme”which means “hope.” Since that time, Africa Hopehas helped the community accomplish the following:

-Drill a new well
-Build latrines
-Expand the Garden &
-Build the orphanage

I never wanted to go to Africa.  I remember vividly, from twenty years ago, pictures of babies in Biafra, with swollen bellies, slowly dying of starvation.  It was all too overwhelming.  Easier not to even think about it; even as a nurse, what could I do about it anyway? Then, in 2002, my daughter went to Zambia to work on an AIDS prevention project as part of her medical school education.  In May of 2003, my husband, son and I went to visit her there, to see what she had been doing and to meet the people with whom she was working.                       
During our visit, we saw the prenatal clinics where our daughter had been working.  Mothers were getting good medical care there, and safe deliveries.  They were being offered medications for themselves, their husbands, and babies if they tested positive for HIV.  But I also saw nearby where they lived.  Thousands of people jammed together, living in huts, with a single water pump for the whole community, where the dust turns into a sea of mud in the rainy season.  And the little children, thin and dressed in rags, shocked to see a white face.How could I just leave and not do anything?  As we flew home, I pondered what I could do that would make a difference.  All my skills as a nurse here in America were irrelevant in Zambia.                
I decided that it was, as always, about the children.  After discussions with my daughter, after we returned, she put me in contact with a group of Zambians who live in a community about an hour north of Lusaka.  They had already made the decision to try and care for their community’s HIV orphans, had talked about their dreams of an orphanage, a school, and a medical clinic, but had no resources. 
In 1999, the American Embassy in Lusaka had given them a grant of $8000, with which they built a three-room school, naming their project the Upeme Community Education Centre,  and where they were now teaching about 200 children in two sessions a day, and where 35 orphans slept on the floor at night.  And this is where the dream stopped.  Every day was a scramble for food.  Where would they get the money for medicine when one of the children came down with malaria?  Then in February of 2004, I went to visit, bringing with me four other Americans.        
Convinced of their sincerity, as much as I could be from this distance, but with the realization that I could not do what needed to be done by myself, I shared this need with a team from Canyon View Vineyard Church Children’s Ministry and Well Spring of Life Church.  In February, 2004, we traveled to Zambia to meet with the people of the Kamaila community to see how we could help them help themselves, and there was born Africa Hope.