Newsletters

With our regular newsletters, we aim to keep you posted on all the interesting and important news and updates of our programs and various activities. Enjoy reading! 

September 2007

            	
Dear friends, This month is the beginning of our new fiscal and program year. It is also the month of our annual report for what we have done in the past year. It has been a very good year. We have worked with 33,958 families with 271,664 dependents. 2025 volunteers came from all over the world and built 611 houses – unbelievable! We were able to install 997 wells – bringing hope to so very many people.
                
Our budgets were met through miraculous ways - savings increased phenomenally this year to $1,290,895.28 – from this our 33,364 families made 124,385 purchases changing their lives for the better. The value of these purchases was an astonishing $8,910,861.00 worth. Families that received wells increased their incomes to an average of $2.50 per day – a remarkable increase. As I sent this report out to our foundations a question came back: In your annual it says “total value of items purchased $8,910,861.00” and “total savings $1,290,895.28”. I don’t understand why the numbers are different. Don’t people use their savings to buy items? In other words how are people buying 8 million dollars worth of items if they have only saved 1.2 million? And I thought now is my chance to explain the miracles of our work. Yes, people bought much more than they saved because savings is much more than just saving money. Poverty is something that is at least 90% attitudinal – for our families in Cambodia it means that they given up hope – they are despaired when we start working with them. For the past thirty years they have lived a living hell – bombings and genocide – armed clashes – floods and droughts – every time they took a step forward something would happen and they would lose it all over again. So they quit – they quit on themselves and they quit on their families – they quit on life itself. The savings process brings back the hope – it is a moral support system that asks each person in our program to believe in themselves, to believe in their families, in their communities and in their country. It is huge step of faith that these people make – faith that we won’t steal their money or abandon them when troubles arise – faith that what they achieve will not be lost yet again, faith that they have the right to choose what their lives should be. And so they save a small amount each week and every week, we are there to say well done – and every ten weeks they get their money plus an extra ten percent – our recognition of the courage it took to do this. Every 11th week we celebrate what they have bought and changed with their purchase and the process is repeated. The people tell us again and again – you have helped us to think again, to dream. The dreams are much bigger each cycle – each member of the family begins to think – to dream - of what is possible – for children it is school and a bicycle and maybe new clothes - for parents its sources of income and making sure everyone can eat their fill – for all the family, it’s the dream of a permanent home which the rains and the winds can’t destroy. And the bigger the dream – the more money that is needed. So our families begin to work together to make these dreams happen - how can each member contribute – they begin to raise animals such as pigs and chickens, they work hard to get a well and with the well – they can grow vegetables and they are less sick. They start small shops selling little bits of many things, or they raise money through kids working for their neighbors – and they all save with Tabitha. Before, no one worked all that hard – now everyone, even the littlest one picks grass for the cows so that older siblings can pick grass for the neighbor’s cows and get paid. The dreams now have dates for the future – something not usually done – but its important that the income from pigs, and vegetables and savings all come at the same time, so that the big money is available to buy the more expensive items. Our hardest times in Tabitha are when we graduate our families – for we are the catalyst to these dreams – we are the ones asking each week, how is it going? We are the ones that celebrate as each step is taken and we are the ones to encourage bigger dreams. No matter if there are floods or the people believe there is no water in their area or if there is a national holiday – we are there to stand beside them and to celebrate as they move from step to step. We become family. What is so amazing in all of this is that it costs us $10 US dollars per year to help each of these families. What is a miracle is that we want to put in 1000 wells and the money is there. What is so encouraging for us is that so many of you come and see what you have done through the house building programs. We had visitors a couple of weeks ago who came to see what we do – and the lady came back after several days in the village and she said to me “I don’t understand the joy – I don’t understand these people – a woman living with AIDS took us around her house and showed me every little thing she had done over the past two years – her eyes were shining with joy – I would have been in despair – yet she, and so many of the families we met, were happy and proud of what they had done.” For us in Tabitha – the amount of money is miraculous – but the most important aspect is the joy. That is the savings program. We are about celebration about life itself. I thank each of you for allowing us this privilege – this gift of life – I thank my God that He gave me, my life. Janne