Laurel Borisenko manages the Africa Office for Canadian Lutheran World Relief. She is stationed in Lusaka, Zambia, and is the liaison between CLWR and local program partners in Zambia, Mozambique and Ethiopia. Below are her reflections on her first year serving CLWR in the new office.

It is a Sunday evening and I am at my kitchen table listening to BBC World as the rain crashes down outside. I live in the capital city, Lusaka, which has a population of 1.5 to 2 million people. The potholes in the road get deeper every day, the flamboyant trees are losing their scarlet blooms, and the power grid has gone down in the whole country three times this week. I am approaching my first year in Zambia, which is a good time to pause and describe where I live and what I am doing.

My work consists of providing support to existing partners in the three African countries where CLWR funds projects, assisting with proposals and reports, and identifying possible projects and funding to expand our work on this continent. I foster two-way communication between CLWR in Canada and development workers in the field. I am also here to assist with rapid response to emergency situations.

I see by visiting the projects we fund that our partners do excellent work. They take an “integrated rural development” approach, which involves providing training and support to committees that bring people together from different villages in an area. These committees initiate small projects to improve water, health, the environment, agriculture and gender equality.

To avoid dependency on outside support, the communities maintain ownership for the process and the outcome of every project. I love visiting the villages in Zambia and Mozambique to see the projects firsthand. As we arrive the women always greet us with singing and dancing, and I dance with them. There will be reports from the different committees, then they will take us to see their work: gardens and fish ponds, solar panels for schools, beehives and more.

We sometimes share a meal of the staple Zambian food, nchima (a kind of solid porridge made from ground corn) and a sauce made from leaves. I am impressed with the courage, initiative, hope and laughter that we see in people who are poor materially, but rich in other ways. I know it sounds cliché, but it’s true.

There are many ways you can support the work I do on behalf of CLWR here. For example, nearly 16,000kg of humanitarian aid, including quilts, hygiene items, school packs, bars of soap and hospital supplies, were recently shipped to Tanzania from Canada by CLWR to ease the hardship experienced by hundreds of thousands of refugees.

CLWR collects quilts, blankets and other necessities from donors across Canada on an ongoing basis. This inventory enables them to expediently respond to emergency requests for supplies.

Individuals and groups wishing to contribute to the cost of transportation between Winnipeg and distribution points in Tanzania can do so via the CLWR website www.clwr.org/donate or by calling 1.800.661.2597.