Renee Gilbert’s pictures reveal an arid, hard-packed village beneath a burning African sun. Casting harsh shadows, but smiling, are children dressed in new, pink school uniforms and standing before a building with the words Calvary Feeding Centre. Beneath that name is the message, “For The Orphans And The Aged, Love In Action.” The children hold a large white banner displaying at its center the Sandy Hook Family Memorial fund’s Never Forget emblem — a colorful rendering of the flagpole and several buildings on Main Street — that has become a familiar sight in Newtown since 12/14. The banner is a tribute of thanks to the Calvary Feeding Centre, established in past years through Southbury’s Calvary Chapel. Villagers’ grateful hands, many of them children’s, left creative drawings on the banner, which returned to Newtown from Malawi after a trip in August through the continued Southbury-based outreach effort.

Calvary Chapel Southbury runs a nongovernmental organization known as Love in Action in the African countries of Malawi and Mozambique. The nonprofit charity has been caring for orphans and the aged for ten years. On a mission trip in August, charity members brought an additional gift of funds for school uniforms to the orphans, donated by the Sandy Hook Family Memorial.

Last month, residents Christine and Kevin Yacko, who established the Sandy Hook Family Memorial, a nonprofit organization, met with Calvary Chapel Pastor John Eastwood and Ms Gilbert, a church member who has become a friend to the Yackos since 12/14. Mr Eastwood and Ms Gilbert are both part of the outreach team in Malawi and Mozambique. The Yackos first met Ms Gilbert when she arrived at that they set up across the street from the Blue Colony Diner following 12/14.a tent-turned-roadside memorial

“She walked in offering coffee,” Ms Yacko remembers.

Within the last decade the chapel has established the center in Africa, which started as a means of helping orphans left to villages robbed of many adults by HIV or AIDS. The effort has grown to an established feeding center providing two meals a day, every day, to roughly 260 people. The outreach also includes clothing, sewing machines, bicycles, and other items to improve villagers’ lives.

Mr Yacko was encouraged to know that all of the $1,000 he raised went to the cause. Ms Gilbert spoke with Mr Yacko last month, and added, “We carried the money over.”

Mr Eastwood paid seamstresses every day as they completed the school uniforms.

Spread out on the lawn where the Yackos and Mr Eastwood and Ms Gilbert met last month was the banner signed and decorated by children’s hands. Although Ms Gilbert had originally asked Mr Yacko for “a little sheet with the [Never Forget] sticker for the kids to sign,” he said, he made something “way too big,” that ended up being an 8-foot by 12-foot vinyl banner.

The village children covered it with their colorful art and messages: one image in brown marker shows a village woman carrying a bucket of water away from a well drilled in the village. Another red marker stick figure rides a bicycle — also part of the gifts for villagers — and a canoe.

A more intricate marker drawing shows a woman in a pale blue dress beside the spigot of a new well. She reaches out to turn the handle and beneath, water drips into a pale. The banner is covered by children’s hands traced and signed, flowers, names, and images of trees, growth, and possibility with the arrival of fresh, accessible water.

Mr Eastwood’s chapel does this outreach on its own. When he first went to Africa, Mr Eastwood said, “We were in the rural areas.” The first wave of AIDS deaths had hit the villages, he said. Villages lost a third of their residents, many between ages of 16 and 40. Children left behind suffered severe malnourishment, he said. “I decided to do something,” rather than wait for assistance. Mr Eastwood said, “They weren’t going to live.”

What had started nearly a decade ago as a smaller effort now feeds 260 villagers twice daily. Death rates had left many children as heads of their households caring for younger children, or grandparents trying to care for the children. Mr Eastwood observed, “In an agrarian society, when you don’t have a person who can use a hoe, you don’t eat.” They needed to bring help to the village, in a place where “children were responsible for children,” and so many were orphans. They could not feed all the children without help, so they came up with the feeding center.

In a recent e-mail, Mr Eastwood spoke of his trips to the villages. “It is a hard road to walk at times because we will have women ask if we can help their children or people ask if we can help get them clean water and sometimes ‘no’ is the only answer we can give. But that answer costs a lot. A whole lot, but that is what happens when you help in areas where need is overwhelming.”

He described his trips as something that has to be seen in person. “Words can never do it. You need to hold the children with the bloated belly, smell the smells around the place where people fetch water, and see what hunger does to one’s eyes. But then you also get to see joy unspeakable, songs that are from the deep in a person, and unconditional love.” From his experiences, he said, “We learn. We cry. We sing. Jesus is more beautiful than you can imagine.”

Clean Water

The Calvary efforts also brought villagers tools and machines to dig wells.

“A well, for one, means clean water,” said Mr Eastwood. And the clean water is immediately accessible, rather than sending women or children to haul it from a river. Villagers must travel to the river on foot, he said. Aside from missing school to retrieve water, Mr Eastwood said, “then there is sickness.” There are animals near the water, and “things mix together,” he said.

A village with fresh water would also bring other assistance. In one village, a clean well meant a teacher would come to the school, Mr Eastwood said, adding, “A teacher would have a reason to come to town, because they would not be drinking filthy water that makes you sick.”

The Yackos now want to begin raising funds through the Sandy Hook Family Memorial to build another well in Africa in the coming year, Mr Yacko said.

Villagers are taught to make repairs to the hand-pump wells.

Ms Gilbert recalls her impressions of villagers after her visit. “It’s amazing. They have nothing, no resources, and no way to get resources. They have mud huts, dirt floors, but understand the meaning of life is people — if there are orphans, they take them into their home.”

She said, “We have everything, we are so spoiled, but lose the meaning of life.” Ms Gilbert said, “So, seeing how they are so appreciative restored my outlook on humanity.”

Going into a village, she remembers, “They have nothing, but they give us things, one little old woman took the last of what she had and gave it to us.”

To Build A Well

According to Mr Eastwood, building a well starts with village leaders. “We first meet with leaders, the chief, elders, and men we work with and discuss where to place it.” The well cannot be placed on any private land. The well must be established where it will be free, Mr Eastwood said, giving people “free access to water.” And “vitally important” is the concern that nobody can claim the well after it is in and start charging, he said. “There is the understanding it’s always going to be free.”

The Calvary has contractors with machines and trucks to access where they want the well to go. Wells can cost between $7,000 and $10,000 or more, and the overall cost “depends how far out in the remote areas,” wells are located. Costs could include cutting a road through the brush to the village.

“Water is life, it really is,” Mr Eastwood said. “Without access to it, people don’t live, and clean water allows people to live in a healthier way.”

The Calvary efforts have established more than 20 wells in the countries of Mozambique and Malawi, along with a feeding center in each country. Mr Eastwood visits twice a year, and villagers oversee work there, he said.

His nonprofit continually raises funds for wells, and contributions via the Yackos’ efforts will be included with money already raised.

Several wells are less expensive than just one, Mr Eastwood said. In a recent e-mail about this year’s well efforts he added, “We really are looking to put five in.” Rates are discounted when more than one well is built. When they do only do one in remote areas, costs are “a lot more than $7,000,” he said, because of the transport of the equipment and the labor in getting to the areas, he said.

But they will fund just one or two at a time if that is all they can fund. “People need water more than we need to save money,” Mr Eastwood said.

Calvary Chapel

Calvary Chapel Southbury volunteers are committed to improving the lives of the people in sub-Saharan Africa by providing access to food, training, education, and resources along with hope for a new way of life; 100 percent of the proceeds that they raise go directly to humanitarian efforts.

Children in Malawi are not allowed to attend school without a specific uniform, which most people who live in these remote areas cannot afford. In all, 91 children received a uniform and along with it, the immeasurable gift of an education.

For more information or to get involved, call Calvary Chapel Southbury at 203-267-5441 or e-mail calvary@calvarysouthbury.com.

To donate to the Sandy Hook Family Memorial, see its page on Facebook, or stop at the People’s Bank in the Big Y Shopping Center, which has the memorial’s account. Anyone can make a deposit into the account, Mr Yacko said.