The Women’s Cooperative of the Mango Grove Community School is up and running! The five women in the leadership committee of the school are traveling twice a week to Chikimbuso for training in crocheting purses from strips of plastic shopping bags. They sold their first purse on March 20^th! When they have learned their skill well enough, they will begin to teach the other women of the community how to make the purses to earn money to support their families and to help support the school.

Dr. Kurtis Sauder, a pediatrician from Waynesboro, Virginia recently provided HIV-AIDS testing and health care for Mango Grove students. The Zambian village has no health care or clinic.  In a report from Dr. Sauder, only one child, who had already been diagnosed with HIV-AIDS, tested positive.

However, Dr. Sauder was saddened by the level of stunting due to malnutrition. “We just stopped measuring the children’s height. They were almost all stunted,” he said. “The good thing here is that the medicine these children need is food to eat and clean water to drink. That is something I hope we can get people to provide for them.”

Sharon and Chisa Mbeba, founders of the Mango Grove Community School, are a bright, young Zambian couple who is passionate about rescuing children from poverty, domestic violence, and illiteracy. In April, 2006, they stumbled upon the children of the Grippis Farm Village in the Chamba Valley of Lusaka, a squatter’s village rife with unemployment, despair, domestic violence and AIDS, and made the decision to dedicate their lives to transforming these children’s future.

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