Sutherland to Surf

It is coming up to that time of year again… the time where the pain from last year’s Sutherland to Surf is but a distant memory, meaning that we are silly enough to decide to do it again! Check out the highlights from last year on YouTube:   

After raising over $65,000 last year, the Kristina Health Clinic is built, and almost ready to be opened for use! Here  are some photos to see the tangible difference that our efforts made last year.

We would love to have you on our fundraising team, as we aim to raise $50,000 to continue to resource and equip the Kristina Health Centre as it works towards being opened in August this year. We are also hoping to provide over 1000 micro-finance agricultural loans to women in 2013, and so will be using some of the funds raised this year to go to our Cents for Seeds project.

This year’s challenge is not only to raise $50,000 but to double the size of our team. We really need your help to do that! Can you find a friend to run or walk with you?

If you would like to run or walk and bring a friend, here is what you and your friend will need to do:

1.   Mark the date in your diary: Sunday 22nd July 2012

2.   Register with Love Mercy: www.lovemercyfoundation.org and click “REGISTER TO RUN” Create your personal profile.

3.   Purchase your t-shirt online through the Love Mercy Website. They are $20.

4.   Register online with the Sutherland to Surf so that you can enter the race www.sutherland2surf.com.au

5.   Personalise the email that Love Mercy will send to you when you register your profile. Send it to your contacts, share it on your Facebook, and start raising money any way that you can!

We will be meeting at 7am at Sutherland, Sunday July 22nd, on the corner of Merton and Flora street, and using the Shire Personal Training Centre as our base.

If there is anything that I can help you with please let me know on by emailing caitlin@lovemercyfoundation.org

 Lets try to reach our fundraising goal ASAP!

ONE HEART ONE MILLION VOICES

New Empire

We are honored and excited to share this video with you, documenting the story of Eloise and Julius our founders.

Eloise began her athletics career at a young age, starting out in the under 6's at her local little athletics club. After realizing at the age of 15 that she wanted to make running her career, she committed to training and qualified for the Olympics at the age of 16. Unfortunately soon after qualifying, Eloise suffered a stress fracture which continued to plague her career for the following decade. She has continued to follow her dreams despite facing much adversity, and is now on track to qualify for the London 2012 games.

Julius Achon has an inspiring story of hope which continues to unfold.One morning on a routine training run in Uganda, Julius Achon literally stumbled upon 11 orphaned children living at a bus shelter. These children, who had been effected by Africa's longest running war, were without food, clothing, housing or education, with some of the children unable to remember even their own names. From that day on, Julius took the children on as his own family.

Julius himself was no stranger to poverty. Having grown up the remote village of Awake in Northern Uganda, and himself being abducted by the Lords Resistance Army and forced into being a child soldier, he understands like no other the effects of poverty and war. At the age of 12, He was captured by rebels, from the Lords Resistance Army and forced to become a child soldier. He was held captive for 3 months until an opportunity to escape arose when a government plane flew over the LRA camp and started attacking the rebels. Julius escaped but sadly witnessed the murder of 9 of his friends as they ran for their lives.

Julius went on to have an incredibly successful running career, representing Uganda in 2 Olympic games, including being flag bearer for Uganda at the Sydney 2000 games.

Thanks to our friends New Empire, their story has been told through the song "One Heart One Million Voices". This song has been picked by channel 9 to feature as the promotion song for the 2012 London Olympics!

What better story to tell than that of Eloise and Julius, two people living on opposite sides of the planet, who met through their sport and a desire to compete at the Olympics. Their story doesn't end there, but was the inspiration for the Love Mercy Foundation.

They are united in one heart, telling the story of one million voices in Northern Uganda, who's lives are in need of restoration and renewal after decades of brutal warfare.

Watch the video here, and show your support for Eloise in her Olympic campaign for London 2012 on our Facebook page!!

KONY 2012: Our Response

After the dust has seemingly settled on the overnight media frenzy that was "Kony 2012" we thought it a good moment to contribute to the mass of online information on the subject. Our aim in this post is to simply inform and empower those who have been moved by what they have seen in recent weeks, to be able to make wise choices about their response. Hopefully we can contribute to the conversation in a way that does not further dilute the real issues.

There have been many criticisms of the Invisible Children campaign and video, from those who have chosen to unpick IC's financials, to those who have personally attacked the maker of the film Jason Russell. After the sad events of the weekend concerning Jason, we offer our best wishes and support as he recovers from what has clearly been an extremely draining and difficult period. I personally felt so overwhelmed and stressed by the huge media response that Love Mercy experienced two weeks ago, yet this was comparatively miniscule to what Jason must have felt. His unfortunate condition does not, and should not affect the real issue that IC is trying to promote, or the fact that IC is a credible and accountable organization with 10 years of solid campaigning behind them. I personally believe that the fact that Obama decided to send US special forces into Central Africa is largely, if not wholly, in response to the lobbying done by IC. What an amazing result, and a real demonstration of democracy in action.

We love Invisible Children. In fact, their first campaign in Australia back in 2008 was instrumental in informing myself of the situation. This awareness caused me to do more of my own research and eventually start the Love Mercy Foundation along with Eloise and Julius and many others who were equally as moved. The critics that have been quick to jump on the statistic that, "only 30% of their funds go to the children!" are missing the point. IC is not a development organization like Love Mercy. They are an awareness and advocacy organization, so the fact that they spend large percentages of their budget on creating awareness and advocacy campaigns is not surprising or detrimental to their cause. For people looking to donate to an organization that exists solely to provide on-the-ground services, then that is Love Mercy's mandate. But, without awareness and advocacy work, our work is only half done. Development work is one thing, but advocating to change governments, policies, and systems that perpetuate poverty is crucial to our work if it is going to have a long life span and a positive impact.

Critics are caught on the fact that the film isn't accurate because Kony isn't in Uganda. It is true that the war is no longer in Uganda, and has not been since 2006. The movie did make mention of this, and showed an albiet brief summary of a highly complex and long-lasting conflict. Despite the fact that the LRA is no longer in Uganda, they are still in neighboring countries, and their behavior has not changed. Children are still being abducted. People are still being senselessly maimed and murdered...for no reason. 

This video may have come too late for some, but the fact that it has come at all is important. Kony2012 is not the first movie that Invisible Children have made. Their previous 11 documentaries are much more in-depth, and provide a more detailed and historical account of events in Uganda, starting in 2003 when the LRA was still present. They can be purchased here. IC is not an overnight sensation like many people have been led to beleive. They have been working tirelessly in Central Africa and in the States to make their cause known  - no one could have predicted the fact that this particular video would skyrocket to the forefront of every bodies minds.

The reaction in Uganda itself has been mixed. The consensus from Uganda suggests that people are slightly puzzled as to why they were left to suffer for over 20 years, and now suddenly everyone wants Kony to be held accountable after 6 years of peace. However one sentiment is clear: Ugandans welcome the awareness of their situation and the realization that they are no longer alone in the recovery. Even though some news reports (like this one filmed in Lira, where our office is located) suggest that the reaction is overwhelmingly negative, I wish that Ugandans were able to also watch the several other documentaries about their conflict rather than just this viral video that was not intended to tell their whole story.

For us, the fact that the Kony 2012 video was seen by nearly 100 million people, makes our job a whole lot easier. The way we do things must now change. We no longer need to work hard to make people aware of what is happening in parts of Central Africa today and what has happened in Uganda in the past. Instead, our role is now to provide people with an accountable and vibrant organisation working hard to restore what has been lost in Uganda.

You can contribute to our projects on our website.

Caitlin

International Women's day

This morning with International Women's day coming up in a month, I am reminded of a story from just a few weeks ago.

One afternoon as we were walking through Lira town, going to check on some seed suppliers for our Cents for Seeds project, two young girls approached us in the street. We were with Julius, who is definitely a celebrity in his village given his Olympic status, but also because of the incredible hard work that he puts in to bringing development to his people. These two girls, both called Grace, looked no older than 16 to me. They approached us and told Julius that they knew him, and that they lived in his village, Awake. It was almost 5pm, and the sun was beginning to set. Julius knew that they had a long journey ahead of them. He offered for them to stay the night in his home in Lira, so that they could rest and commence their journey the next morning.

They followed us around the market place, where we noticed that one of the girls was pregnant. Julius told us that the other girl already had two kids, and that this one who was currently pregnant had no husband. She also was wearing no shoes. The next morning, Eloise packed her spare pare of thongs in a plastic bag, and we made our way over to Julius' house for our morning training. Eloise intended to give Grace her shoes, however when we arrived, we were told that the girls had left last night and they had not stayed after all.

When we enquired as to why the girls left so suddenly, we were told that Grace, the young woman who was pregnant, had had some type of fit as soon as she arrived at the house. The boys told us that she was posessed by a demon and that she fell to the ground and started shaking. We asked a few more questions and established that her eyes were rolling in the back of her head, and once the fit was over, she was delirous and not making any sense. Her friend was laughing at her and telling her to get up and stop being silly.

Whilst the boys were adamant that she was posessed, Eloise and I were both quietly putting the pieces together in our heads; either this girl had epilepsy, severe malaria, or something even worse. She had left the house that evening in embarrassment and fear, and by the time we arrived the next morning we had no way of contacting her, as we didn't even know where she was. I couldn't get her out of my head for the rest of the trip - a young girl, with no husband, expecting a baby, and with some sort of serious medical condition yet no access to proper medical care. I felt helpless, I felt overwhelmed. Part of me wanted to get in the car and drive into the village until we found her, but I knew that that was unrealistic. We didn't even have a photo of her, but her face is still burned in my memory.

I had to accept that that is the way things are over here. People live like this. Women can die like this... and it's for this reason that on International Women's Day on March the 8th, we will be raising as much money as possible to change the fate of young women like Grace.

Our trip: A personal reflection

Caitlin Barrett

Walter and Myself - my sponsor child.

There is always a lesson to be learned in Africa… not that that is the reason that we go, but each time I have been to Uganda I have come away with a clear and distinct lesson that I have learned, and that has changed me in some way. On the plane trip home from our January trip, Eloise and I wrote each other 15 questions and asked for answers then and there. Reading through them on this side of a 30-hour plane trip having overcome severe jetlag, I I have found a few coherent themes.

1.Highlights. (in no particular order)

Family

The first time we went to Africa, we went with a group of about 13 Aussies. This time, it was just Eloise and myself. The highlight for me of this trip was being part of an African family. We had two babies in our group, and Eloise and I were expected, like everyone else in the family, to play our role and help out with the kids. Luckily we were more than happy (desperate in fact) to cuddle the kids at any given moment. We also felt this sense of brotherhood with our new friends Samuel and Quinto, our quasi body guards who were hired on with the instructions to “come running if you hear us screaming.” They took us under their wings like we were their sisters. We felt like we were a valuable part of an intimate family, made up of brothers and sisters, adopted children, stepmothers and grandfathers and new wives and new babies. It reminded me of what I already know – family really is so incredibly important, no matter what it looks like.

Monique being checked for Malaria by her adopted step-mother. Her birth mother is trying to run a business in Lira, so Monique is cared for by her new family

Julius' father Charles, the head of our family, with his Grand-daughter Grace

Eloise and Myself, With Grace - the wife of Julius and their son Jayden, and Florence, the wife of Jimmy and their daughter Grace.

 Development: the way it happens in the books I read.

Development can be a scary word  - I remember learning at university that if you do it wrong, you ruin peoples lives. The newest buzzword in the development scene is “participation.” Every project needs to be design and run with the participation of its stakeholders. Of course I agree with this, but it is easier said than done. From a professional perspective, our first meeting with the women in Barr village was so fruitful. We watched as they came up with brilliant ideas that we would never have thought of on our own. They really are an incredible group of women and I am so excited to be working in a place where authentic, organic, grassroots development is happening.

The ladies from Barr welcoming us

Speaking at Barr village

Feeling comfortable, like I was at home.

I had a few moments in Uganda where I was so happy, so relaxed, and so comfortable, I forgot that I was on the other side of the world in a place where I was an outsider. Walking through the streets, buying jewellery from the side of the road, riding motor bikes. All of these moments made me feel comfortable, and despite the many staring eyes, made me feel like I was at home.

Lowlight: a blessing in disguise

The lowlight of the trip involved the breakdown of our car… but this was really a blessing in disguise, because it meant that instead of being like every other white person that visits Lira in a big four wheel drive, we were forced to do what everyone else does- Walk!
I saw so much more, understood so much more, and felt so much more connected to the people on foot than I would have from a car. With that said, whilst I love the connection I felt with the place on foot, I also loved the separation that being in the car offered, where I could be a spectator on the lives of the people we passed. I love observing daily life from this perspective; the people walking along the road, the little kids on bikes that were way too big for them, mums carrying babies, kids carrying siblings, people carrying heavy loads in interesting ways, the way life works when no one is watching. 

  2.Most significant moment:

On about the third day, after a highly stressful stuck-on-the-side-of-the-road experience, I realised something that has changed me as a person forever. Lying in bed one night when the power failed, I thought about what may happen if there was an emergency. We had no power. No car. No medical facilities were close by. We had no way of leaving in a hurry should we need to, and no where to go if there was some kind of emergency.  As a Christian, I believe in the power of prayer and the sovereignty of God. However, being in a place where everything in the world had been taken, every option, every back up plan, every other thing I could possibly have put my faith in was gone, faith in the lord became a lot more real and important. If the lord didn’t save me, then nothing else would! It was at this point that I released my grip and stopped worrying. More faith is never a bad thing!


3. What would you change?

The only things I would have changed about our trip? I would have packed more pens and pencils. Luckily Eloise had a red lipstick in her handbag, which came in handy when we needed to write a “Thank you” sign for our sponsors!

Two Front Teeth

Monday 16/1/21-Elzy
 
It's been a busy week here in Lira town and every night I've tried to write but have ended up nodding off onto the keyboard. I have a few spare moments this morning before we set off for another busy day running errands around town.

After last Saturday's long day in the village of Barr we had a rest day on Sunday and went to the local pentecostal church with Julius, Grace, Jayden and Samuel, we were running a little late but as we walked into this huge church with around 1,000 people present they started singing "God is able" which was so great as I didn't feel so far from home! We hid right up the back, but sure enough, when the pastor got up to preach, he called on his "white sisters hiding up the back to come up and greet us". Which we did... and everyone enjoyed. Julius also bid on and won the bag of sesame that they auctioned off to raise money for the church youth.

We spent the rest of Sunday catching up with Jimmy and Julius and going over our plans for the next 2 weeks.

On Monday we visited all 35 of our Love Mercy sponsor kids in Julius's village. This was emotionally and physically exhausting but soul delighting at the same time. What ensued was the expected roller coaster ride that is a trip to one of the poorest parts of Northern Uganda. Some of the kids we had not properly met before and Julius wanted us to see the condition of their homes. We had an amazing time with all of the kids that we visited, but a handful of moments will be forever etched in my memory.

Joan (above) is an orphan of the 20 year conflict. Joan is 16 years old and she is cared for by a relative in a small grass hut within Awake Village She is softly spoken but one of the few kids who wasn't too shy to try and speak to us in english. She kept saying "please, stay a while and talk with me, sit, you are welcome". "Tell my sponsor I am so grateful and I love them and pray for them, please greet them from me on your return home". Joan has been suffering from typhoid but says she is slowly recovering. She walks 1 hour to school everyday and she told me she wants to be a teacher when she finishes school. She was desperate for us to meet her older sister who is 24 years old. Her sister recently lost her baby to tuberculosis.

Then there was Daniel (below), also an orphan, his father was abducted and killed by rebels in the war, his mother died from HIV. Daniel is cared for by his grandparents. He's just a really smiley kid who has been through more struggle than most will go through in a lifetime. He got out his report card to show us and so we could tell his sponsors that he was doing well at school! 

We also visited a woman who has 4 boys and is now a widow. Last year she thought she was the luckiest woman in northern Uganda- Orange, the phone company, came to her hut and asked to build a phone tower on her land for approx $6000 a year. Money like this in the village is unheard of. Unfortunately, the brother of her late husband found out about it and came back to the village and has taken all of the money. This women now doesn't see a cent, and when we visited she was suffering badly with malaria. She could not afford the treatment or the transport to the hospital, so we secretly slipped her some money so that her brother-in-law couldn't see. When we visited her, her sons were all softly spoken but very happy to see us. The eldest, Morris, who is 18 took us into his hut and was  chatting away. The 2nd eldest, Walter was given a soccer ball by his sponsor. When I handed it to him, he said "this one is too good!" When we were leaving the village about an hour later, we saw approx. 50 kids assembled on a playing field ready to play.

The rest of the week has gone so quick, we have made 3 trips on the long, dusty and bumpy road out to the village for meetings with the women for Cent's for Seeds. Each time there has been a new challenge and each time we have had to think quick on our feet and come up with answers to questions we have never thought of. Each time God has been faithful to find solutions. After each meeting we hand out soda's to the women, I learned why some of them have so few teeth... they were opening the glass bottled soda's with their teeth! We had only two bottle openers for 200 bottles so a few mins to get around to every bottle was too long to wait for some. The soda's are also a great way to measure the amount of women that are at the meeting. We subtract the number of soda's left over from the number that we bought. It's really the perfect headcount! 

One of my favourite things about these meetings with these women is that we always start with worship, as well as honouring God, I feel every time that it unites us and breaks down any barriers between us and them regarding race, vastly different living standards or foreign faces or whatever. Worship songs, no instruments, just epic singing and dancing. At the end of one of the meetings I was brought to tears when they prayed for us and a man said to us "your presence here has given us strength". 

Yesterday we visited the almost finished medical clinic and got Julius to take us through each of the rooms and talk us through as if we were a patient. It is so very exciting! Jim Fee, Jimmy and Jullius have done an amazing job with the construction so far and it's going to make a huge difference to the lives of the people in the community. It's mind blowing what can be done with good leadership and vision. 

Today we visited the returned loan of seeds from Barr village from last years harvest. This was fun!

UGANDA JANUARY 2012

Eloise and Caitlin are spending 2 weeks in Lira, Uganda, to monitor and evaluate the Cents for Seeds project. Here is their first travel journal entry:

8/01/2012 - Elzy

It's about 5am here in Uganda and I'm wide awake. I'm trying to tap softy so as to not  to disturb Caity or to rouse the mozzie's lingering outside my mosquito net. 

We had a long but safe flight here and we arrived in Enbebbe on Thursday to Julius's welcoming beaming smile at the airport. We had one night in Kampala and we had a nice dinner at the hotel catching up with Julius and Grace and playing with 6 month old Jayden.

On Friday Julius and I went for an early training run in Kampala before starting the 7 hour drive North to Lira on a bumpy, dusty road. We had a full car, with Julius, Grace, Jayden, Florence and her 1 year old baby Grace and Caity and I. About 5 hours into the drive, all the warning lights lit up in Julius's car, we were in the the middle of no where so we made it slowly (and nervously) to the next town where we found a mechanic so we waited by the roadside whilst he worked for 3 hours on the car with no result. We finally were able to pay a guy to take us all to Lira and we arrived exhausted but safe at about 1030pm. We are staying at the Kanberra hotel in Lira, and the staff are lovely and I feel safe here.

Yesterday, I got up early for a run with Julius and 19 year old Samuel (one of the original orphans who Julius found underneath the bus in 2003) and Samuels friend Quinto. Samuel is following in Julius's footsteps with running.

I love running here, the sun rises and the roosters crow, we run along a dirt road the goes for 100's of miles, passing farmers who stop and stare and sometimes call out as we run by. Julius translates as we run, they say things like "go go Muzungo", (Swahilli for "White Person" or more literally "confused person walking around") or they yell to the boys "don't let the Muzungo beat you!"

After the run yesterday we had breakfast and headed to the village of Barr. This is one of the villages we do the cents for seeds program with. About 200 women met us singing and dancing and welcoming us into their village. We all sat in the church and they sung to us as a gift for running the program with them.

We then spent the following hour with them explaining how we were going to improve the program, what our vision is for it and encouraging them to make the most of it. It went better than we could have ever imagined, they were responsive and happy with what we had come up with to help break their cycle of poverty. We have a few new comers to the program and so we explained step  by step from how we fundraise by telling our friends about them in Australia, to them registering their names to receive their seeds and having a educational agriculture workshop (one of the big step in improving cents for seeds) to planting and farming and eventually harvesting and returning their loan and the rest they keep to eat, feed their family, sell at the market and store for the future.

We answered their questions and calmed their fears about if their was a serious drought and they did not get a harvest what if they couldn't repay the loan. We told them about all the friends and supporters they have in Australia who love them and are standing beside them.

After the meeting we cracked open the some 200 bottles of soda and we watched and took photos as they sat and drank. A number of women came up to us at the front they would get down on one knee with hand reached up and say "opoyo" which means thankyou. There is not much that moves me more than this. To know that we are making a difference in this village causes me to thank god over and over again.

As we drove out of the village, a man who was very sick, shaking and groaning and sweating profusely  tried to get into the car, Julius thought he was a mad man and ordered him out, the man collapsed on the ground and Julius realized he was sick, he said he had no family to take him to get help and we were told by another man that there was a government run medical clinic a few miles up the road. On the way to the clinic in the car, the man was in a really bad way so Julius reached back and layed hands on him and we prayed for him, Julius asked if he wanted to receive Jesus and the man said "yes" and begun praying with Julius. We got him to the clinic and told the doctor and they layed him down and said they would take care of him.

It was a sobering drive back to Lira after a morning like that, TIA (this is Africa)