Hand in Hand, We Journey Together

I remember clearly a journal entry that I made in my early twenties when the power that is held in my hands became apparently clear. Suddenly, I realized that whenever I used my hands for someone else’s betterment or to create a special gift for someone, my life ran incredibly smoother.
It was like a key that opened a whole new world to me of becoming other-centred and what power is held in giving part of myself for the benefit of others. The strength of that awareness came at an opportune time to battle my own self-doubt and anxiety that I was facing during those years of discovery.

As the years have passed, a new vision has come into being around the idea of what power and strength our hands can contain. As we began on this venture of breathing life into MotherKind and In Her Hands, hands have been a central theme to what we are doing and what we know changes the lives of the women and girls that we are so privileged to meet and work with.
Our very first event for MotherKind was called “Hand in Hand, We Journey Together”. The vision came so early in what we were beginning to create- the vision of women from around the world joining us as we walk forward with our hands extended, ready to greet them and walk hand in hand forward- going together. We see hands of all shapes, sizes, colours, rough, old, new, weathered….
We know that we are such a small part of what we have helped to birth, that it has its own life. We know that the hands that are really making the difference are the hands of the women sitting in the village of Lunga Lunga, Kenya making necklaces, weaving baskets & writing letters to their Rafikis in other lands, women in India that are putting hot wax on cotton to make the beautiful batik bed covers we sell, the women picking coffee beans in South America for Café Femenino and the hands of our dear Patricia who is rolling paper bead by paper bead to live her dream of finishing school. These are the hands that are doing the work, and these are the hands that have come forward out of the vision walking boldly forward, hands outstretched walking into a brighter, more hopeful future for us, for them, for our daughters and the future that is yet to come.

(* check out CARE's short video clip called "Natural Resources", a small glimpse of what we see...)