Friday night, Oct. 30, 2009, in a warmly lit family room, a small group of caring, committed women gathered to hear the results of SEEDS San Diego’s first financial award votes. They heard about the beginnings of SEEDS, the joys, challenges, and fine-tuning of the year, and, finally, the two winners of our funds were announced:
The Purple Palace in Tijuana and Gogo Grandmothers in Malawi!
(As we were meeting, Tyler Youngkin from Purple Palace and Pam Gott from Gogo Grandmothers arrived and were ‘hiding’ in the living room, ready when the time came to thank us in person and tell us more about their organizations.)
Purple Palace’s request in their proposal was for a large van to ferry the kids in their care to school, to sports, to church, and to other activities. They are accustomed to making do with older vehicles and have mechanics who help keep them runing, but their ‘youngest’ van is 13 years old. We were so pleased when Tyler confirmed that the gift SEEDS gave them will be enough to buy a really good, slightly used, van!
Gogo Grandmothers requested funds to introduce a soy crop into a small village in Malawi. The grandmothers (and grandfathers) there, who are caring for their own and others’ orphaned grandchildren, grow maize (corn) primarily and are in need of a crop with greater food value – thus, soy, full of protein, easy to grow, but difficult to process. Gogo Grandmothers provides the seeds, the training, and the motivation that will not only provide this nutritious grain for these AIDS-orphaned children but will also introduce a new avenue for entrepreneurship.
Both of these fine organizations have needs that you might be interested in meeting on your own, from prayer, to money, to manpower, to ‘adopting’ a grandmother. The Purple Palace (www.thepurplepalace.org) is located just 15 minutes south of the border and is looking for all kinds of physical help – painters, plumbers, carpenters, computer technicians, etc. – as they have just this weekend moved to new facilities without much notice. Gogo Grandmothers (www.gogograndmothers.com) establishes groups of praying grandmothers in the US (though there are NONE in San Diego at present), and encourages groups of women already established (like maybe your book club or Bible study) to adopt a gogo (the African word for grandmother) as a project.
Go to their websites to find out first how wonderful they are, and second, what you can do to help! And if you would like to get involved in SEEDS, read over the website and go to “Become a Member.” We’d love to have you!
Hi ladies,
I was reading this entry and went to the link you provided for GoGoGrandmothers, but it doesn’t look like it’s the right link. It takes us to something called theresourcecenter.us.
Hopefully someone can double check this?
Thanks for all you do.
Elaine