September Newsletter

In this newsletter: 1. Visitors from home 2. Beijing with Bob & Ben 3. Summer Celebrations. 4. Coming to the UK. 5 Nigeria carry-out. 6. A song for those in need. 7. Welcome back Bob 8. A Kosovo Story. 9. Your Partnership with us.

1. Visitors from home
It has been a very busy and exciting time for us at this, the tail end of the summer. Over the last few weeks we have had lots of visitors from our home club, making the number of people from Berowra on team quite significant. First came Alison & Claire, closely followed by Rob, our younger son, and Dev & AJ, Pete, Benson and Kenny. Rob and Kenny are still here for another week or two. It has been so lovely to have the opportunity to show all these friends what it is that we do and what Crossroads is all about and simply to catch up.

2. Beijing with Bob & Ben
We were able to visit Beijing with Benson and Rob for a few days last week and had a great time, walking on the Great Wall and exploring the Forbidden City & Tiananmen Square. The highlight for the boys was the chance to hone their bargaining skills in the markets, not to mention checking out the fast food, Beijing style, which included scorpion skewers and seahorse on a stick. As Rob will tell you, we really don’t recommend the seahorse!!

3. Summer Celebrations
As summer here draws to a close and the weather becomes infinitely more bearable (at least in Sue’s opinion), there have been a number of special events here. An event signalling the end of the summer each year is our annual student party. This is a time to say thank you to the students who, through the intern and student program, have made a huge contribution to the work in every department. This summer we have had a grand total of 95 interns, who committed to working full-time for 6 weeks through their holidays, plus many other students. It was fun getting to know them all and awesome to see the amount of work they were able to get through.

A Summer Clearance Celebration was also held over a 2 week period. We decided to extend an invitation to the local charities that we have worked with in the past to come and select from a range of goods we had prepared. There was a two-fold purpose in this. As well as offering them a range of items that they could use for their work, (and at the same time clearing stock to free up space in our badly overcrowded warehouse) we wanted to introduce them to the other new aspects of Crossroads. So we had information available about Global Hand and they were able to take part in a LifeXperience activity. They also had the chance to visit the Silk Road Café and Global Handicrafts. Many local groups came and collected goods and enjoyed coffee and Helen Mottee’s singing in the café. Friendships were renewed and new requests generated.

We also wanted to include the guys we call the African team who are part of our community. Many of them are asylum seekers. We wanted to make them feel special and give them an opportunity to select some goods for themselves, their family and friends. As well, we used a special day during the Clearance to show them what we are doing with our LifeXperience program to allow Hong Kong people to understand better what life is like for people like them.

4.SPECIAL NOTE
PHIL IS COMING TO THE UK IN OCTOBER FOR CROSSROADS AND IS LOOKING FOR SPEAKING OPPORTUNITIES. PLEASE LET HIM KNOW IF YOU CAN HELP.

5. Nigeria carry-out
By day 16 year old Adiana sits by the roadside, waiting for her band of homeless kids to bring back to her whatever food they have scavenged for her to cook. Adiana would join them but she does not have the use of her legs and so must spend her days waiting.

By night the children gather around Adiana and haul her up the side of an empty petrol tanker. They drop her in then tumble in after. The kids used to live in a home scratched together from branches and plastic. That was, until one of them was kidnapped and sold for ritual murder rites. It’s a money making venture in these parts. The kids now take ‘refuge’ in the abandoned tanker, standing on each other’s shoulders to push Adiana back out the small opening each morning to start the day’s survival routine again.

Recently, a local organisation with few resources was given some clothing to hand out. The clothing had come all the way from Hong Kong. Adiana and her ‘gang’ received basic items such as shirts and trousers. Adiana bundled her new items into the small fabric wrap that contains all of her worldly belongs. It was a small gift but a significant one.

A larger gift is on its way to Adiana as, this week, we will be sending a small consignment of items to this area, including a wheelchair with Adiana’s name on it. She doesn’t know it yet but she is about to receive the gift of mobility!

A Nigerian lady who is ‘carrying out’ these items commented that “this will give Adiana a freedom she has never known in her 16 years. Until now the community has looked at her as a burden - thinking her life has no use to it. Now she will be able to get herself around, perhaps even go to school!” The ‘carry out’ will also contain books, medical equipment and toys, all bound for the poorest of the poor in Nigeria.

As well as the containers that we ship out every month, we also send out many goods in ‘carry outs’. Sometimes as small as just one bag, these gifts can still make a big impact on groups around the world.

6. A song for those in need
We’re delighted to have working at Crossroads singer/ song-writer Helen Mottee - along with her husband Jim and children Georgie and Isaac. Helen has worked as a professional musician throughout Australia and New Zealand and also in Zimbabwe. Her song writing has been greatly influenced by her time spent overseas, often in countries where people are in desperate need and face seemingly impossible situations. These travels have allowed her to hear first hand stories of suffering but also of hope and courage. Helen’s heart is to share these stories, being a voice for the voiceless and encouraging us to travel on the road billions walk everyday.

“…when our hearts can be broken for the suffering and the isolated and the unheard, then pain becomes the conduit through which we can begin the journey.”

You can start this journey right now by visiting Helen’s new website If you like the songs you hear, there is also the opportunity to vote for Helen in the 2007 Musicoz Awards. Her entry ‘Do You’ was written for and about refugees and was used recently by the UNHCR in Hong Kong for World Refugee Day in their National television campaign. To vote follow the link through from her website or Click here

7. Welcome back Bob
Much celebration at out Hong Kong Club this month as we welcomed back Bob Jones as Shepherd. He served as interim a few years back and we are delighted that he has agreed to return with officially with his wife Amy and daughter Mo.

8. Kosovo Nazmije's Story
"At 41, I thought life was already over for me," says Nazmije, a survivor of the Kosovan conflict. "My country turned into a place of horror. I witnessed it as I ran from village to village with my five children."

It was an era of terror. The Kosovan conflict of 1998 – 1999 left 10,000 dead, mostly men and boys. Half of the population fled across the borders. The survivors were mostly women and girls. Rape was wielded as a weapon of the ethnic cleansing campaign, with 20,000 women falling victim.

“War has left lot of pain in me. When I returned with my five children to my village, Cikatove, after the war ended, I came back to nothing. I was heartbroken," Nazmije recounts. "I was homeless, jobless and sick. We had to start life again. I took so many medicines to recover but found no relief from my pains. The best medicine for me was Women for Women International’s program. The classes woke me up. I could not believe that one day I will be able to earn money myself and I will be able to support my family.”

‘Women for Women International' mobilises women to change their lives by bringing a holistic approach to addressing the unique needs of women in conflict and post-conflict environments.

They begin by working with women who may have lost everything in conflict and often have nowhere else to turn. Participation in the organisation's one-year program launches women on a journey from victim to survivor to active citizen. The program starts by linking up a woman sponsor with a woman in a post-conflict situation. The women move through a program of recovery to rehabilitation. Women for Women believe that providing people with a sustainable form of income is crucial to the healing process of both these women and the communities that they are from. Nazmije's story is one of the many that have been touched by the work of ‘Women for Women’.

“The letters I received from my sponsor Shan, warmed my heart," she said. "I thought how a woman from far way who has never seen or met me has put her faith in me and made a commitment to change my life. If she was so committed to help me improve my life, why should I not do it for myself?”

"Now I have joined a group of women in my village to work on looms. The loom work has become part of my life. Because we don’t have another space, I put the loom in the same room where my husband, five children and I sleep. I work there when I finish cleaning and cooking. The loom sounds to me like music, and it makes me feel good and calm."

In the Global Handicrafts marketplace, you will find items from the looms of Kosovo available for sale. We also have products from other ‘Women for Women’ projects in Afghanistan. Your purchase of one of these items will keep women like Nazmije in the business of life!

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT HOW TO SUPPORT US SEE THE SIDE BAR