6 minute read
JOAN FUDALA
pinnacle members Serving Children Around the Globe
BY JOAN FUDALA
Five Pinnacle Presbyterian members combine high tech with high touch to significantly impact children’s lives around the globe.
After retiring from the Chicago Tribune, journalist Mike Conklin sought a way to positively impact the lives of others. “I’d always been on the outside looking in; now I wanted a chance to be on the inside, doing something worthwhile.” In 2011 Mike joined a mission trip with his Presbyterian church in Illinois to Tanzania, where they visited the Faraja Primary School. There he found his calling and cause. A K-7 boarding school that serves children with physical disabilities, the rural Faraja Primary School is located in the shadow of Mt. Kilimanjaro. It teaches educational basics and helps students prepare for tests that could allow them to continue their education beyond 7th grade. With little disability infrastructure in the country, Faraja helps its students learn to adapt and lead productive lives.
Mike shares his writing and reporting talents and his experience teaching college journalism during his visits to Faraja. “I’ve helped them develop a web page, a Facebook page and a newsletter.” He also co-authored a coffee table book, Miracle By The Mountain: The Story of Faraja Primary School, which is used to recruit and thank donors, benefit the Faraja Fund Foundation and describe the mission and successes of the school and its students.
Mike always takes something special on his mission trips. “I noticed a large concrete slab on the campus which they use to dry their crops. Next visit I brought two basketball hoop stands,
sized so that students in wheelchairs could play basketball on that slab.” He’s also delivered knitting supplies… and brought Illinois college students so they, too, can experience the culture and people of Tanzania.
What Mike brings home to Illinois and Scottsdale after each trip is new perspectives. “It’s hard to take griping here in the U.S. seriously after visiting Tanzania. Clean, running water is a luxury there. Teachers walk a mile or more on unpaved roads to teach at Faraja. Poverty is rampant. Despite their hardships, I’ve met neat people with a great outlook on life.”
New Pinnacle members Larry and Jane Lee Winter – both children of Lutheran pastors – have owned a travel agency based in Thousand Oaks, Calif. for 40 years. In 1993 they went on a trip to Botswana where Larry said “we fell in love with the people and the safari experience. Every year since (except during COVID) we’ve taken client groups on safaris to Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe.” During one of their annual trips to Africa, the Winters met “Ranji,” who some called the Mother Teresa of Africa. She had started the Ebenezer School and Children’s Home in a former garage, educating impoverished and orphaned children in the Livingstone, Zambia area. The Winters were inspired by her mission, and realized that they could bring much needed resources to Ebenezer. Larry and Jane Lee knew their safari guests were eager to meet the local population and to have more meaningful travel experiences.
So they added a visit to Ebenezer to the safari itinerary while the groups toured nearby Victoria Falls.
Jane Lee now serves on the Livingstone-based Ebenezer board, participating regularly via Zoom; she also coaches the Ebenezer Child Care Trust Executive Director in operating the school. Larry serves on the board of the US-based Ebenezer Foundation, which funds a majority of the school’s and orphanage’s needs. Beyond the Winters, several of their safari guests have become Ebenezer board members and ardent supporters. From across the ocean, the Winters and their colleagues helped Ebenezer through the COVID pandemic, ensuring students were fed via food deliveries.
“We’ve seen incredible progress at Ebenezer since our first visit in 2008,” Larry said. “We’ve watched the kids grow up, some going on to
university, others going to work at the orphanage. Ebenezer students now rank in the upper one percent of academic achievement in Zambia.
“We’re Uncle Larry and Aunt Jane Lee to the Ebenezer kids,” Larry said. What more reward can one ask than to share life with a global family.
continued on page 12
James and Nancy Lipscomb have been dedicated to the Center of Hope (Haiti) Inc. orphanage and school since visiting Haiti on a church mission trip in 2001.
“In addition to incredible poverty, we found that Haiti also has a high number of children in extreme poverty with a high incidence of mortality,” James said. “The children barely have a place to stay and rarely go to school. We decided to start a school and orphanage for children of extreme poverty.”
James said it took three years to acquire land for the school and orphanage in Hinche, Haiti (about 80 miles northwest of Port Au Prince) and to start construction. “Our first $50,000 was raised as a result of a 70-year-old board member swimming the English Channel in record time. I formed the Center of Hope (Haiti) Inc. as a U.S.-based non-profit corporation in 2004; it’s now an approved NGO [non-government organization] in good standing in Haiti.”
“Our school is very different from a typical school in Haiti. We limit our class size to 15 children in grades 1-9. We provide an enhanced education program where, by the time they reach 9th grade, they speak four languages. We currently have 130 children on campus and 33 full- and part-time staff. We provide two meals a day, drinking water, uniforms, shoes, transportation and school supplies.”
“Each child is like the mustard seed in the Bible. We work with them individually and collectively. The harvest is seeing the children years later with caps and gowns fully armed with their diplomas. There is no greater feeling when you realize that while your efforts are but a drop in the bucket, each drop counts and each of our children count. The trajectory of their lives is changed forever, and so is mine.”
Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.
~ Matthew 25:40
PHOTOS - Page 11, (top right) Mike Conklin with a Faraja Primary School resident. Page 11, (center) Larry and Jane Lee Winter with high school students at the Ebenezer Child Care Trust. Page 12, students from Center of Hope. Page 13, (top) Jane Lee Winter with children at the Ebenezer Child Care Trust Orphanage in Livingstone, Zambia. Page 13 (bottom) James Lipscomb with youth from Center of Hope in Hinche, Haiti.
JOAN FUDALA is an author and community historian. She’s been a member of Pinnacle since 2012, serving as a trustee on the Pinnacle Foundation board, and co-chair for Amigo’s group.
