Carol’s Speech at Redemption House Grand Opening
SPEECH BY CAROL McBRADY, FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF ACTION FOR CHILDREN ZAMBIA
Given to the audience on 15 October, 2024 t at the Grand Opening of Redemption House. Kakubo Village, Chongwe, Zambia
Welcome to our Grand Opening. Thank you for coming to share this wonderful day with us.
Today is a great day for Action for Children Zambia. We are officially opening a ‘one of a kind’ home for older youth and a place for emergency shelter needs here in Chongwe. It’s a day to celebrate.
For those of you that don’t know me, I am Mama Carol, founder and director of Action for Children Zambia. I am a Catholic Lay Missionary, sent by St. Timothy’s Church in Maple Lake, Mn, USA. I am not a nun. I chose to stay in the laity because I knew that children need mothers – and nuns are not allowed to stay in one place for too long. I hold University degrees from America in Social Work and Secondary Education. Before coming to Africa, I worked 14 years as a school social worker and spent 8 years teaching in the juvenile prison system. I was well equipped with the knowledge and experience I needed to tackle the issue of Zambian street children from new and different angles. My first trip to Zambia was in 2001. There I met and fell in love with the street child. I found them very easy to work with as their behavior was nothing compared to the children I had taught in America. In 2004, after two more trips here, I sold my home in Minnesota, moved here, and used the money from the sale of my house to start Action for Children Zambia. In 2005, we registered as an NGO, with help from students I had met while speaking at UNZA. I have lived here ever since that time, working with the street children. If you do the math, you will know that I have earned every one of these white hairs on my head – as I’ve been working with children in trouble and troubled children for over 40 years now. And indeed, it is still my greatest joy to see a child who thought he was hopeless and useless, turn his life around and have success in whatever path he chooses.
We started off with a transition home in Lusaka. There we learned that many of the children in the streets did not have relatives they could return to. The families were destroyed beyond anything you could imagine. We found addiction, prostitution, abandonment, imprisonment, domestic violence and many other issues that rendered families unable to take the children back, and assure the child would not return to the streets. This led us to start Kulanga Bana. In 2008, Chief Bunda Bunda blessed us with 22 hectares of land and we started operations. Here the children are treated as individuals in our family. Through family tracing and counseling, those that can go home – do go home, and we continue to pay for their education and health care. Those that cannot return to their relatives are admitted into one of our children’s homes and become a permanent part of the AFCZ family. Here, we quickly learned that when a street child is taken out of their environments and moved far from their families and the trauma they survived; moved to a place with lots of space, things to keep them busy and people that show them love, they can heal and change their lives. At this time at Kulanga Bana, we have 3 children’s homes, one transition home, one home for disabled adults and our church. We also have pigs, goats, chickens, a huge garden and fields of maize and beans. We are grateful for today’s rains and pray for more of the same this year.
It was our success with the children that led to the need for Redemption House. Our children began qualifying for grade 8, yet there was no secondary school in Chamulimba at that time. We tried boarding school but that did not work. Our children still needed the cushion our family environment provided and were not ready to be independent again. So here we were at the farm with kids ready for secondary school and no place to take them to. We rented a small home and started. Matipula secondary school graciously accepted all the children into their school and off we went. Our first home had fourteen boys and one bathroom. It was not a good environment, but at least they got to stay together in their family and go to a good school. I sent Uncle Jonathan, our house parent there, to search for a plot we could build upon. I had no idea what Redemption House would actually look like, I just knew that we had a load of teenagers that needed beds and school. Through prayer and God’s guidance we moved through the process to what you see before you today.
In 2017, we found a plot that was within walking distance of Matipula School and Chongwe hospital. It was an ideal location and we opened negotiations to purchase the land. The asking price was too high and we thought we were going to lose it, but God reached out and we received a donation to cover the difference between what we had and the asking price. Then a year later, a Lions Club from Norway came in put in our well. It was difficult to find enough pressure and they had to go down 80 meters to assure we would always have an abundant water supply that was uncontaminated. After that a Catholic Organization from New York donated and installed our solar pump, panels and water tanks. Then a short time later, we received a donation for a family in Arizona to build a fence and guard house to secure the land and the water. I appealed to our wonderful donors and through their generosity we began building in 2020. We built this place one room at a time and in 2021, we were able to move the boys from the rental property onto the new space. The following year, we closed our homes and offices in Lusaka and shifted everything to Chongwe. I am very proud to say that everyone we hired for the building process is a local Chongwe person and we did our best to purchase our materials here in Chongwe. Our desire was to do our best to help Chongwe develop with the funds we had been given.
We waited in prayer for almost two years before our board treasurer in America received a very large anonymous donation to finish the project. We still to this day, do not know who gave us the money and we believe it was our gift from God. Today, we stand here viewing the finished product. You will notice that it’s not like other orphanages, but is designed with the adolescent needs in mind. You will see a home with parents that live here and aunties or uncles in each room, just like your homes. You will see a home that is designed to help youth identify their gifts and talents and you will see a home that is grounded in our Catholic faith. There are many activities for youth here. We have a library for reading, a classroom for extra lessons, a sewing room and arts and crafts. In addition, you will see recreation activities, a gym, a football pitch and lots of games to play. You will also see that one room has been left unoccupied. This is for your emergency shelter needs as they arise. Police, the hospital and our victim support unit often run across people in desperate situations, for example, a mother who has fled a violent husband with her children by her side. Generally, these things don’t happen in the middle of business hours. As a result, those they turn to for help have no place to take them to sleep and wait for things to open. We offer you a room to use room for emergency shelter needs as they arise.
As you look around, you will see the children’s friends from the community here to celebrate with us along with many of our neighbors. You will see the young adults that have completed our programs and are now successful in their communities. You will see our college students These things will also show you how Action for Children indifferent from most institutions. We are a family and we live in the community. Both of these concepts are essential to our success with the children. The Chongwe community is a good place for children to grow up and we are happy to be here.
In conclusion, I can only say that God has given both you and I this beautiful place. It is now our job to be good stewards of it. That job belongs to all of us, not just me. I call upon you, the leaders of this community, to help make the environment around us equal to this place you see here. We need roads, we need drainage and sanitation systems, we need security. The living environment around us is a critical to our success. Let’s work together and make this the best living environment in Chongwe.
Feel free to drop in and visit at any time. We need mentors and local friends to be part of what we do here. In Action for Children Zambia, we always say, you are only a stranger once, after that, you are part of our family. So, I say welcome to our family! We hope to see you again. Thank you for coming. Enjoy your time with us.
God Bless you today and always.