The humanitarian aid that reaches the country, through many fraternal hands, is what ensures that hundreds of people have something to eat. Mozambique is among 16 countries at high risk of increasing levels of acute hunger, in the face of a global situation of record high levels of acute food insecurity, according to a United Nations (UN) report. The number of people facing a food crisis or emergency may have reached 1.7 million.
This reality is transformed through humanitarian work. Our union transforms the reality of the local population. Today, we are already present in 30 villages with our reception centers. Our mission is, in addition to providing food and assistance, to offer tools so that the recipients gain autonomy and take the fraternal mission further.
We welcome children from Mozambican villages who lived in extreme poverty, most of them orphans of parents who died of HIV.
In an environment that encourages fraternal living, they receive food, health care, hygiene orientation, and participate in educational, recreational, and cultural activities.
The children attend the reception center during alternative hours to school. Many were enrolled by the FWB after they joined the project. Before, they had to work to be able to feed themselves.
Dance and music are strong expressions of African culture. In reception centers, we encourage art as a source of joy in life. Children and young people form groups, rehearse choreographies, sing, and perform, making everyone happy in moments of welcome and fellowship.
The first children who came to the project are now young and continue to be welcomed by the FWB.
The sponsors give them the opportunity to continue with their studies – in the villages, classes only go up to the 6th grade. They receive help with transportation to the city, tuition, and school supplies. Especiosa Marge is one of the first children to be sponsored, and today she is at the University.
In the shelters, young people also participate in work training courses through Dream without Borders, which professionalizes and trains those sheltered by the project. They learn to cultivate the land, how to make handicrafts with local materials, sewing, batik (fabric painting), and others. Thus, they gain self-esteem confidence in a promising future.
With the help of our supporters, we were able to build a bakery shop at the Muzumuia Welcoming Center. This creates jobs for the adults and the opportunity for the youth to learn a new occupation. Furthermore, the community has access to cheaper and local bread.
The FWB hires local workers to fulfill the tasks of the drop-in center – cooks, social educators, administrative assistants, and other duties. Some people from the community are hired on a temporary basis to work on the construction work of the reception centers.
Many older adults in Mozambican villages live alone and have difficulty getting around. We support the construction of new houses for them and young people, welcomed by the FWB, bring food to grandparents who cannot walk.
We drill deep artesian wells, breaking through layers of rocks to provide clean water in abundance to the village community. Mothers with their children on their backs would walk miles to the edge of the dry river to dig wells to get a few liters of non-potable water to meet all the family’s needs.
The arrival of water allowed the start of agroecological planting, aiming at self-sustainability of the project’s food. At the Muzumuia reception center, the sustainable cultivation, in the pilot phase, already gives the first fruits, and the harvest goes to the children’s plates. Young people, children of farmers, learn to produce by taking advantage of nature’s resources, and the children participate in environmental education activities.
Fraternity Without Borders organizes caravans of sponsors of the cause, who pay their own expenses and go to Mozambique, in Africa, to learn about humanitarian work. They are doctors, dentists, educators, artists, liberal professionals – volunteers who get together to get to know the reality and help with the tasks of welcoming the families.
We maintain 24 reception centers in the villages in Mozambique located within an area covering 700 kilometers, from Barragem, near Maputo, to Chicualacuala, on the border with Zimbabwe.
In the Muzumuia village, we implemented the model structure for the reception centers. It has a kitchen, classrooms, bathrooms, a bakery, and rooms for professional training courses.
The goal is to bring the same structure to all reception centers. In some units, we still need kitchens, bathrooms, rooms, to offer adequate conditions to the workers and better welcome the children.