Grandmothers Beyond Borders

May 22,2006

Dear Friends,

With keepsake journals filled with photos and notes from founding grandmothers, sponsoring angels, and others who could not turn away from our sisters in Uganda, Amy Peterson and Sarah Wall will be departing for Kampala in a few days. They will be bringing messages of love, caring hearts, and the simple, profound capacity to walk with the grandmothers of Uganda, to hear their stories, and to learn how we can reach out to them in the most meaningful ways.

Amy and Sarah know this is a journey of the heart, and will have much to share when they return.

Please keep them in your thoughts, and please join us for a “Taste of Uganda” brunch on June 24th - a time to hear from them about their experiences, and about next steps in reaching beyond borders.

We will post news from them as we receive it, and will include details about the brunch in the near future.

Thank you for the many ways you have contributed to Grandmothers Beyond Borders, a person to person connection between people in the Milwaukee area and grandmothers in Uganda who are raising their grandchildren because their own children have died of AIDS.

For more information please contact Janine Arseneau

Warmly,
Janine

Amy Peterson and Janine Arseneau launched this project, starting with a gathering at Janine’s house, on April 2, 2006

Here’s Bill Sell’s posting from the Bay View Matters yahoo group.

Grandmothers Without Borders: Reaching Through the Distance -Touching Each Others’ Lives

Mary Namutebi’s story, recently profiled on NPR, touched our hearts and we cannot turn away from her and other women like her. Mary lives in Uganda, and finds herself abandoned in her old age - a situation hundreds of of thousands of other Ugandans also unexpectedly find themselves in. At the age of 80, with all her children dead, some of them from AIDS, Mary says she is left alone in the world to look after all of her grandchildren.

In a world community, we cannot leave women alone to carry burdens of this magnitude. It is our dream to support grandmothers in Uganda who are raising their grandchildren because their own children have died of AIDS.

Here’s how we will begin: we will start with 20 founding grandmothers or sponsoring angels who are willing to donate funds to start this project. We will match them with 20 grandmothers in Uganda who are struggling, in poverty, to raise their grandchildren. We will build relationships, one grandmother to another, by taking and sharing photographs and mini-biographies of each of the women.

All funds will be channeled through the World Mission Office of the
Archdiocese of Milwaukee and will be used to support the grandmothers in the Diocese of Lugazi, Uganda. The Lugazi Diocese will work directly with the grandmothers and other community members to design an equitable way of distributing the funds.

Our goal is for the grandmothers in Uganda to feel united with others in their struggle, to be able to send their grandchildren to school, to reduce the rate of poverty among grandmothers supporting their grandchildren, and to improve the grandmothers’ standard of living

We cannot do everything, we cannot solve every problem, but we can help Mary and other grandmothers. We invite you to join us in doing what we can, where we are, with what we have.

To learn more about becoming a founding grandmother (or an angel to the project), please contact us