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PottersHeart – Bringing Hope, Transforming Lives…One Village at a Time
PottersHeart is a Christian Adult Education Charity, working in the some of the poorest parts of the world. They support communities who have lost all hope for a brighter future. Villages way beyond the end of any tarmac road. Uneducated villagers, struggling to survive…struggling to feed their families, every day. All of the money they raise goes towards supporting these precious people and their communities.
They believe education is the key to unlocking futures. The aim is to see people working their own way out of poverty. PottersHeart strategies build independence and sustainability, rather than dependence on the next hand out, as is sadly so often the case in many parts of the world today. They see the adults as the missing link. Most education in third world countries today focuses on the children; giving them a future. But unfortunately, if they don’t teach the parents and grandparents things people take for granted, these children won’t survive long enough to see the benefits of that education!
Through local and UK based volunteers, they provide structured, often quite basic, education and training in hygiene, healthcare, nutrition, farming and business skills, parenting, marriage, and so much more… They began working in the Nakuru District of Kenya’s Rift Valley, in 2015. Since then they have seen lives changed and families restored; hope, once dead and buried…rise from the ashes of despair. They’ve seen businesses started, communities transformed, and countless lives saved. And they want to do more… They want to expand the work of PottersHeart beyond the Rift Valley, to poor, uneducated communities elsewhere in the Africa…and other parts of the world. They operate a simple, transferable model, based on a few core principles: • Training is always led by need, whether real or perceived. • They never teach led by western perception and assumption. • They never presume they have the solutions. • Instead, they teach in the gaps…..to help dispel the myths and to bring revelation about how local people can help themselves…. • They treat them as friends, precious people with huge untapped potential…..not their latest pet project…… • They commit to sticking with them until they are teaching others…. no matter how many trips it takes. And there are challenges. In rural communities, like Kenya’s’ Rift Valley, the people struggle to get to the training from their villages. Partly because of the terrain, in drought or flood. Often because of the lack of transport and the sheer distance on foot……
Their plan is to build a Training Centre centrally located for the 10 villages they support. Managed and staffed by a trusted local team. Connected globally, providing training as needed from anywhere in the world, and no longer only during their twice-yearly visits from the UK. They envisage a multipurpose building with rooms to hire to the local communities; making it self-funding once built. With appropriate accommodation and catering facilities for the delegates and trainers while on location. The site will also have a borehole, providing clean water for the hundreds of villagers living around the centre.
PottersHeart UK In the UK, PottersHeart is also a vehicle for community development. For so many people in the UK today, not being able to work, whether through unemployment, retirement or ill health, leaves them without a purpose… and often alone. PottersHeart offers lonely people a safe environment to gather together, to make friends, and to think outside of themselves and their circumstances. The current ‘vehicle’ they use to make the groups non-threatening and attractive is a craft, coffee, cake and a chat…but it could be anything! They know it works…and the groups are thriving.
Pottersheart PottersHeart UK has hard and soft evidence of the benefits experienced. People who’ve lived in loneliness for months, often years, are now enjoying life with friends, a common purpose, and hope beyond themselves. Others have been able to reduce painkiller usage because knitting and crocheting have become a ‘diversion therapy’. Through sharing the stories and slideshows from the mission trips, they have been able to introduce their ‘friends in the UK’ to their ‘friends in Kenya’. People who would probably never have the resources, or desire, to travel to these villages, have become part of improving the lives of those less fortunate than themselves. Receivers have become givers. And a by-product of these groups is fundraising for PottersHeart overseas mission. The UK community groups make craft items for sale, hold weekly raffles and offer refreshments for a donation. A win-win situation! They currently run groups in Potterspury (Northants), Nettleham (Lincs), Birmingham and newly launched Bognor Regis. Their vision is to replicate this transferable template into other areas of UK, and they are currently looking towards launching a PottersHeart Group in Central Milton Keynes. They truly believe that when potential is released communities thrive….anywhere in the world!
Release ID: 246258