Got Hope?

Dear DHF Family,

So, tomorrow is our Planting Seeds of Hope event, I am really excited to be with the 120 people or so that RSVP’d for the event! I hope we can collectively inspire one another to raise The Hope House. I always get nervous before events. I feel an innate responsibility to inspire people to want to be part of what we are doing. I suppose I do have that role to a point. But one thing I’ve learned over our more than 15 events is this: let love lead and lean into the heart. When I truly do that, the message is natural and real. I hope to see some of you Austin folks there. If you forgot the RSVP, just come.

For those of you who are not going to be with us in Austin, if you decide you want to be part of the fabric of the Hope House, I want to assure you that it will be a gift that gives back to you in more ways than you can imagine. You will tangibly alter the course of many women’s lives by opening up possibilities they never knew existed. The Hope House is born from the voices of our women, and we know that the power of leadership means guiding others to their true nature—facilitating opportunity for their greatness.

In the Hope House, women will get direct access to new skills that create income for them. During the last 6 months of 2008, we recorded that women gained a collective total of $2500 more in income due to concrete lessons they learned in our classes! That is a lot of money for women who live on nearly $2 a day. In turn, we know these women can feed their children. Through health classes, women learn hygienic habits for their families so kids don’t get deathly ill over preventable things like diarrhea. Women learn simple math literacy lessons and how to write their own receipts in their shops. Hope is born in these walls! I know I’ve spoken quite a bit about Hope House, but I just want to make sure you all have the opportunity to see it grow with us and feel connected. If you want to help, everything matters…just connect with me.

As promised last week, our 2008 Evaluation Document on our Microcredit Program Plus Program model is complete. Just click on the hyperlink for the PDF file. Many thanks to Nora who collected the research information over the course of 2008. The document is rich with women’s perspectives, photos, and looks classy thanks to the design work of one amazing Tracy Kuramoto at 9066 Productions in Chicago.

Austin Film entrepreneur Lyn Graft of LG Pictures once again created a video link featuring DiscoverHope for the Rise Austin entrepreneurs’ conference for next week. We are constantly thankful to him for promoting our work and helping people hear the messages of DHF. Check out his work about DHF “Standing for Abundance” by clicking here.

Finally, if you are on Twitter, will you follow us at /magszoe? You can help us build our family by twittering your followers a message about how www.lendhope.org inspires you (hopefully we do)!

To guiding others to their nature, MM