Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission takes online donations for specific projects

Donors can choose among projects ranging from Nepal water supply to Botswana disabled rehabilitation

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By Pekka Mykkänen
     
      A snake slithered into the home of 35-year-old Onkabetse Kavinja when he was just five years old. His parents were sure that someone had put a curse on the boy and sent evil spirits to curse him.
      "It didn't bite me, but as soon as the snake was killed, I slumped to the ground and my legs stopped working."
      The mother and father brought Kavinja from one traditional healer to another. He remembers the fear he felt when his skin was cut with a razor, and black powder was sprinkled into the wounds. The measures did not help, and he had to attend school by crawling.
     
In 1988 he became one of the first patients at the Thuso Rehabilitation Centre for the disabled, which was set up by Helmi Makkonen, a deaconess working for the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission.
      Makkonen had wondered why she never saw any disabled people in Northern Botswana.
      "Still in the first half of the 20th century the disabled were hidden away in their homes. We have managed to change the attitudes of the families, and now the disabled can enjoy their lives", says Dickinson Samaemo, deputy director of Thuso.
      More than 3,000 disabled people are registered at Thuso, where they are offered specialised help instead of magic. For instance, the cause of Kavinja's disability proved to be polio, rather than magic.
      Today he walks with the help of crutches, and earns his living as a therapist for others who are physically disabled.
     
Thuso, which is jointly financed by the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission and the government of Botswana, now receives direct support by SMS message or credit card over the Internet via the VillageLife web site
      VillageLife is a new fundraising method set up by the Mission, in which donors can send donations to help work in specific parts of the world by clicking on targets of aid of their choosing.
      The web site has Third World villages which do not have an exact equivalent in the real world.
      For instance, a new village was reacently added to VillageLife: "The Bolito suburb in the city of Ramovango". Information officer Paula Laajalahti says that it is a composite of various projects run by the Mission in Botswana and Angola.
     
The donor can choose whether to aid in the construction of a well in Nepal, or to donate money to help the disabled of "Bolito". In the case of the latter, a contribution might help pay the wages of Venla Kurki, who lives in Maun. She has studied the Setswana language and gives speech therapy to local children.
      Anders Wikström, who heads the VillageLife project, says that it has brought in more than EUR 5,000 since the site was opened in late January.
      The average age of the donors has been about 30 years, but a few donors above the age of 60 have also indicated interest in the service.
     
The Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission operates as part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. To some people it conjures up an image of unscrupulous missionaries proselytising with ulterior motives. Laajalahti has run across message boards where some people allege that the only purpose of the VillageLife project is to convert people.
      "The old image of missionaries is hard to shake. Missionary work no longer involves men in pith helmets converting pagans under the palm trees. Nowadays we work together with local churches according to conditions set by them."
      There is much prayer in Thuso, but the disabled also learn to make clothing and shoes. The parents of the disabled are sometimes surprised when their wheelchair-bound offspring offer to chop wood or fetch water. Previously it was always assumed that disabled family members are nothing but a burden.
     
Results come slowly in missionary and development work. Mission workers Iiris Kontra and Maria Stirling, who have lived for more than a decade in Botswana, have nevertheless been able to see how progress can be fast even in Africa.
      "It used to be that when we wanted to call abroad, we would have to wait for hours for the operator to connect us. Now everyone has a mobile phone in his or her pocket", Kontra says, describing the rapidly modernised capital Gaborone.
      Samaemo says that those needing help in Botswana suffer from the country's excessively good reputation. Many organisations have moved on to poorer African countries, although there is much still to be done in Botswana, where more than a third of the population live in poverty.
     
Maria Stirling says that aid work requires resilience. She says that the world suffers from a short attention span, taking as an example the earthquake in Bam, Iran in 2003.
      At that time pledges for aid of more than a billion dollars were made, but less than 20 million dollars came through.
      Marjo Ihalainen, who trains would-be pastors, feels that the tsunami which hit Southeast Asia was a "media frenzy".
      "It is always a tsunami here when you hear that a person close to you is infected with HIV."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 24.5.2005.


Links:
  The Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission
  VillageLife website (in Finnish and Swedish)

PEKKA MYKKÄNEN / Helsingin Sanomat
pekka.mykkanen@hs.fi