Help Harry Plant Hope

HARRY is choosing to PLANT hope. In a country ravaged by floods and drought, and now facing the COVID-19 pandemic with Western medicine and even soap too expensive to buy, and despite many friends being orphaned from Malaria and AIDS and his brothers and sisters going to sleep hungry most nights, Harry is planting hope.

He has just completed his training in Malawi in PERMACULTURE (ecologically sustainable ways of living & planting) and ANAMED (Action for Natural Medicine) with flying colours and has a bright, bold vision to help not just his family and friends but his local community and beyond become self-sufficient and prosper, offering resilient, sustainable, self-reliant ways to grow both food and medicine.

His vision is big.

Harry’s long term plan includes buying a piece of land to grow edible, useful and medicinal plants and trees as a community resource.

This Garden would be:
- resilient to drought and floods
- regenerate the land
- serve the local community with desperately needed food and medicines
- become a demonstration garden with a centre to run workshops
- enable large scale self-reliance and long term independence for the local and wider community.

In the immediate term:
Harry would like to START WITH A SMALL BUSINESS making and selling vital medicines and soap. In so doing, he will build a local reputation and be able to start saving for the productive, resourceful Garden & Centre.

With YOUR helping hands he could get started....

In Malawi, there are no pharmacies or ambulance services outside of the main cities.

Your donation could be helping not just Harry but MANY others on the road to good health and self-sufficiency.

You are invited to join Harry on his first step to raise:
£1,800

This would:
Pay 6 months rent for a small shop in his local village 
Buy the ingredients for simple soap making and medicines 
Enable him to start offering demonstrations and workshops 
Pay for soap moulds and other reusable equipment
Pay him basic subsistence while he starts his business

Even if you can offer just a few pounds please do, as yours along with others will build to make a HUGE difference.

For relatively small input, the benefits are immeasurable.

You will impact his entire community and beyond to on-goingly prosper independently.

Some friends have already offered to make things to sell,
so if you can’t donate right now, but happen to need to buy a mask or head-scarf or hair scrunchie or....
please take a look at my friends links, they are ALL giving 100% of their takings....

http://www.facebook.com/Makes-for-Malawi-121671002950912
for creations by Sarah Perceval
https://www.etsy.com/shop/Scrunchies4Hope
creations by my young Godson Lexington and his sister Kensington

...more links to come shortly!

EVERY PENNY of your purchases and donations go DIRECTLY to the project.

I trust and believe in Harry… 
so much so that I used my last bit of savings to invest in his training. Now his goals are too big for me to help on my own, but with your assistance he can achieve these dreams.

Other ways you can help:
SPREAD THE WORD:
PLEASE consider sharing this link to your Facebook timeline and across your social media. This offers a chance for the project to reach many more people. Thank you.

ADVICE or ASSISTANCE/ IDEAS:
Do contact me if you have ideas of ways you could help or get involved or even make things  to raise donations, please let me know! Would love to hear from you.
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THE BACK STORY
Harry was my neighbour and was in his last year of primary school the first time we met in 2011, when I worked at MOET Orphanage (Mangochi Orphans Education and Training) in Malawi. www.fomoe.org

Harry is the eldest of 8 children and in my first week his father came and asked if I’d be willing to help Harry with his English.
So every day after school we would have reading lessons together on the beach of Lake Malawi. I had chosen “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe” but before we even began he looked at me quizzically and asked “What is wardrobe?” Harry had the clothes he stood up in and a toothbrush, beyond that his home was virtually empty.
(Our view while reading together on the lake-shore)
Over the years I have watched Harry with his family live together in such joy, despite extreme challenges, while all sleeping in a tiny one room hut. They would work so hard, and in the greatest harmony. This would amaze me and touch me deeply.
(Harry in blue with brothers, sisters and me, 2016)
(Harry with his younger sisters 2020)
One night I came home to find Harry sitting under my porch light, finishing his homework. 97% of Malawi doesn’t have electricity, so once it’s dark, you can’t easily study.
Malawi is the 3rd poorest country in the world and you have to pay to go to Secondary School.
Friends sponsored Harry through Secondary School and after my last visit, seeing what a fantastic young man Harry has become, a couple of friends and I sponsored him to take a Permaculture Design Course and ANAMED Training (Action for Natural Medicine).
(Harry far right with Secondary School graduate friends, 2016)
Harry has just completed his training very successfully and is ON FIRE with passion for using his new skills and sharing them with others to find ways to help his local and wider community. 
(Harry in mask learning to make soaps on the ANAMED training)
(Harry bottom left, successfully completing his ANAMED training with "Highly Commended" certificate)
Harry wants to immediately start making and selling remedies and soap in his local village to assist all those that cannot currently afford them.

SOME GREAT EXAMPLES WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT:
If you were a primary teacher in the Tropics and you suffered from rheumatism you would have to spend an entire months wages (£20) to buy an ointment for rheumatism (50g) in a pharmacy in the capital. On the medicine packet you read that the active ingredient is capsicum frutescens. Unfortunately you do not know that this is an extract of chillies, plants which, in tropical regions, grow right outside most peoples front door. With the same amount of money, it would be possible to produce 3kg of the ointment using ANAMED principles with these locally grown plants.

When I was in Malawi, soap was considered a luxury many cannot afford. I remember going down to the lake one day when we had no running water, to wash. Local kids leapt into the water with me and their eyes grew wide when I started lathering up my soap. When it suddenly slipped out of my hands they dived under the water to retrieve it, as if it were a precious jewel.
(My neigbours in the water with me)
When Harry was preparing to travel to Blantyre to live there during his Permaculture training I asked if he needed anything to take with him? Harry rarely asks for anything but he paused and said…. “It would be amazing to have just a little money for some soap. And right now my 2 brothers and I share our clothes between us, and I don’t want to leave them without, so a pair of trousers and a t-shirt would be very helpful.”

I was really shocked when a Doctor volunteer said on my arrival in Malawi: “Whatever you do, do NOT get sick or have an accident while you are here. There are no ambulances outside of the main cities and no pharmacies either. Do you know what the most common form of transport to a hospital is? A wheelbarrow.”

I believe, particularly in these times, NO ONE should be deprived of access to soap and basic medicine.

Harry’s vision is one I too share, as I choose to grow and live in a permaculture Forest Garden here in the UK, and I experience first hand the effectiveness and resillience of that system.
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Now more than ever, in this climate of 2 pandemics, COVID 19 and racism, we need to find creative ways forward.

Some believe one way is to grow our own food, in harmony with the land, share resources and understand what plants are available and can be grown for health and well-being, thus creating self-sufficiency and the opportunity to flourish.
Let’s help our brothers and sisters have the same opportunity.
#BLM
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THANK YOU FOR CONSIDERING DONATING.
YOU can change the world.
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BACKGROUND INFO:
WHAT IS PERMACULTURE?
Permaculture is an innovative framework for creating sustainable ways of living.
It is a practical method of developing ecologically harmonious, efficient and productive systems that can be used by anyone, anywhere.
By thinking carefully about the way we use our resources - food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs - it is possible to get much more out of life by using less. We can be more productive for less effort, reaping benefits for our environment and ourselves, for now and for generations to come.

This is the essence of permaculture - the design of an ecologically sound way of living - in our households, gardens, communities and businesses. It is created by cooperating with nature and caring for the earth and its people.

Its principles are being constantly developed and refined by people throughout the world in very different climates and cultural circumstances.
It is not a dogma or a religion but an ecological design system which helps us find solutions to the many problems facing us - both locally and globally.

WHAT IS ANAMED?
ANAMED is the abbreviation of “Action for Natural Medicine”.
Natural medicine is a synthesis of traditional medicine and modern medicine.

ANAMED aims to enable people in the tropics to develop the greatest possible degree of self-reliance particularly with regard to their health, while working in complete harmony with the environment.
It combines traditional herbal medicine with scientifically based modern medical practice.
ANAMED not only promotes the medicinal benefits of certain valuable plants and trees but also how some can provide nutritious food, purify water, fertilise the ground and produce a good insecticide.

Through ANAMED we have seen already that individuals and communities have become much more self-reliant in preventing and treating illnesses, thousands of people have been treated successfully for malaria, diarrhoea and other illnesses and hundreds have found employment through growing these medicinal plants and producing these medicines.

Even nature gains from this system: planting trees (reforestation) of medicinal value not only provides medicines but also shade and rain, improves the soil, and provides food and shelter for insects, birds and animals.
This fund raiser includes investing in care for our planet.

Nature, with its trees and shrubs, is a unique pharmacy.
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Photos of planting up the permaculture and ANAMED gardens at MOET Orphanage while in Malawi:



Paracelsus, the father of medical science, said:
“the most important foundation of medicine is love”
I believe your donation is an act of love, and thus part of creating health and well-being on our planet.
THANK YOU.
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Thank you for caring enough to read this far....!
You can be part of a prosperous wide-spread SOLUTION.
Thank you for even considering joining in.
(painted on the wall of MOET Orphanage permaculture garden)
#helpharryplanthope