Alice came to our BeadforLife office in Kampala because she had heard that we might help her get a little food. She and her two sons were slowly starving. "Could you please help us?" she asked in a quiet low voice, her eyes downcast. The short-term solution was to give her a small task.

Alice washed the BeadforLife dishes in exchange for 10,000 schillings. Alice quickly hurried away with the money and bought food for her family. The following week she returned to tell us that her landlord had evicted her family. When we went to investigate, we found her meager belongings and her two small sons outside a locked mud room.

Then her whole story came out. Alice had been widowed for two years since her husband died of AIDS, leaving her no income, savings, or way to make a living. She lived in a one-room mud house with Valentine, 3 and Emmanuel, 6. Both she and Emmanuel were HIV+ and sick. Alice was getting HIV care but her son was not so we immediately had Emmanuel seen at the Pediatric Infectious Disease Clinic at Mulago Hospital.

His immune system was severely compromised and he was in danger of dying. Emmanuel was immediately put on lifesaving anti-retroviral medicines.

We gave Alice a cleaning job and began teaching her how to roll beads. When Alice sold her first beads she fell to her knees, tears streaming down her face. "Is this money really mine? All of it? God is good!" She had earned $18…the largest amount of money she had ever made in her lifetime.

As she improves her beading technique Alice can anticipate making about $80 a month and participating in other community development projects with BeadforLife.

She has asked us, on behalf of Emmanuel and Valentine, to thank the good people in North America who are buying beads. "Waybali Nyo."