Friends! Aschalew Abebe here, Help One Now Global Empowerment Director and Ethiopian Local Leader!

After casting the vision for the Family Business Program years ago, I’ve seen the incredible impact this program has made on my community, and I now have the pleasure to travel to Help One Now’s seven other partner countries, meet with their leaders and oversee the empowerment work. I recently had the pleasure to visit my good friends John and Orpah Chinyowa in their beautiful country, Zimbabwe!

Welcome to the final part of our series, Walking Together in Hope. I chose the title of this series very carefully. While we have unpacked a lot of challenging information in this series, I ultimately knew that hope would be the common theme through it all; finding hope amid suffering by leaning on God and our community, discovering hope by working through our feelings, and asking ourselves difficult questions, and finding hope and joy by depending on God.

In the second installment of this series, Genessa spoke beautifully about how we can process painful experiences together and work towards joy. In this article, I want to dive a little deeper into biblical joy and how we can access it amidst global and personal experiences of suffering.

In the last installment of this series, Chris introduced the true meaning of partnership and what it means to walk through suffering together. He talked about how visiting our partners in their communities, sharing stories and updates, and supporting the work on the ground are intentional ways to build connections. All of these opportunities allow us the incredible honor of experiencing life alongside our partners and the people they serve.

“Onward with Hope.” My friend Carlos signed off on a conversation earlier this week with that simple phrase, and it hit me right between the eyes. I keep hearing from so many people, including the ringing voice inside my head, that life is overwhelming right now. Our world is sooverwhelming. Everything is hard…..

March is Women’s History Month. To celebrate, we asked women in the Help One Now family to answer two questions: What does empowerment mean to you, and how can we live lives as individuals that empower women?

Meet Alice and Patrick Isiko!

They live in Buwenda Village, near Jinja, Uganda. Their life is not much different from other people in the village. However, one thing that is unique about them is their deep desire and passion for caring for the least of these.