Who We Are
Stories of Home (SOH) is organisation that finds, shares and preserves life experiences of Africans that demonstrate hope, faith and resilience. These stories come in any form, from the story of you reaching a mark you always aimed for, to adopting a child and watching her become a young woman you are proud of; from the first day you decided to become your son’s personal tutor, watching how this changed his life, to how you led your company through a time everyone thought would have broken you. It is the story of our individual strengths and victories as Africans, wherever we are, whoever we are. These single stories come together to tell our collective story. The range is wide: faith and spirituality, home and parenthood, overcoming disease, helping students of a public school at your village, daring to make a difference, or the story of your dream coming true. In each story, we do not look out for popular people, or perfect stories. We only need them to be true and enough to inspire others. We look out for our everyday heroes here, from Africa.
The second thing we do at SOH is we work with underprivileged communities and children to support them in different ways for a number of years. This support ranges from providing clean, free water supply to them, to offering free medical and educational support to the members of that community.
Collecting Our Stories
Writing, Sharing and Preserving
We look out for these stories, and try to stay as attentive as we possibly can. When we learn of a story, or a person whose experience we would like to share and preserve, we reach out to the person/group/family to ask if we could write their stories. Following this, we usually would have two options for collecting the story: either we write, or we ask you to write your story in your own very words. Each story runs for about 3 to 7 pages. If we write it in your behalf, we send it back to you for your assessment. Once all settled, and following your approval, we put the story here, in our collection for others to read and draw inspiration. Each person whose story we share is a Hope Icon in our Hope Community, and we hold them every one of them dearly.
Hope Bridge
Community Adoption and Work in Community
SOH has a second major arm called the Hope Bridge. Our goal here is to find ways of helping our community. So far, we’ve used our community adoption model, where we work with one community at a time. This allows us to closely understand the needs of the people in that community, and to find ways of helping them in a long-lasting, meaningful way. From 2022, we’ll begin to explore new ways of helping our community and choosing projects for to make specific kinds of impacts for specific groups of people in our community. We shall carry you along as we make our decisions. Apart from the adopted community, we also give out different aids to members of the larger community quarterly, from offering book grants to giving medical support, and giving financial assistance to people in distressing situations.
Everything Hope!
SOH is also called the Hope Community. Here are the units that make up our Hope Community.
We are owning Hope!
Hope Community
This is everyone and everything involved in all we do at SOH, at any capacity. From the team, to our volunteers; those whose stories we tell and preserve, those who we have supported; our partners, our families and friends who have made contributions; our adopted community; our projects; our stories; the heart from which we do the work we do. You also are a part of our Hope Community.
Hope Family
The Hope Team and the Hope Volunteers form our Hope Family. Everyday we come together to make decisions, choose projects, create plans, give our time, run with our vision, we do this together as a family. What connects us is our common heart to help, to keep showing up to do the best we can, for others. Love, laughter, and warmth.
Hope Stories & Podcast
Everyone whose story we tell and preserve is an icon of hope, and their stories are stories of hope. They inspire us by how they respond to life moments. Once anyone shares a story with us, s/he immediately becomes a part of our Hope Community, reminding us to never stop doing our best, to never stop dreaming, to never stop believing.
Hope Media
Our social media platforms are a way through which we interact with the larger community. Some of our Hope Tags are #HopeIsAnAttitude, #HopeIsACalling, #HopeIsALanguage, and #Hope. Our tagline is "Strengthening Hope". And our Hope Quote is, "Hope allows us choose the colour of an unknown tomorrow, and to hold a certainty that it will be beautiful."
Hope Partners
To the ones who support us, who make contributions and donations, who give suggestions, who respond to our calls, who give us advice, who help us do better: you make what we do meaningful. Thank you. You are our Friends-in-Hope. And we value each one of you.
Hope Stores
Our Hope Stores open December 1, 2021! And we are so excited about this because when you buy any of our Hope pieces, you give a gift to those who we help. SOH uses all the profits from the Hope Stores to do more for our community. As an NGO, it's a way we can raise more funds to do more for others.
The SOH Hope Team
Ifeosa Anwulika Nkem-Onyekpe
Founder
Anwuli enjoys spending time with God, family, and community. Joy, grace and kindness are some of the words you'll hear her say a lot. Historian of poverty and rural economies, she is currently enrolled in the PhD program at the Department of History, Harvard University. She also runs her podcast, Scholarship by Grace, in honour of God's grace.