Our Hope Community Learning & Library Project 2022
The gift of learning & community
Three words: children, learning, hope. We want to create a place where people will be given the gift of learning, of experiencing community, of finding their paths. It’s a place where we create more seeds into the minds and futures of children in ways that will far outlive that moment. This project is close to our hearts.
Hope Bridge Projects
The Hope Bridge arm of Stories of Home (SOH) creates opportunities for us to make some difference in our community, from giving book grants to exceptional children in rural communities, to offering capital support to breadwinners in slums, bridging the gap between wishing for good and doing good, between hope as a belief and hope as a reality.
Our Community Adoption Model
We adopted Sogunro community in October 2019. This is the first for us, and we have become a part of their community. Our goal is to build some support for them over time, through scholarship programmes for the children there, supporting the community's fishing occupation, giving them medical care and access to free potable water, among others.
The Hope Conference
The Hope Conference is our annual gathering to share some of the stories we have gathered in person, draw out more ways of helping our society, surprise needy families through donations, and generally do more as a community of hope in and for Africa. In August 2019, we organised our first Hope Conference. There, we had some of our Hope Icons come in to share their stories, people whose experiences touch the very core of our hearts. We customised and exhibited some merchandise to create profits which we used to help our community project later in December. We also rewarded an exceptionally brilliant boy, Elijah, and his mother.
Financing Our Projects
We have often raised funds through contributions from our friends and families, people we are most thankful for. As we do more, we are exploring more ways of raising donations and special contributions to support our work in the community. We also have the Quarterly Contribution beginning in 2021. Here, we ask you to join us through making any contributions once in each quarter of the year.
Community and beyond
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SOH COVID Cash Relief
During the pandemic lockdown in Lagos, we reached out to families to offer support. With the help of our Friends-in-Hope, we brought relief to the homes of widows, elderly members of our community and low-income families. As we closed the relief, we did so really thankful for what we could do and the support you gave, and very hopeful that everything will be fine.
Recycle and Sanitation
In 2020, we worked with Sogunro community to engage in a sanitation project through recycling waste materials from their community. It was in stages. Our team partnered with the Africa Clean-Up Initiative (ACUI). We showed them how to identify recyclable waste. And in December, they joyfully filled their sacs and fishing nets with recyclables, in exchange for some cash record. It showed how we can partner with local communities to make things better, that we can each do something to make change happen, and that regardless of being so depressingly poor, this community has some of the birghtes smiles you'll ever see.
December Hope Tradition
Every December, we find ways of helping our community. In December 2019, we went to Sogunro to distribute food items and clothing, and to train them in skills (bead making, baking and soap making) to support them financially. This December, in the spirit of Christmas and joy, we will be giving cash gifts randomly to people around us. It'll be for those who normally are unable to afford good Christmas meals. Random, Cash, Kindness.
