09/27/2026
Dear Friends,
Yes, as you have noticed from my new Facebook cover photos, I have just returned from Madagascar again. Thank you for your affirming responses to my photos. And thank you for the prayers and donations that have helped the people of Toamasina move towards recovery from Cyclone Gezani. Every textbook, notebook, pen, blackboard, and piece of chalk for the 14 literacy centers that serve some 850 adults were blown away. The menstrual hygiene teaching materials for hundreds of young girls were lost to the wind and the rain. Rooftops, personal possessions, food, and newly built latrines were destroyed. Your kindness and generosity helped CRMF make repairs in the city and countryside, rebuild the Dispensary Antsiramandroso that serves the rural poor, supply medications at the dispensary and at the clinic that houses the maternity project. The progress is visible.
And yet, what Madagascar gives me, surpasses anything CRMF provides.
CRMF and our partners at St. Gabriel have a project that promotes financial independence for poor women called the Women’s Self-Help Group program. Small clusters of women like the one pictured below – usually 10-12 – band together and promise to save money on a weekly basis despite their meager earnings. In this way they build up a pool of savings which they lend to one another so that their individual small businesses can grow. They may raise chickens or produce handicrafts, sell street food or vegetables. And every week, they save part of what they earn. But here is what is extraordinary and inspiring. In addition to what they put in the savings pool, they contribute a small amount to what they call a “social fund.” And this they reserve to help any member who suffers a setback, an illness, a death in the family. Despite their poverty, they help one another grow their businesses and they care for one another in time of need. These women may only earn the equivalent of $5 or $6 a week, but they invest in the wellbeing of one another. They know they are better when they work together. They know that the success of one is a success for all. They know that small acts of kindness matter. My regard for them is unlimited.
I think of these women when I visit the city prison because small acts of kindness are all CRMF can offer to the more than one thousand malnourished men, women and adolescent boys who reside in that decrepit, crumbling structure built in19th century to hold 200 prisoners. We fund three literacy centers there and our CRMF team celebrates International Literacy Day with them, distributes certificates (see the photo below) to those who have completed the adult literacy course and passed the government test. The graduates testify to the importance of literacy. They feel empowered even though they may not know when or whether they will be released. And CRMF can only offer them small acts of kindness: a meal with rice and meat instead of crushed cassava, a television to replace the one destroyed in the cyclone, a soccer ball and a basketball for the adolescent boys (one of them only eleven years old), a tiny grant to begin raising poultry. I sit under the canopy erected for guests, looking into the faces of a thousand of my sisters and brothers and I wonder what they are thinking. Do these small things matter in the face of so much deprivation? Then I think of the women in the Self-Help Groups and their social funds. Every small act of kindness says, “You matter. You have value.”
As we leave the prison, an administrator asks me if CRMF would help replace the medicines lost when the cyclone destroyed the infirmary shelving. She shows me the new shelves the prisoners made to house medicines. They are empty. I take the list and again I think of the women who, in their poverty, give and save towards the wellbeing of one another. Small acts of kindness matter. They acknowledge the worth of the recipient.
As a child I learned that we are all – without exception – made in the image of God and that each of us carries that image within us. A God of Love does not organize us in order of importance, social standing or wealth. We are all loved equally and equally deserving of dignity. The Self-Help Group women of Madagascar remind me that God acts through the small gestures of kindness that ennoble and empower others, wherever we are, whatever we do. Here in one of the world’s poorest countries, you have helped us do with love small things that make a difference. And for that, I thank you.
With sincere gratitude, Ginny
