OneVoice

06/22/2018

Amid the deluge of daily news, this may have been understandably lost in the shuffle: Nicaragua, where OneVoice has worked and made friends for 3 years now, has been experiencing civil unrest and government sponsored violence. As a result, Coco Loco, our gome when we come to visit, is temporarily closed, and many of the friends you see here--including Lester, Maria, Gustavo, and so many others--are out of work indefinitely.

If you are inclined to help these people who have given us and their community so much, we encourage you to click on the link below.

It is with heavy hearts that over the past few months we have witnessed growing civil unrest in our beloved Nicaragua. What started on April 19th as peaceful protests over social security changes quickly escalated into a nationwide movement when the government responded with violence against the...

11/07/2017

Want to sponsor a 2017 graduate in Nicaragua and enable them to go to college? OneVoice has. Watch this fabulous video of the many young people who have inspired and become dear to us. It includes Exma and features Samir, our 2017 recipients.

You can help too: http://www.waves-of-hope.com/

10/19/2017

We are thrilled to announce the recipients of the first two OneVoice-sponsored University Scholarships in Nicaragua!

Exma Nohemi Lopez and Samir Esau Erazo Condega are part of the first graduating class at the local El Manzano High School, built a short 4 years ago by our friends and partners at Waves of Hope.

Exma has an infectious smile and enthusiasm that lights up any space she enters. She intends to study computer engineering systems. Samir is a talented percussionist who seems up for anything on the spot--from learning guitar or marimba to audio engineering. He intends to study English and tourism.

They are just two among a graduating class full of extraordinary young people, all of whom will receive scholarships through Waves of Hope. Congratulations to all of you! We love you and are bursting with pride!

Jamie Collum Ben Connor

08/17/2017

We are excited to announce that Crayola has become an official supporter of our CreatED programming, donating art supplies to select schools and communities in the OneVoice network. Earlier this year, Robbie and his son Ethan (pictured here at the Francisco Laguna Elementary School) delivered the first $1000 worth of Crayola markers, whiteboards, paints, brushes, and crayons to several schools in our partner community in El Manzano Uno, Chinandega, Nicaragua. Thank you Crayola!

03/31/2017

One of our favorite people ever--Kakenya Ntaiya. We visited her school, the Kakenya Center for Excellence, for a week in 2012 during which we sang, danced, and painted hearts with her students. The girls' heart paintings helped raise money to provide heart surgeries for 13 children with congenital heart disease in Nairobi. Kakenya is not only empowering her girls to help themselves, but to help others as well. That, and, as you can see, she has the best laugh/smile ever.

07/05/2016

On the flight home I sat next to a man from Seattle. We got to talking as people do and when I told him I'd been in Lesvos working with refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and elsewhere, he turned curious but uncomfortable, and said:

So, do you have an answer to all this?

He meant a political answer, I think. No, I don't have an answer, I said. In fact, I have only more questions now. But here's one place the questions seem to have led me:

We belong to one another.

Both the Talmud and the Koran tell us that to save one life is to save the world entire. Though I've always thought that was incredibly beautiful, I have no idea if it's true. Here, in the camps, the world shatters into so many pieces even the word broken ceases to hold meaning. Judgments, solutions, analysis, blame are no longer of use to me. There is only Life: your suffering and mine, your joy and mine, rising and falling and rising and falling. And the growing inability to discern any separation between the two leaves room for nothing but the shared uncontainable ache of being.

That's it. It's not satisfying but it's all I've got, I said to the man from Seattle. He nodded but I could see he already had one eye on the tv. The rest of the time we talked about soccer.

The people in the photo below did not belong to one another before they got to Pikpa camp. Sultan is 19 and from Pakistan. Maria is 2 and from Syria. But they belong to one another now. They belong to me too. And I to them.

Photo Credit: Pippa Samaya

Lesvos Solidarity - Pikpa

06/30/2016

Waiting.

It's the most useful skill one can aquire at Pikpa camp. Residents wait for activities, volunteer visitors, and, of course, for the asylum interviews that will hopefully be the first step toward the first day of the rest of their lives.

Mohammed, just 17 and from Syria, is here alone and wants to become a computer engineer. Earlier this week he was granted asylum in Holland but the journey to a new country is not always a direct one. We've received an update that he became indefinitely stuck in Athens.

Waiting once more.

Lesvos Solidarity - Pikpa

Photo: Samaya

06/28/2016

No problem? asks Sahar, pointing at my guitar.

This is her favorite English phrase. She is 14 years old and has recently arrived from Afghanistan with her father and younger brother.

No problem, I answer, handing it to her. Sahar has played my guitar every day since I’ve been here. She asks me to teach her chords. Play sad one, she says, smiling easily.

On the fifth day I finally ask her about her mother. She points her finger in the air and makes the sound of a gun going off.

Taliban, she says.

Her mother was a teacher. Her mother played guitar.

Fighting back tears I want to run out of the camp toward the sea, the sea that carried her here, the sea in which I can dive and scream and be washed of the world’s brokenness. Instead I look in her eyes—the ones that have seen too much--and tell her how sorry I am.

She begins to play.

No problem, she says.

Photo: Pippa Samaya Lesvos Solidarity - Pikpa

06/26/2016

"It's not possible" says Navid, a newly arrived refugee from Pakistan. He holds up his freshly bandaged right hand.

"Yes it is", insists Pamela, our visual artist, as she leads him toward the mural we are collectively creating at Pikpa Camp.

"No. It's not possible", repeats Navid even more firmly, explaining through the international language of hand gestures that he is right-handed.

Pamela gestures back that she is right handed too and then puts one paint brush in her left hand and another in Navids left hand.

They paint side by side that way for the rest of the morning. And the next. And the next.

It's possible.

Photo: Pippa Samaya

Lesvos Solidarity - Pikpa

06/25/2016

Boredom. Despite the best efforts of all of us at Pikpa camp, this is not home and boredom and a sense of being suspended in time is never far away. Photo: Pippa Samaya. Lesvos Solidarity - Pikpa

06/24/2016

In Syria, she was a music teacher.
A first glimpse of our work with the residents of Pikpa Camp in Lesvos, Greece . . .

Video: Kuna Malik Hamad

Lesvos Solidarity - Pikpa