ThisWeek CW 06/06/2013
Canal Winchester resident Patty Huston-Holm is combining social entrepreneurism with education to help the women of Mukono, Uganda.
It’s part of her belief that “faith without works is dead.”
She first visited Uganda on a mission trip in 2009 with a group from Reynoldsburg United Methodist Church. Since then Huston-Holm has returned annually to Mukono to develop and implement a two-part strategy for helping children and women there.
“I’ve always been socially minded and when I went with my church in 2009 and observed how poorly women were treated, I came home and immediately started researching the issue further,” Huston-Holm said.
“I found that polygamy is legal there and helps to foster a culture where women are really abused. Many women’s prisons are full of women and their babies who are only there because they’ve spoken out against their husbands.”
In the years since that first visit, she started the Holm Works Uganda Project, which works with partners in the U.S. and in Uganda to build micro-businesses and to provide college scholarships, allowing the women to become more independent and better support their families.
It is the micro-business development that brings Huston-Holm to the Canal Winchester farmers market.
“I noticed how the women worked so hard to support their families but were paid so little,” she said. “I’ve never been one to wear a lot of jewelry but I saw some of these women making beads and then jewelry from old newspapers and magazines. They use paste made from the cassava plants and paint them, taking what would be trash and making beautiful art.”
Huston-Holm thought she could help create jobs for these women by importing their jewelry and selling it here, thus providing them with a better wage than they could make picking through garbage dumps or breaking rocks.
All money from the sales of the jewelry and other items goes back to five women with whom Huston-Holm has developed a relationship. Everything she does on her end is a free donation of her time, she said.
“I will never need money the way they do,” she said. “One woman I met had bone fractures and all sorts of health issues because she spent her life breaking rock and transporting it to sell for the purpose of making cement, and I saw her daughter was going to have to do the same work. There was no future in that.”
Najjuma Eva is the 20-year-old daughter who is receiving a scholarship through Holm Works, Community United Methodist Church in Pennsylvania and other private donations.
Huston-Holm said for $3,000 per student, per year, the group is able to pay for room and board, tuition and supplies. Because of these donations, Eva is pursuing a degree in public health, which will result in a significantly higher standard of living for herself and her family, according to Huston-Holm.
Currently, Holm Works and its partners, including the Rey-noldsburg UMC Women, are sponsoring four students with the hope of adding more as the resources become available.
The mission for Huston-Holm is continuing to evolve and grow as well. Her husband, Mike Holm, joined her last year and has been helping with the website and online outreach. Huston-Holm, who is trained in journalism, said the Uganda Christian University — where the sponsored students attend school — has asked her to work with the teachers and students there this fall.
“It’s an opportunity to teach assertiveness, something not very common with the women there, and writing skills,” she said. “I’d like it if the students could visit one of the women’s prisons and help capture those women’s stories, particularly the ones there just for standing up for themselves.”
However, she said, Uganda does not have the same freedom of the press that is enjoyed in the U.S., so Huston-Holm intends to research Ugandan law to avoid becoming a prisoner herself.
“All of these efforts are really about making the women there smarter, educating and inspiring them to be able to start businesses and support themselves,” she said. “This is about sustainability, not just charity. I know God has put me in this place for a reason, so as long as I can go and help, I will.”
More information is available online at www.holmworks.org.