Thank You for Colored Pencils!

Have you ever given thanks for colored pencils? This young girl at St Bakhita School is definitely grateful for them. Can you tell how engrossed she is in the experience of creating art?  Perhaps she will be the world's next Gauguin or Picasso.  Or better yet, she could become South Sudan's first world-renowned artist.

Join me today in saying THANK YOU to all of you around the world who support Mercy Beyond Borders. You're working miracles, great and small.  You're saving girls from early marriages, enabling them to pursue careers as educators and nurses and journalists and agronomists. And you're putting colored pencils into the hands of budding artists!

A WONDERFUL, WARM, MEMORABLE & HAPPY THANKSGIVING to ALL of YOU from Mercy Beyond Borders!

It worked!

MBB scholars at St Bakhita Secondary School stand amazed at having created light in their science class through the marvel of electricity.  Most of us in the West take electricity for granted, but its presence is more than enough to elicit "oohs" and "ahhhs" from these girls who are now deciphering its mysteries through lessons in circuitry.

On a deeper level, it is these girls themselves who promise to be the light of their young nation. MBB is not seeing any "brain drain" among its Scholars. Quite the contrary: as soon as they finish their university studies, they get jobs within South Sudan, eager to serve despite the volatile and dangerous conditions that persist.

Do You See What I See?

When a team of optometrists from Lions InSight came to Gros Morne, Haiti, with Mercy Beyond Borders this past April to conduct vision screenings for 1,000 children, most of the students who needed corrective lenses got them immediately, Several dozen others, however, needed specialized prescriptions not readily available.  Their eyeglasses arrived at the end of the summer, just in time for the opening of school.  

Do you see what I see? A girl who won't get  headaches every week from squinting. A girl who can both see the blackboard and enjoy reading books. A girl whose chances of doing well in school (and in life) have increased dramatically.  Thank you, Lions InSight. Thank you, MBB. 

Sign right here, please

What does it take to register women for health services in the most remote parts of South Sudan? An intrepid young nurse like Grace Layet, a graduate of Mercy Beyond Borders' scholarship program and now a practicing nurse in rural Kuron Peace Village.

Grace, sitting on the striped blanket, is enrolling women for the clinic's health outreach services. Of course, none of the women surrounding her was ever lucky enough to go to school.  None of them knows how to hold a pencil, much less sign her name. Grace walks each one through the enrollment process and patiently answers their questions. She first learned their local language (Toposa) while she volunteered for a yearlong pre-nursing internship with MBB. Now she's a full-fledged RN, back at the same place, using her skills to improve maternal/child health.  We salute you, Grace!  By your commitment to work where the need is greatest, you epitomize the MBB spirit of "paying it forward."