Features

By Christina Endres

Imagine a mother of over 100 children. When that mother walks down the street, even more children beg her to be their mom. Imagine that even harder than providing for so many, is having to say no to all the rest.

Carol McBrady doesn’t have to imagine. As the founder of the Zambian Children’s Fund and Action for Children in Zambia, she works in the streets of Zambia to give sick and at risk youth a chance at health, education and community.

“My mission is street children. My goal is to take children off the streets and provide for them and get them on to a real life,” she says. “It is my belief that each child should be restored to the purpose God planned for them.”

In Lusaka, Zambia, Carol runs Salvation Home through Action for Children. At Salvation Home, Carol and the University of Zambia students who work with her provide a residential treatment program. The kids receive basic medical care, behavioral and/or drug counseling and have help transitioning back to the community. Children with serious health issues are taken to the hospital and sometimes Action for Children receives help from Dr. Tim, a doctor from Minnesota who runs a private clinic in Zambia.

A large emphasis is placed on the role of Salvation Home as another family in the community. The children receive educational help and learn English there (the dominant language spoken in the government and businesses), but attend the community schools like anyone else. They go to church in the community just like any other family. If they don’t go to school, the teenagers enter a work program and get jobs at hotels or other businesses. “We function as a family and we want our children to behave the way other families in the neighborhood behave,” Carol explains.

To help provide for all the children, Carol has started the Kulanga Bana farm, which means “keeping our children” in the area’s language, called Bemba. Carol’s goal for the farm is to be able to provide more food for the kids, and also to provide some funds through selling what is grown. For those children who don’t have homes to return to in the community, she hopes to create homes on the farm where groups can live together as a family. There are currently 12 teenagers living at Kulanga Bana. At Salvation Home there are about 35, and in the community, where Action for Children continues to provide education and health care, there are about 54.

How does one become the mother of dozens? It doesn’t happen quickly and it doesn’t happen without tremendous commitment and hard work. In 2001, Carol’s church organized a mission trip to South Africa, where she and her group worked in squatter’s villages. After working in South Africa, Carol wanted to go back to Africa and had been planning a trip to Zimbabwe when political unrest and violence forced her to change her plans. A friend had a contact in Zambia, so Carol traveled there instead. “That’s when I met the street kids and fell in love,” Carol says. “I left a piece of my heart on that first trip.”

The eager-to-learn children living on the streets, many without parents, inspired her to return. Carol soon became frustrated with the limitations of only being able to help for a short period of time before having to leave again. She would leave money to pay for a child’s schooling, only to return the next year and see the money had been used for something else.

After several years, Carol received an opportunity to teach a class at the University of Zambia. Through the research process, she and her students were trying to find organizations that were working directly to help kids on the street, and aimed to figure out what was actually working for the children. Despite Carol’s orders to try harder to find systems that were successful in directly helping the problem in a long-term way, her students informed her there was no such organization.

“Finally, my students said, ‘It’s you! You have to do it; you have to stay,’” Carol says. “I never had any grand plans to start two international organizations and change the world, ever. I just kind of got up and took one day at a time and responded to a need.”

And it has been working. Carol’s two international organizations, Action for Children located in Zambia, and the Zambian Children’s Fund, which helps fund Action for Children and is located in Minnesota, are growing and proving to be successful. The two organizations are registered jointly with the same board and constitution and both must follow the Minnesota Charitable Giving Act.

Carol founded Action for Children based on her research at the university and an idea to try something different. She sold her house and used her own money to start the operation in Zambia. She uses funding directly for the kids, living with them at Salvation Home. The organization has no office, because an office requires rent. By cutting down on expenses for running the organization, they hoped to be able to use the money they did have for things the kids needed, not things the organization needed administratively.

“We had a thesis when we started this and we were right,” says Carol. “With a lack of overhead, you can use the money directly for the child and it makes a difference forever in that child’s life. That’s the cool thing; we showed you can make a difference in Africa but you have to spend the money differently.”

It has been a challenge to prove to Zambians she is there for the right reasons. When Carol first arrived to run Action for Children, things were very difficult. “What happens is they see you as a white person, and then they say give me the money and get out of here,” she says. “When I stayed permanently they didn’t know what to do with me.”

Now, though, Carol says she has a great relationship with the local people. Taxi drivers help her out and give her time to pay them back. The police and vendors call her when there is a child in crisis on the streets. “It takes a lot of time and you have to show that you are not going to just leave them, that you really want to make a difference,” she says. “You have to prove you’re sincere.”

Carol doesn’t get along with quite everyone. She says she has problems with the government and some others who don’t necessarily want Carol solving the problem of street kids in her grassroots way. Last year, the children at Salvation Home were forced to leave by social welfare and Carol was threatened with deportation. Many of the kids ended up back in the streets, but slowly they came back to Salvation Home. Despite the challenges, Carol doesn’t let the government’s disapproval stop her because she knows what she is doing is working. The local people can see its working too, because teenagers who used to be dealing drugs in the street now have jobs in the community after coming through Salvation Home’s work program.

Despite her acceptance by the locals, Carol has no chance of blending in. Children and adults recognize Carol, the only white woman in the community, as she walks through the city. She spends several days a week out in the streets doing general first aid and playing with the children. Those children that do not live with her at Salvation Home beg her to take them home.            “It’s overwhelming. There’s just so many of them,” she says. “I’m trailed by 20 kids, all wanting to come home with me. It’s hard to turn them down.”

People have called Carol crazy for trying to do what she is doing. Home for a visit to Minnesota for the first time in three years, Carol isn’t sure she disagrees. “I can’t say I’m not a crazy woman,” Carol says with a laugh. “But at least my craziness is working for the children.”

The first two weeks home were a blur of exhaustion and catching up on sleep followed by the opportunity to spend time with her mother and sister, catch up with friends and get some much-needed rest. However, just like any mom, Carol was lonesome for her children in Zambia.

When friends from home question her decision to quit her job as a teacher in Minneapolis and move to another country, Carol can confidently say she believes she is doing the right thing.“I love my work. When you look at the whole thing I’m doing I can’t say I’ve ever felt more content,” she says. “I get to be a part of a miracle every day. When you love your work, it’s just that simple.”

As her organizations have started to really grow and succeed, she says, more people have shown support. “Once you prove you’re sincere and once you can see the whole thing is working, then people get on board.”

A social worker originally from Maple Lake, Minnesota, Carol has worked with teenagers all her life. She worked in schools as a social worker, in alternative education and in juvenile correction facilities. Because of her strong commitment to helping kids in Minnesota, when she decided to start Action for Children in Zambia, some friends understood right away and said simply, “Oh, that’s just Carol.”

While in the States, Carol plans to start the planning process for growth for her Zambian Children’s Fund and Action for Children. “We need to develop the farm so it can feed the kids and generate income. There’s a couple business ideas the kids want to start,” she says. “We need to grow this model because it is working.”

Much of the reason it is working is because of Carol’s strong commitment and selfless attitude. She truly cares about the children she works with and, as the only mom they know, doesn’t want to let them down.

When asked to tell the best thing about living in Salvation Home one little girl responds, “Well, here I have a mom.”

“I think sometimes it’s that simple,” Carol says. “Kids are kids in every country, no matter what. What kids need starts with a mom, or some parents. You know, if you simply respond to the needs around you, you will make a difference and sometimes that difference is a forever difference. I think that’s what Zambian Children’s Fund is all about.”