Hands of Hope - Gardeners Doing Something Important

This is a great story about one group of women and how they’ve made a difference in the world. Read it. Go the website. Make a donation - this is important stuff.

Hands of Hope is a community of women helping women in crisis - particularly women in Africa. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that Africa is one of the hardest hit areas for women. You can name just about any country you like - from South Africa with the aids epidemic wiping out families so that only the children and grandmothers are left - to war-ravaged places such as the Sudan where women and children’s lives are cheap and carelessly discarded.

My daughter has been to Sudan as part of her work and told gut-wrenching stories that still bring tears to my eyes when I remember them. I simply can’t imagine living them. And I don’t mind telling you that it took me a long time to write this because every time I think about those stories, I simply tear up (like I’m doing right now).

This Chicago area group of women decided that a great way to raise money - to pass it along to those women who weren’t as fortunate as they were - was to have garden tours.

We’re not talking about your basic let’s take a look at a garden type of tour. We’re talking about the “The Barrington Country Garden & Antique Faire”

We’re talking million dollar landscaping jobs - the kind you can only dream about and see in the magazines. These women open their properties and charge folks for the privilege of seeing their gardens. And the folks in Chicago eat it up and attend - heck, when Mayo and I went this summer (Mayo was speaking) there were at least 3-4 school buses running between the gardens all day ferrying visitors (you can’t drive because the parking would be impossible) between gardens. Heck, they had me drooling and I’d kill for a few of the “guest cottages” on my own place.

We’re talking seminars, shopping like your life depended on it (somebody’s does) and enough food and music through the garden to sate any appetite.

We’re talking hundreds of volunteers taking care of thousands of tourists.

Bottom line. This is a million dollar operation and all the proceeds go the Hands for Hope.

These garden tours count for something beyond mere voyeurism.

The money goes to NGO organizations that work directly with the women and children in several African countries - this is no admin-bloated organization. And the organizers here work directly with local politicans smoothing the way for the work to get done and enlisting those who want to help their people.

So.

What are you doing with your garden tour? Something as good - something that will make a difference to people’s lives the way these women are making a difference?

And if not. Why not.

Want to check it out? Go to the Hands of Hope website and make a donation. Or volunteer to work next year. Or write about it - spread the word that there are gardeners making a difference.

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