I’m not gonna lie, running a Non-Government Organization is no walk in the park. Gaining a good network of supporters is critical to the life of any new NGO, and in this day and age people can be very leery of supporting any non-profit; not everyone out there is completely sincere in their fundraising efforts. For any new NGO to get off the ground successfully (if they don’t already have an angel investor or benefactor behind it) you can only hope for other forces to be at work in your favor. Some would call these forces “karma” or “the universe” or they might just refer to it as, “good old-fashioned luck.” However, my faith orientation sees these things as the handy work of God. Whatever your world-view happens to be, it’s quite clear to most that there are serious favorable forces at work in the Fly Fishing Collaborative, and our recent trip to South Africa was filled with this favor.
If you’re not familiar with what FFC does, then you need to be. Essentially, we funnel angler’s passions to help rescue and prevent children from the horrible injustice of human trafficking; we help rescue kids from though Fly Fishing. This may sound a little unrelated at first, but what we do is fundraise through Fly Fishing. With the money raised, we build sustainable Aquaponics Farms for safe-homes and villages around the world, targeting places where trafficking is rampant. Because so many millions (yes, I said millions) of women and children are either forced or tricked into trafficking due to a lack of recourses, we have found that providing a sustainable source of food and income for these homes and villages can give them the recourses they desperately need. With these simple provisions they can actually be given the choice of freedom over slavery. We are putting power into the hands of the powerless.
Our experience in South Africa actually started in Zimbabwe last summer. Our two farm construction managers, Jason and Brenda Sommer, were working on one of our new farms projects at an orphanage in Zimbabwe last October. While they were in town gathering supplies for the farm they were in a parking lot talking about the needs for the project. A man in the parking lot happened to overhear them talking about Aquaponics. .