Dear Friends, 

I'm happy to share with you news of beginning a US based non-profit called Healing Hands of Joy. For the past five years I have been deeply involved with the plight of women with obstetric fistula in Ethiopia while working on the documentary film, A Walk to Beautiful and its subsequent outreach. The film follows the journeys of five Ethiopian women who suffer from obstetric fistula, a devastating childbirth injury caused by obstructed labor during childbirth, as they seek to reclaim their lives at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. After spending several months in Ethiopia during the production of the film and meeting many women with fistula, I was compelled to help these women. It was evident that curing them from fistula was only part of the healing process.  

Recently I read an article in National Geographic about two Indian doctors who had trained women who had been cured from leprosy in basic health care procedures and then sent them back to their villages to assist in raising the public health of their own communities.  It was a wonderful way for them to reclaim their lives having been deemed as outcasts because of their illness, and a way for them to provide a much needed service to their village.  My immediate thought was what a parallel this could be for Ethiopian women with fistula, many of whom, though cured, still live as outcasts from their families or at a minimum struggle to reintegrate as productive members of an Ethiopian community.  Wubete and Yenenesh, two characters in A Walk to Beautiful are perfect examples of how giving these women a purpose enabled them to reclaim their lives, but they are exceptions who probably would not have had such an opportunity if it wasn't for our intervention and the work of the film.  And so I decided to begin exploring whether or not the project of these two Indian doctors might be applicable to Ethiopian women who had endured fistula.  At the start of 2009, Healing Hands of Joy was created. 

Our recent trip to Ethiopia produced dramatic results and led us to start a pilot project in the Tigray region in Northern Ethiopia. It became clear that every woman recovering from fistula needs help reintegrating into their villages. They need psychological care, education and the means to be productive post-surgery, rather than ignored as they often are now. This was evidenced by all of the women in A Walk to Beautiful, and was confirmed by all of the NGO’s we met with in Ethiopia. 

I thank you for opening your heart to these women and helping them as you can. We still have much work to do but we hope to start our project with Ayehu, a character in A Walk to Beautiful who was cured from fistula but has had a horrible time reintegrating back into her community. She is still treated as an outcast by her family and village. We will start with this one woman when we return to Ethiopia to open the pilot project in Mekelle. One by one we can support these women's dreams and help them become independent and valued members of their communities. Our mission is to help fistula patients reintegrate and hopefully help prevent future fistulas by improving the substandard maternal health care in their community which led to their own injury. Please join us and become a Founding Member of Healing Hands of Joy.  

Warm wishes, 

Allison Shigo