Join Us As We Travel To Lusaka Zambia In May 2020
We are excited to return to Lusaka Zambia in 2020 to continue the ongoing mission of Sew Powerful. The trip will focus on support for seamstresses who are working to create a better world for their families and community. The trip will also include a wonderful collection of activities that will help trip participants learn about economic, social, and cultural aspects of life in Zambia. Plus lots of time with the incredible seamstresses, teachers, and children of the Needs Care School. Tentative, (but probable) Trip Dates: May 15-25, 2020.
Learn More About The Trip
The heart and soul of Sew Powerful is the sewing cooperative in Lusaka. Together we'll work to assist these powerful ladies in their mission to make a difference in their community.
Where Is Lusaka Zambia?
Lusaka is the Capital City of Zambia a country of 14 million people. It resides just above Zimbabwe and Botswana.
Lusaka has many modern aspects including a nice mall, hotels, good hospitals, and terrific restaurants. It also has a huge population living on less than $2 a day. It has 1 million orphans and 1 million people with HIV/AIDS.
Prepare to meet the cutest kids on the planet and let them into your heart.
Our Destination - The Needs Care Centre
The Sew Powerful program resides at a community school that was founded by Esther Mkandawire over ten years ago. It is called the "Needs Care Centre". Esther is the driving force for helping orphans and widows in her community.
The school has over 1,400+ students, literacy programs for adults, a clinic, soap making group, and the Sew Powerful sewing cooperative.
If you love children - your heart will be filled as you work at Needs Care and hear the stories of the children and families.
Trip Eligibility: We consider this a donor recognition and education trip, not a missions or work-trip. The reason is simple, we want to make sure your contributions to the program are not all spent on you (your travel, your lodging, your meals) but instead represent just a portion of your overall contributions to the program. Therefore, we request each donor:
- Financially Support The Program: We ask for a $6,000 giving commitment over the next 30 months. The pledge can be completed with a one-time gift prior to the trip, or trip participants can sign-up for a monthly recurring donation of $200 per month, which must begin before the trip occurs.
- Join Us In Prayer: We will conduct group Bible Studies every morning and pray together throughout the trip. So having a comfort level participating in these discussions and activities is vital.
- Advocacy For The Program: In addition to personally giving, we are looking for people who are ready to begin fundraising, advocating, or volunteering to help us grow. This is the purpose of the trip – to equip you to be an ambassador.
- Travel Permissions: You have a valid passport and are physically able to travel to Zambia.
Cost: The trip cost is $3,900, which covers all expenses: Airfare from your city of departure, hotels, food, in-country transportation, safari day, and entry and exit taxes. This is not a charitable donation, is not tax deductible, and does not count toward the pledge amount.
A few hundred dollars per traveler is also included in the trip cost to cover the trip costs for Jason and Cinnamon, which is important for you to understand. The only trip cost not included is tourist souvenir purchases.
Flights: The flights are arranged and paid for by us via our travel agent, so there are no mistakes and no drama. We are happy to use your frequent flyer miles, but do not allow you to book your own travel. During the process we work very closely with you to ensure your airport, seating, and other preferences are noted.
Travel Route: Generally, the best (and cheapest) flight is via Emirates airlines and goes through Dubai. But this is subject to change each year.
Lodging: The team will stay at a very nice, clean, and comfortable hotel in Lusaka. Imagine a nice Holiday Inn Express. Prior groups have stayed there and really enjoyed it. You'll enjoy a restful nights sleep, wonderful breakfast, access to very good wifi, and other comforts of home. The hotel is next to a large mall - so there is access to anything and everything you could possibly need.
Meals: We will eat meals together and ensure we accommodate any special food issues/needs/Allergies. Unless otherwise noted,
- Breakfast - we will plan to have breakfast at the hotel.
- Lunch - we will be served lunch at Needs Care Centre. This will be what you might consider "adventure eating" as the ladies make us regional favorites. Deep fried whole fish, oxtail stew, and other regional specialties. All delicious.
- We will eat dinner each night at a local restaurant together.
Sewing Project Days: Assisting the Sewing Cooperative will be one of the primary trip purposes. It will include:
- Training the ladies on new product strategy and sewingtechniques.
- Working with the ladies to finish the Sew Powerful Purse project and distribute purses that have been completed.
Secondary Activities: We realize that not everyone on the team is going to understand how to help with the sewing project. The good news is that the sewing project resides on the campus of a school with over 1,400 students. There are lots of activities that we can help with from assisting teachers in classrooms, to helping cook, photography and video, and even home visits.
We will also visit several different program locations related to Sew Powerful and the Sew Powerful Purse project.
We will work to ensure that every team members has a set of activities they are comfortable with - and will affirm their purpose in going.
Safari Day: We will take (at least) one "debriefing day" to visit a regional safari destination. This will include a relaxing meal and a wonderful tour of safari lands where we can see the local wildlife.
Extended Safari Trip: If enough people in the group want to extend the trip by 3 extra days, we can travel to Victoria Falls. This will cost an additional $2,700, but it is the trip of a lifetime. It includes staying at a hotel in Livingstone and seeing Victoria Falls, Rhinos, Elephants, and other exotic game.
Jason getting way too close to a huge lion
Draft Trip Itinerary: This may change slightly, but as of now, the trip will look like this:
May 15th, (Friday), Depart flights From Your local airport.
May 16th, (Saturday), Arrive in Dubai (overnight stay) We all rendezvous in Dubai and travel to the hotel together.
May 17th, (Sunday), Travel To Lusaka
- Morning Breakfast at hotel.
- Mid-Morning flight to Lusaka, land in Lusaka at 12:35pm
- Early afternoon – Settle in at the hotel.
- Late afternoon visit Lusaka Mall - Dinner.
May 18th, (Monday), Visit Needs Care
- Morning - Greeting Ceremony
- Lunch on - site.
- Afternoon: Program Overview, (school, clinic, sewing cooperative).
- Dinner at Levy Mall.
May 19th, (Tuesday), Program Day 1
- AM - Program teams working in locations, (Sewing Cooperative, Clinic, School).
- Lunch on - site.
- PM - Purse Distribution @ Needs Care
- Dinner at Levy Mall.
May 20th, (Wednesday), Program Day 2
- AM - Program teams working in locations, (Sewing Cooperative, Clinic, School).
- Lunch on-site.
- Afternoon - Program teams working in locations.
- Dinner at Levy Mall.
May 21st, (Thursday), Program Day 3
- AM - Program teams working in locations, (Sewing Cooperative, Clinic, School).
- Lunch on-site.
- PM - Program teams working in locations.
- Dinner at Levy Mall.
May 22nd, (Friday), Program Day 4
- AM – Travel to One Chongwe Area (World Vision Location).
- Lunch on-site.
- Afternoon - Purse Distribution with World Vision
- Dinner at Levy Mall.
May 23rd, (Saturday), 3 Esthers Farm Visit
- Plants trees
- Learn about the food crisis in Southern Africa
- Help around the farm
May 24th, (Sunday), Tourist Market Visit & Team Debriefing
- Tourist Market in the morning.
- Protea Lodge (depart at 10am)
- Lunch at 1pm.
- Team debriefing discussions/conversation 1-3pm.
- Return to Lusaka late afternoon.
May 25th, (Monday), Departure from Lusaka & Return Home
- Departing Flight for those not going to extended Safari. Flight path is Lusaka to Johannesburg, Johannesburg to Dubai, Dubai to home. (No overnight in Dubai on return trip). You arrive home on the 27th (the longest day of your life).
- For those going to extended safari – Monday includes a short Flight to Livingston where that adventure begins.
------- Optional Safari Itinerary --------
May 25th, (Monday), On To The Safari
- 1 Hour Flight To Livingstone
- Transit to Victoria Falls Hotel.
- Evening visit to the Falls & dinner
May 26th, (Tuesday), Victoria Falls
- Breakfast together
- Depart for Safari to see Elephants and White Rhinos
- Dinner Together
May 27th, (Thursday),
- Breakfast together
- AM - Guided Tour Of Victoria Falls
- PM - Depart For Livingstone Airport
- Fly from Livingstone To Johannesburg, Johannesburg to Dubai, Dubai to Home. (no Overnight in Dubai on departing flight). Return home Thursday May 29th after the longest day of your life.
Trip Timeline / Milestones:
Application Deadline: February 1st, 2020. Please complete the application and confirm your participation before this date.
Non-Refundable Deposit: We are asking everyone provide a 1- time non refundable deposit of $100 to confirm your interest at the time you submit your application. This will be applied to your trip if you go. If you end up not going, it will be considered a donation. You can make your donation via paypal. Our paypal email is Jason@sewpowerful.org. Or visit www.sewpowerful.org/donate
If we end up having 24 people express strong interest we will consider setting up a 2nd trip either just before or just after this one, (in this case Jason and Cinnamon will stay over to host both groups).
$1,000 Deposit Deadline March 1, 2020: To ensure we can purchase the airline tickets at a good rate we need to get them early.
Final Payment Deadline: The remaining balance of your trip costs needs to be submitted no later than April 15th, 2020. Checks should be made payable to: Sew Powerful. We can also take paypal payments (so you can use any credit /debit card).
Next Steps #1: You can submit your application totally via email: Simply email Jason@sewpowerful.org (or alternatively jason@libertyjaneclothing.com) and include the following information:
Full Name:
Email:
Phone:
Address:
Please Answer The Following Questions:
Your Best Airport To Depart From?
Do Have a Valid US Passport?
Have you read our book We Are Sew Powerful?
Have you made purses for our Sew Powerful Purse Program?
Are you ready to make the financial commitment?
Next Steps #2: You can submit your non refundable $100 deposit via paypal at: Jason@sewpowerful.org
Questions & Final Team Selection: We will work as quickly as we can to finalize the team and confirm. Once finalized, the team will use a private Facebook group to begin communicating, do trip prep, answer questions, and getting to know each other. If you have questions that will help you decide whether this is the right trip for you or not, please don't hesitate to email us, we are happy to share more as needed and jump on a phone call to chat about it.
Thank you for considering going! If it's not right this year, maybe it will be next year.
Jason & Cinnamon Miles
jason@sewpowerful.org