Each year, HOPE celebrates a client who demonstrates HOPE’s values of perseverance, compassion, character, and creativity with the Thurman Award. Established in honor of HOPE’s first CEO and his wife, the Thurman celebrates clients who have not only experienced change in their own lives but have also extended that transformation to others in their community. Over the previous few weeks, we posted the stories of this year’s winner and four honorable mentions to the blog. Today we celebrate the final honorable mention, Lelah* from Central Asia.
In a cramped, 10-by-16-foot room in Central Asia, Lelah worked tirelessly to provide for not one family but three. After her husband’s two brothers died in wartime conflict, she took in her widowed sisters-in-law and their eight children, caring for them along with her own four children. When her husband’s chronic shaking and loss of muscle control left him unable to work, Lelah found herself the sole provider for 16 people.
![Before Eveness Mulungu joined the Walusungu (“mercy”) savings group through our church partner in Malawi, she faced days where she and her family ate animal feed because they couldn’t afford human food. But that changed when she joined the savings group. Eveness used her first group loan of about $1.70 (U.S.) to start a business selling doughnuts and beans.
“By the end of my first cycle I made $140 (U.S.),” Eveness shared. “My life is no longer the same now; [I] was regarded as no one in the community. ... This was the first time in my life that I ever touched and owned big money like this!”
Pictured: Eveness, with her husband in front of their piggery—a third successful business that she operates.](https://blog.hopeinternational.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)