On Perth Tonight Chris spoke to a Perth Couple who uprooted their lives to start a not for profit in Zambia.

Michael and Christine Mesiti founded House of Hope Africa to empower vulnerable members of the community.

Michael told Chris they build the organisation slowly.

“We used to do a lot of short term mission trips around the place and after a period of time when you use all your annual leave and your funds to do all these short term things…you realise that we actually might be able to pull this off by ourselves and start an organisation over there…and fill a gap that might exist for our skill base,” Mr Mesiti said.

“I think you’ve got to ask other people…what kind of job are we doing…we train up local people to do the job,” he said.

“We always involve the locals…for the first six months while we were doing this job, we didn’t say anything..we just asked question.”

“Money is going to run out…we worked in child protection for many years in Western Australia and… I remember a mother, who was an addict saying to me you can give me all the money in the world to help my children but I’m spending it on drugs.”

“We can feed and clothe maybe a thousand kids but at the end of the day what’s that doing for the community?”

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