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The Maxons' Mission Year Newsletter - January/Febuary 2010 / 02.28.10, 06:35 PM
CHRISTMAS
The Christmas season was quite eventful for us here in LaGrange. We had a few Christmas celebrations: one with the community kids, another with Zach’s coworkers from Habitat, one with the teen mothers and their kids at Twin Cedars and the last one with our friends at the Jenny Jack Sun Farm the night before we flew back to Iowa.
We were so thankful to spend time with our family and friends in Iowa over the holidays. It energized us for our next seven months in Georgia! We drove back safely in Zach’s 1984 Caprice Classic. We’ve received numerous offers to buy the car down here! That big, old “hoopty,” as we’ve heard it called, is a hot commodity with the young African American men who add new rims, bright paint and chrome. We’ve been told to keep an eye on the old Caprice!
After a couple days back, we had a light snow here. It melted immediately, but most schools started two hours late the next day. Recently, we had a heavier snow, and everybody was outside playing in it!
JUBILEE PARTNERS & THE MLK, JR. MARCH
In mid-January, we were very fortunate to visit Jubilee Partners, a community in Georgia that practices sustainable agriculture and takes in refugees from all over the world, helping them more easily adapt and adjust to life in the United States. We spent three days learning about the structure of their community, spending time with its diverse members and eating with the whole community for every lunch and dinner.
We also went to the historic Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration in downtown Atlanta that weekend. We participated in the march and met many passionate people there.
SSAWG
In late January we attended the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group Conference in Tennessee with our farm friends. We attended numerous sessions and workshops on sustainable agriculture and were inspired by farmers of all ages and from all places, working to bring responsible, healthy food to their communities, like we’re trying to do.
GARDENS & CHICKEN COOOPS
Over the last month, we’ve worked hard to plan garden projects and chicken coop buildings in local immigrant communities. Zach is building a coop prototype with one of our immigrant neighbors, Arturo.
Margareta is slowly translating gardening information into Spanish with Arturo’s wife, Norma. We hope to create community gardens in two immigrant neighborhoods by spring and provide a few families with coops and chickens.
ZACH AT HABITAT
Work at Habitat is going wonderfully! We’re almost done with our first house and I’m getting the hang of this “volunteer coordinator” thing. With our busy Mission Year schedules, I haven’t been around every weekend to help build, but I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to put up a house. We will be building another house that I’ll be in charge of coordinating soon!
LATINO PERSON OF THE YEAR
Anton Flores, our Mission Year and Alterna director, received the Person of the Year award from the Atlanta Latino newspaper. “Atlanta Latino is the largest independent Hispanic newspaper in Atlanta. The paper, which also runs a Hispanic television station, serves the Spanish-speaking community living in the Atlanta metro area. Each year readers submit names for the Person of the Year award. A panel chooses finalists and the winner” (LaGrange Daily News, 9 Feb. 2010). We’re thankful to be working alongside and learning from him.
VOLUNTEERS TEACH SEWING TO SINGLE MOMS
by Sherri Brown, staff writer for LaGrange Daily News
Dec. 31, 2009
Seams, hems, armholes, facings and even darts. Seam gauges, straight pins and tracing paper. Chauncy Austin is learning to sew, and it’s a lot more complicated than she expected.
“I wanted to learn to sew so I could make my own clothes. I started with making clothes for my daughter,” she said. “It’s not as easy or as fast as I thought it would be.”
The 20-year-old single mom is sticking with the project, though. She was the first to request sewing lessons through Circle of Care, a program that works with teen mothers with the goal to prevent a repeat pregnancy in the teen years.
“We want to empower our moms,” said Circle of Care coordinator Dedtria Jackson. “We teach independent living skills to help them graduate from high school or get a GED and get a job.”
Along with tutoring and other independent skills, Jackson has implemented a program for volunteers to teach the young mothers cooking, nutrition, sewing, parenting and other practical skills.
Margareta Maxon is a volunteer two days a week with Circle of Care, teaching sewing classes one afternoon a week. Maxon, an Iowa native, has been sewing all her life, beginning as a child by making clothes for her Barbie dolls. She gradually picked up skills for sewing clothes for herself and others, and is passing along that knowledge to the teen mothers.
It’s proving to be an unexpected challenge for the moms.
“It’s harder than I thought,” admitted Teresa Staples, who is making a dress for her 2-year-old daughter, Kionna. “But it’s fun.”
Circle of Care is funded through a grant from “Promoting Safe and Stable Families,” but there are no funds for sewing supplies. Donated supplies and a sewing machine got the girls started, but Jackson hopes that more donations will come in.
“We’d love to have a sewing center. Right now we have to share the few items we have,” said Jackson, who also is recruiting more volunteers to teach sewing and cooking skills.
(* Thanks to the readers of this newspaper article, Circle of Care now has its own sewing room stocked with donated machines, fabric and supplies. So far, the mothers have been working on clothes for their children and tote bags. One pregnant teen is happy to have a diaper bag just in time; she’s due in 2 weeks!)
THANK YOU!
We want to thank everybody who graciously donated towards our year of service over the past six months, especially in December when the funds were doubled. We could not be here, doing what we’re doing, if the people we know and love (and some people we don’t know, but still love!) were not supporting us. Thank you for blessing us with your gifts and helping us do good work here.
Stay in touch!
zachmaxon@gmail.com / 712.348.4025
margaretamaxon@gmail.com / 712.348.2333
1712 Jackson Street, LaGrange, GA 30240
www.missionyear.org/blog/maxon
http://picasaweb.google.com/margaretamaxon/MissionYear0910#
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Hi! I just have to say that Pete and I LOVE to read about the stuff you two are doing with farming and chicken coops and community gardens! We just started getting into gardening recently and dream about one day supplying all the food we need to live on, or at least having a big garden and some chickens! We really hope we can continue the work you guys are doing when we’re down there next year. Hopefully we can talk more about it sometime! Keep up the great work!
Cherilyn :)
By Cherilyn / Mar 5, 12:00 AM / #