This morning, LGH's Amberle & Andrea Reyes, who are currently running an LGH booth in Columbus Circle, NYC, were highlighted in an article reflecting an interview with the Daily Record in New Jersey.

"Rockaway Twp., NJ, sisters helping Ugandan woman earn a living"

Rockaway Township native Amberle Reyes was working at a mental health center in Alaska about two years ago when she began searching for an organization she could volunteer with.

During that same year, her younger sister, Andrea Reyes, had been volunteering and traveling through Africa, and fell in love with Uganda, telling her older sister how wonderful the people there were.

In her online quest for a group to link up with, Amberle Reyes found Light Gives Heat, and went to Jinja, Uganda for four months in November 2008 to volunteer with the Colorado-based organization, which helps Africans help themselves by providing them with income in exchange for handmade goods to be sold in the U.S.
"I just found myself agreeing with them and believing in their mission, and their vision," Amberle Reyes, 28, and a 2000 graduate of Morris Hills High School, said. "They were looking for a director and a designer and I said, 'I know those people. That's me and my sister.' "
The Reyes sisters have spent the last year of their lives thousands of miles away from home dedicating themselves to the organization that is providing something desperately necessary in Uganda: consistent income.

Light Gives Heat was founded nearly four years ago by Dave Hansow, 29, and his wife Morgan Hansow, 28, while they were in Uganda adopting their second child: a little girl named Jadyn.

Amberle Reyes is the in-country director for Light Gives Heat, managing the day-day activities of the organization in Uganda. She is currently trying to develop a workplace standard - a human resources guide - where the African workers can know what to expect from Light Gives Heat, and can also know what's expected of them as product makers. Andrea Reyes, 24, and a 2004 graduate of Morris Hills High School, is director of product development and creates designs for jewelry makers.

Every week, Light Gives Heat pays 93 bead rollers - a group of artisan women who are part of a group called Suubi, which means "hope" - to make necklaces. It pays 12 tailors a monthly salary to make purses by hand. In Uganda - where steady work is sparse- consistency is empowerment and brings with it a sense of security.

Jewelry makers get about 40,000 shillings a week - or about $20 - to make necklaces. Tailors get paid anywhere from $80 to $150 a month.

With a steady income, the women, most of whom are war widows and refugees from civil war in Northern Uganda, can send their children - and the several other children they are often raising - to school. They can get their hair done. They can eat better. They can go to a doctor. They can open a bank account. "It's a sense of pride; a sense of, 'I have a job.'

I think those are kind of universal feelings in any community ... I think that improves the feeling of self worth. They're not getting hand-outs," Amberle Reyes said. "These women are now the heads of their households. They're the ones that are going to feed their families and pay their rent, and they're learning the skills to do that."

The bead makers often call Suubi, and Light Gives Heat, the "husband," or, their provider, Andrea Reyes said, because the organization provides them with income. Since Light Gives Heat began paying these women for their wares, their salaries have nearly doubled, from $12 a week to $20. And the tangible evidence that Light Gives Heat is making a difference can be seen in something as simple as the women getting fatter because they can eat more, and a woman being able to send all five of her kids to school, Andrea Reyes said.

"Every single Friday, when I put that money in that woman's hand, I know that she's going to be able to feed her kids. She's going to be able to pay for her school fees," Andrea Reyes said.

Dave Hansow, who these days is running Light Gives Heat from Colorado, said life is "super messy" in Uganda. "Throughout their messiness, our hope is to continue to provide them consistent income," Hansow said.

While Uganda has seen postive economic growth in this century, the east African country is still subject to armed fighting among hostile ethnic groups, rebels, armed gangs, militias, and various government forces that extend across its borders, according to the Central Intelligance Agency World Factbook.

Amberle is heading back to Africa in January to keep managing workers, and Andrea will be stateside working on product sales until March. Right now, Amberle and Andrea are visiting their parents in Rockaway and fending off blistery cold weather at the Holiday Market in Manhattan's Columbus Circle, where they are selling the jewelry and hand-made bags that allow them to continue paying Ugandans for their work.

Though the Reyes sisters are constantly working to help Ugandans, certainly, they think, the benefits are mutual. "No matter what we do in Uganda, however much we help in Uganda, Uganda gives a lot more to us," Andrea Reyes said. "In America, we need Uganda as much as they need us."

Written by The Daily Record's Vanessa Vera Roman: 973-428-6574; vroman@gannett.com