In 1998, Mary Steiner and daughter Shawn traveled to the east Africa as part of a volunteer organization. They were confronted daily with poverty of an unbelievable magnitude: the unemployment rate often soars as high as 85% in some areas, the water supply is contaminated, AIDS and other diseases are endemic, and families struggle just to stay alive. The suffering they witnessed quickly challenged Mary and Shawn to do more than they could accomplish within the organization with which they were volunteering.  They decided that they had to set out on their own.

For months they traveled through Uganda and Kenya. They were overwhelmed by the generosity and warmth of the people who welcomed them into their homes. The Kenyans and Ugandans, in turn, seemed overwhelmed that these two women from the US really cared about them. They met with hundreds of women, who at great personal risk, were involved in women’s economic self-sufficiency groups, sharing seeds and proceeds from their crops with each other.  They visited schools where a hundred children crowded into one room and sat on dirt floors.

The turning point came one night in Tororo, Uganda.  Mary and Shawn lay in a small dark hut and listened to the wailing of women and children who were pouring out their grief because the last remaining man in their village had died of AIDS. Mary and Shawn knew they had to do something.

As they continued their journey they heard from people in the villages that many, larger organizations had attempted to help them, but they had ultimately failed because the organizations had not asked the people what would help them most to succeed.  Mary and Shawn decided that the foundation of their work must be the establishment of trusting relationships with the people they hoped to help.  They resolved to talk to the people and ask them what they really needed to rise out of the grip of poverty.  Mary and Shawn vowed that the money their organization raised would go to empower the people of Uganda and Kenya. To help them become self-sufficient. To allow them to maintain their dignity and to preserve their culture while they worked hard to provide for their families.

Mary and Shawn gathered stories of hunger, illness, struggle and despair. But remarkably, they also gathered stories of hope and determination. As Mary wrote in one of her letters, ”We expected to meet poverty. We met people.”  And although they had little to give, their presence offered hope to people eager to rebuild their poverty-stricken villages.

In May of 1999, Mary and Shawn gathered a small group of women in their apartment in Minneapolis and explained that they wanted to start a nonprofit organization to help the people they had met in Africa.  They wanted the organization’s approach to be one of transformation, rather than merely direct aid.  The goal of the organization was to ”fund the start up of community projects, train groups for economic self-sufficiency, and develop ways of meeting the medical and educational needs of the adults and children.”  They would work person-to-person and maintain trusting relationships with the people of the villages.  At the end of the meeting Mary shared the story of Elijah Omolo, a young man she had met in Kenya who was dedicated to helping his people.  He told Mary, “What we really need is access to information and education. We need people to give us wings.”