Rebuilding The Lives Of Thousands Of People

After the Pakistan floods has devastated Pakistan, James’ daughter Hanah Caan identified an opportunity to empower over 600 people to give them a chance to rebuild their lives. The disaster left millions of people with nothing. Lots of organisations provided food, blankets, shelter and in some cases rebuilt entire villages.

Hanah recognised that giving them back their livelihood was extremely important and so set to work alongside Muslim Hands, an International aid agency based in Pakistan.

Together they embarked on a programme to identify specific skills needed by families in order to rebuild their lives. In some cases people wanted to become a hairdresser, in other cases a tailor, butcher or a farmer.

Nevertheless, their objective was to provide the specific training and development needed in order to give them the skills to build own business.

The programme gave individuals sufficient working capital to purchase tools and resources which enabled their business to become established. The project was a resounding success; it reenergised the village, re-established the economy of the village and gave people hope for the future. James visited the village 5 years on to see how families where doing.

He came away with a sense of tremendous excitement after witnesses first-hand how empowering people made such a difference to them and enabled them to get back their livelihoods, dignity and more importantly the financial security to support their families.