Great Profiles

The 4-foot 9-inch OB nurse curls her knees up towards her chin as she sits on her couch, black ringlets fall across her face. The movement suddenly hides her brown eyes—the gateway to ten years of life-changing memories.

“In 2002 I broke down emotionally. I came back weeping (after visiting a Mother Theresa orphanage),” said Debbie Lee. “It’s not that I haven’t seen poverty that deep. I didn’t know if the kids would survive the night.  We’re sheltered from that aren’t we?”

There are more than two million orphans in Kenya, many abandoned because of disease and abuse. But as extravagant a number as this is, one Missoula resident is determined to help see it drop drastically—one bracelet at a time

For almost two years now, Debbie Lee and her friend Colleen Briggs have made and sold jewelry to help support an orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya.  The urge to help the needy started with a visit to a Mother Theresa Orphanage, just outside the Huruma slums near Nairobi, in 2002. But that’s not where Lee’s life in Africa began.

Debbie and her husband, Brian, are staff members of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, a college ministry on the University of Montana campus. When they were in college, they were both Intervarsity (IV) members. In 1988 they decided to help staff a mission trip to Kenya.  The project was nine weeks long.

“Through IV, we began to have an interest in overseas ministry,” said Debbie. “I think it transformed both of our hearts, our minds, I guess we saw how it changed us.”
Shortly after the visit, the couple was asked to direct the trip.

“Brain laughed,” Debbie recalled. As for her, the question triggered a flow of possible ideas and ways to help the people upon her return.

“Because I was white, Kenyans believed I was more knowledgeable.” Lee said people constantly asked her for medical advice. “I felt pretty ignorant at the time and kind of helpless, wanting to care for people but not having the knowledge base.”

Lee decided to look into nursing school. “So that if and when we go back, I’d have something to offer,” said Lee.

Debbie’s eyes wander to the left back corner of her office. She smiles when they settle on a pile of peachy-pink purses made by a church in Kenya. For her, finding a reason to return isn’t hard . . .

“Oh gosh, I’m addicted! I love the people, I love being in a place where I can do something significant.”

In 1984, Debbie graduated with a degree in zoology. But after her trip in 1988, she decided to go back to school to study nursing so she could use her knowledge to help those in Kenya. Shortly after making this decision, she found out she was pregnant with her second child. Lee graduated with a degree in nursing within four years.

In 1998, the Lees decided to go back to Kenya, this time taking their first group of college students. Ten years later, the couple has taken more than 300 students to Kenya.
In 2002, the team visited a Mother Theresa orphanage. The trip left Debbie feeling drained and wanting to do more.

“I think it was . . . seeing this baby in a plastic bag, it put me over the edge,” said Debbie. She decided that sitting back and watching was not an option. “I met with Colleen over the summer and we prayed and made a commitment that day to do something to help the kids.”

Two years later, during their 2004 visit to Kenya, Edith Karau, the wife of the minister of Mathare Valley Worship Centres, approached Debbie with a request.

“We were visiting them and I remember very clearly. ‘I want to talk to you about something, I’m thinking it would be good to open an orphanage for them (kids in the slums),’” Debbie recalls Karau saying. “She didn’t ask for help or something, just prayers. But I got so excited because we (Colleen and I) didn’t know anything about going about helping. We knew this was something we needed to pursue.”

The idea was just what the two friends were looking for. They quickly scurried about trying to find sponsors and support for the orphanage. Sanctuary of Hope is administrated by adoption agency, Hope’s Promise Orphanage Ministries in Castle Rock, Colo. “It was the year for laying the ground work, and then we started to fundraise after that,” said Debbie.

In 2005, the hunt for support began. Colleen went on a news broadcast, signed for grants, and traveled between churches trying to pull in any money she could for the orphanage.

And Debbie, well Debbie spent her time recovering from foot surgery. “I couldn’t do anything for months,” she gives a small chuckle, happy to show pictures of her foot wrapped in bandages, with a screw sticking out of her big toe.

Months later, at a staff meeting at the hospital, Debbie came across a jewelry magazine, Silpada, and a light was turned on. “I thought maybe that would be a quick way for me to make some money.”

“I went home that day and called Colleen. I said, ya know, this is gonna sound nuts, but Colleen at the same time had decided to use her art for God.” Debbie’s face lights up a little after she recalls the memory. “It was really incredible.”

While Colleen was getting on her feet, learning how to make jewelry, Debbie sold Silpada jewelry on the side to bring in money for the orphanage. Sometimes she would place Colleen’s work on a small stand to give it a little more attention.

“It got to the point where people were saying ‘I want these, I want more of this stuff,’ pointing to Colleen’s jewelry.  February 2006 I started to just sell her stuff.”

After the first month of selling, Sanctuary of Hope  “picked their first child.”      Debbie said the Karau’s are so connected with the slums, they know which children they would like to take in.

Between October and March, they got ten children.

“They staggered every three weeks, until they had ten. They wanted to be a family and ten was a reasonable number for a family,” explained Debbie.

Sanctuary of Hope is now home to six boys and four girls. They also have Purity, a teacher who home-schools the youngest two children. They’ve converted the garage into schoolhouse. There’s a full time cook, Dania Karau is their full-time social worker, and they have a full-time security guard.

“I think about these kids everyday. When I get bogged down and tired, I think about Sammy, his little face. I think about him and it helps to keep going,” said Debbie, as she reminds herself what the purpose behind all those pretty bracelets really is.

Her little hands delicately arrange the treasures on her Pamba Toto display, finding angles that bring out the best of each jewel.

She stands back to admire the canvas of jewelry . . .

Reminders of her mission are everywhere.

Debbie said watching the children change over time has been quite the experience in itself.

“(When they first arrived) none of the kids knew how to use a toilet, spoon or fork. They would shovel food into their mouths with their hands, always thinking this might be their last meal,” said Debbie. “Edith and her husband have had to work with them, to prove to them that they will get three meals a day here. It’s kind of neat to see the poor experience things for the first time. Kind of puts my life into perspective.”

This February will make the second anniversary of the jewelry line Debbie and Colleen have named “Pamba Toto.” Pamba Toto means, “adorn a child” in Swahili. Their motto is “As you adorn yourself with this jewelry, you are adorning an orphan with hope and love.” Each piece of jewelry is fair trade and has a Pamba Toto tag on it that explains where it comes from and where the money for the gift goes.

As for as success, Debbie doesn’t seem too concerned.

“This week, I made $3,800 in four days.” On Sunday, while she was at a Bible study, Debbie said the leaders handed her a $1.500 check for the orphanage.  She also went to work to sell for a couple of hours and sold $700 worth of merchandise.

“I hear that all the time, that people like having a meaning behind the gift. Knowing that they’re making some kind of contribution,” Debbie said happily.

Pamba Toto has been spread across a few states now, as Debbie makes her friends jewelry kits. She has Pamba Toto helpers in Montana, Colorado, Chicago, Kansas City, and Wyoming, “That’s so far,” she said, expecting to expand even more in the near  future.

Debbie’s creating a website to grab the attention of more American consumers. “I have 500 people on my list,” Debbie said. “ What makes it successful, you share your heart and people jump on board with the mission.”

“I think it’s an amazing idea, a good way to reach out to children in need,”
said Elementary Education major Letitia Hankel. Hankel learned about Pamba Toto through Intervarsity. “It is unique, it’s not your everyday fundraising campaign. It’s very personal because it’s not a manufactured thing. It has a lot of meaning to it. It has a deeper meaning.”

Hankel has known Debbie for two years and thinks her compassionate personality suits her mission to help the orphans in Kenya.

“She’s an extremely friendly and outgoing lady who really cares about others and wants to make a difference and help others in need,” said Hankel. “Children who are in Sanctuary of Hope will have  . . . a more promising future because of the awareness Debbie has raised.”

Tiffany Wilson, a photojournalism major and Debbie’s jewelry photographer for her website, said she enjoyed working with Debbie and is excited to see how Pamba Toto works out. “ It’s a very clever way to appeal to the merchandise mentality of Americans in order to literally save lives.”

Wilson said the personal relationship between the creators of the jewelry and the couple that runs the orphanage gives their cause more credibility than other charity projects.

“ They personally knew them before they even thought of making a business to help out. It’s very simple and it makes you feel secure that it’s a legitimate organization because it’s so small and because of the personal connections between Colleen and Debbie, and Sanctuary of Hope. And I know that Debbie has her heart in it and that makes it more than a business for her.”

Each year as June rolls around, Debbie packs for another adventurous summer in Nairobi

Every summer, she’s submerged in the filth and despair of the slums, yet each June she’s ready and willing to go back for another summer— building more life changing memories.

“God says you’re responsible . . . if you see something, you’re called to help and not walk away.”