Today you'll hear from Allison Karnes, the founder of WRAPS. She started this ministry that makes and gives away Washable, Reusable, Affordable Pads to girls in Ethiopia. This gives young girls the chance to continue their education rather than dropping out of school because of the embarrassment that can come from not having access to feminine hygiene products once they begin puberty.
Show Links
Ed Gillentine:
EdGillentine.com
Instagram: @journey.to.impact
WRAPS:
Facebook
Donate to WRAPS:
Global Outreach
The Forsaken Children
Books:
Journey To Impact by Ed Gillentine
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Today you'll hear from Allison Karnes, the founder of WRAPS. She started this ministry that makes and gives away Washable, Reusable, Affordable Pads to girls in Ethiopia. This gives young girls the chance to continue their education rather than dropping out of school because of the embarrassment that can come from not having access to feminine hygiene products once they begin puberty.
Show Links
Ed Gillentine:
EdGillentine.com
Instagram: @journey.to.impact
WRAPS:
Facebook
Donate to WRAPS:
Global Outreach
The Forsaken Children
Books:
Journey To Impact by Ed Gillentine
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
00;00;00;01 - 00;00;22;20
Ed Gillentine
Welcome to the Journey to Impact podcast. I'm your host Ed Gillentine and I'm here with Allison Karnes all the way from Ethiopia so to Ethiopia to be exact. She's the founder of WRAPS. Alice, welcome. Thank you. I can't tell you how pumped I am to talk to you today. We started getting the idea of doing these interviews.
00;00;22;22 - 00;00;47;09
Ed Gillentine
Believe it or not, you were one of the very first, I want to say, three people that I thought of and, you know, we've been in Ethiopia basically together, but I've never met you. And so this is kind of a big deal for me. You're one of my heroes. We've got a lot of ground to cover. But before we dive in, let me give our listeners a little bit of background on you.
00;00;47;11 - 00;01;14;02
Ed Gillentine
As I mentioned, she founded WRAPS and she is the director there, and I'll let her talk about that in a minute. She got her undergraduate degree from Grand Valley University in Michigan to a degree in teaching focused in history and English. I gotta admit, I'm super pumped about the history side and I'm not a huge English fan, but, you know, you got to have teachers, right?
00;01;14;04 - 00;01;27;22
Ed Gillentine
She's happily married to Mark, has been married for 49 years. Marks and OBGYN practicing there at Soto Christian Hospital and they've been there around 13 years. Did I hit all the high spots?
00;01;27;22 - 00;01;30;04
Allison Karnes
Alison, Thank you. Did. Yeah.
00;01;30;05 - 00;01;50;15
Ed Gillentine
All right. Well, without further ado, let's jump in. Give us the CliffsNotes version of how you went from Michigan to Arkansas back to Michigan. I'm sure a bunch of of meandering trails in between. And now you are in Sodo, Ethiopia, doing some amazing work. Give us the cliff note version of.
00;01;50;17 - 00;01;54;06
Allison Karnes
Got the Cliff note version. Woo. Remember, it's been 49 years, right?
00;01;54;06 - 00;01;57;04
Ed Gillentine
I know.
00;01;57;06 - 00;02;23;17
Allison Karnes
And about 1974 I became a Christian, became a believer. I mean, it really gave my life to the Lord in 1974, I believed, but I didn't really practice that belief. Right. So I didn't know what to do. I had been in a really bad relationship and with bad friends at that time. So my mother said, Well, let's just send you out of the state and go to school.
00;02;23;17 - 00;02;48;20
Allison Karnes
So I left Michigan. I was I grew up in a suburb of Flint, Michigan, and I went to Harding University, where my husband Mark, had already graduated from. So I stayed at Harding for just a semester. And then Mark and I became engaged and we married that that year in 1974, and we moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he did his internship.
00;02;48;23 - 00;03;08;21
Allison Karnes
So in Lancaster I enrolled in Millersville State College and did a semester there. And then we went to Cameroon for five years and worked as he worked as a medical missionary in Cameroon. We had two of our children were born in Cameroon, so we came back and Mark did an ob gyn residency, and over the years we had five children.
00;03;08;21 - 00;03;31;20
Allison Karnes
We raised our five children from there. When my three of my children had finished college and my fourth child was at the University of Michigan, I just wanted to go back to school. My mother had died and that's a big transforming time in your life. It was in my life losing my mother, and she was one of my best friends.
00;03;31;22 - 00;04;00;03
Allison Karnes
And I just felt like I needed to do something different. And Mark was really encouraging to me. It was not easy to go back to school at 47, but I wanted to be a teacher. I had been an aide in the school and I thought, I'm good at this and so I'm going to do it. So I pursued education and went to Grand Valley State University when I was 47, and I graduated at 52 with a degree in history and English within No one At that time.
00;04;00;03 - 00;04;21;17
Allison Karnes
We knew we wanted to go to Ethiopia. So my goal was to come to Ethiopia and be a schoolteacher. So that's where it was. Then my daughter graduated from my youngest with five children, and our youngest, Sarah, finished at Baylor University. And at that time we lost and came to Ethiopia. So that's kind of the Cliff Note version.
00;04;21;17 - 00;04;23;06
Allison Karnes
I left out a lot.
00;04;23;08 - 00;04;43;19
Ed Gillentine
But I know you have, so we'll dig a little bit. It sounds like maybe teaching drove you to Ethiopia, but you'd already been doing medical missions as a couple. You have that in your past. What was what drew you to Ethiopia? You clearly knew you wanted to go even a little bit before you went, but talk about that for a second, correct?
00;04;43;21 - 00;05;02;15
Allison Karnes
Well, Mark and I knew that when our five children finished college, that was our goal has always been Mark's goal, to put our children through Christian college. And he knew when the kids finished college we had made a decision and the children all knew that we wanted to go back to the mission field. Our heart was in Africa and our children, by the way, very supportive of us.
00;05;02;15 - 00;05;33;06
Allison Karnes
And it's been such a blessing. They're all strong believers in the Lord. They're all doing wonderful things with their lives and they just really encouraged us to do this. And so we began we came over to Africa in 2007 and looked at a few hospitals to see if they might be a fit for us. We looked at Solar Christian Hospital, we looked at the Korean hospital in Addis Ababa, and we looked at a hospital in Zambia.
00;05;33;09 - 00;05;56;19
Allison Karnes
It was interesting with Zambia, we wanted to be close to our daughter, who lives in Johannesburg. She married a South African man and we thought that would have been a better fit for us if we could have gotten closer to South Africa. But solar was a fit for us. We had been in Cameroon, where we had every tropical disease, just about you can think of, especially me.
00;05;56;22 - 00;06;17;03
Allison Karnes
And I just asked the Lord, please don't want to go back to the tropics. And we knew we were older time and I didn't think our bodies could handle the tropics and long term we could stay. And so it was in the mountains and it's a lovely climate and I love to garden. You asked me if I had other passions and gardening is a big passion.
00;06;17;03 - 00;06;52;28
Allison Karnes
I should have mentioned that. So so I knew I could grow things. I could make this hospital beautiful and there opportunities for me to teach. So that's what I was looking for. So that's probably why we come when we felt the Lord just kind of drew was DeSoto and Soto had the Pax residency. Pax stands for Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons, and that's another amazing podcast you might want to do someday because they we train Ethiopian physicians to become surgeons, general surgeons, trauma surgeons.
00;06;53;00 - 00;07;14;23
Allison Karnes
And that really appealed to Mark as an OBGYN. He wanted to be able to train people not just save a woman's life by doing a C-section, but actually train somebody to do that C-section. So this was a very good fit for him. The Pax Pax program was relatively new at this hospital, and he is not a general surgeon, but he is a surgeon.
00;07;14;23 - 00;07;26;23
Allison Karnes
And it allowed him to do a lot of training, which she loved to do. He loves to teach. So it was a real big fit for Mark. I had to find my place here, but it didn't take long to find it. Yeah.
00;07;26;26 - 00;07;37;08
Ed Gillentine
And so did you do any teaching while you were in the earlier years before you founded WRAPS? How did that sort of transition out?
00;07;37;09 - 00;07;59;23
Allison Karnes
Yeah, it did, actually. So my dearest friend here, Jackie Anderson, had started an English training school for Students for Children and she asked me if I would teach in it. And Jackie has almost identical degree as I do with really good friends. And so she had already set up this lovely school. So I began to teach in her English school.
00;07;59;26 - 00;08;23;28
Allison Karnes
And so I had a lot of really neat students at that school. I learned a lot. It was basically teaching ESL, English, second language. And then at that time I really got close to quite a few of my students and I began a high school Bible study group. And those girls are now college graduates and it's just funny, I've been here a long time.
00;08;24;00 - 00;08;42;24
Allison Karnes
But also out of that group we got our son a baby. And so Debbie was one of my students. He was 14 at the time. He was abandoned and he was living with a distant relative at that time. And so we just clicked with the baby. So he's been in our life all these years too.
00;08;42;27 - 00;09;09;29
Ed Gillentine
So that's really awesome. I'm glad you mentioned the Korean hospital and obviously sort of Christian hospitals for people that don't know they're there, really first class. And we did some work with Marta and Demi, a little bit closer to Addison. It's just it is it's tough to get good facilities. I mean, I remember my first trip to Ethiopia.
00;09;10;01 - 00;09;18;23
Ed Gillentine
I went to I can't remember if the numbers go up or down, but whatever the lower clinic is, is it like a three or is one I forget?
00;09;18;29 - 00;09;21;06
Allison Karnes
yeah, we have like a one, two and three.
00;09;21;09 - 00;09;24;01
Ed Gillentine
Yeah. Which one's the better one.
00;09;24;03 - 00;09;24;27
Allison Karnes
The three.
00;09;24;29 - 00;09;47;13
Ed Gillentine
Is three. So I would have been in a one and I remember this kid from the street that we were working with and they just invited me to go with them and he was I had him hooked up to an I.V., made out of a 7UP plastic 7UP bottle, as I recall, and, you know, reuse and needles and all that sort of stuff.
00;09;47;13 - 00;10;12;28
Ed Gillentine
That's just it's just really hard talking about it sounds let me back up. It sounds like with Mark's work and then what you're doing now with the WRAPS, there's definitely a connection. So tell people what what is this WRAPS we keep talking about? Is it a thing? Is it an organization? And and kind of what what was the genesis of it?
00;10;13;01 - 00;10;45;24
Allison Karnes
Okay. Love to It's my passion. So WRAPS is an acronym for Washable, Reusable, Affordable pads. One of my dear missionary friends came up with that name as we were brainstorming many years ago. WRAPS came about because I had read a very, very small paragraph in the book Half the Sky. Half the Sky is a book that deals with the troubles and problems that women have in the world today, meaning half the sky or women.
00;10;45;28 - 00;10;55;09
Allison Karnes
Okay, so the book is really good. And I was reading this, the book and this just how things can sunlight pop off the page. You know.
00;10;55;13 - 00;10;56;17
Ed Gillentine
I'd.
00;10;56;20 - 00;11;15;21
Allison Karnes
Be reading something like, Wait, I didn't know that. Or, Wow. And that's what happened to me with that paragraph. It just leaped off the page and I just sat and looked at that and I thought, I never thought about this. So it said that so many girls in Africa were missing school because of their menstrual period and because they're missing school.
00;11;15;27 - 00;11;38;04
Allison Karnes
They're not moving forward in school and they're dropping out. And it just was this today like, my goodness, this never occurred to me. And I'd been in Africa at that time. I'd been in Cameroon five years. I've been here probably or been here for years when I read that. So seven years in Africa and I never even thought about it.
00;11;38;06 - 00;12;04;10
Allison Karnes
So as God would do it, if all these big things would come in my way, all of a sudden I'm hearing about other people doing this ministry or somebody else is making pads. And I went home to Muskegon, Michigan, where Mark and I are from now. That's our home base right on Lake Michigan. And we were having a little get together for supporters of ours and many people would come to the house and what are you doing?
00;12;04;10 - 00;12;31;14
Allison Karnes
What are your next plans? And that's why I'm thinking my might make these men so bad. I don't know. I feel like God is is wanting me to do this. And they said, well, there's an organization right here in Muskegon doing it. And I thought, my goodness, this is right at my back door. So I met with some different people in the Muskegon area that were sewing and making washable sanitary pads, and they were just so helpful and gave me a pattern and encouraged us.
00;12;31;17 - 00;12;52;11
Allison Karnes
And I just felt like I was supposed to do this. So we picked up a bunch of sanitary pads that they had made and I brought it back to Ethiopia and I showed them to my different. There's a large group of missionary women here, their husbands, most of their husbands were doctors here. And so I had them in my backyard and I said, Look what I brought.
00;12;52;11 - 00;13;14;21
Allison Karnes
What do you think? And I'm thinking about doing this. And most of them said, Well, that's nice, but they weren't interested in doing it. But my friend Inga Bird Roth is Norwegian. She's lived next door to me. She said, I'm in. I've never thought about sheep in Africa for years, She said, I've never thought about this. Both of us are like guilty as charged.
00;13;14;23 - 00;13;42;04
Allison Karnes
And she said, I'm in. Let's do it. We didn't know what in the world we were getting ourselves into. I'm telling you, we were just felt like we were supposed to do something. And we started reading a lot about it and we began this ministry, like completely clueless. But she is a brilliant seamstress, okay? And English with English is also teacher, retired teacher, so she's a brilliant Norwegian.
00;13;42;04 - 00;14;05;05
Allison Karnes
They learn in school how to crochet and they do everything right and I don't so so this was the funny part about this whole thing is I don't love to I mean, I can so but I don't love to sew and she loves to sew and she's good at it. And so we started with two people in her house and she began to train them how to sew.
00;14;05;08 - 00;14;25;00
Allison Karnes
And remember, these women really had never even picked up a pair of scissors. This is not something you do Like we in kindergarten, you learn to hold safety scissors. But these women had never even health scissor. They'd never cut cloth. They never So they could, but they could crochet. So somehow they cut. But they probably cut the date with a machete.
00;14;25;06 - 00;14;42;25
Allison Karnes
That's how what they would cut or not cut their legs. And so it took us a year. And in this house she would train them a couple of days a week to teach them to sew straight how to clean the sewing machines and that type of thing. So we didn't really even make any pads for about a year.
00;14;42;27 - 00;15;01;19
Allison Karnes
And then we started coming up with a design and playing with designs and we would just crack up because she's really funny and she's really funny and she would come over to my house and she'd be she'd take a sanitary pad that she'd sewn and she'd start like moving it and she'd say, Look at how loud it is.
00;15;01;19 - 00;15;22;20
Allison Karnes
The plastic is so loud. And we would just crack. She would just crack up. So we'd try every plastic we could find in Ethiopia. What are we going to put in this pad as a waterproof barrier and we couldn't find anything. And then eventually we went to the Mercato in Addis Ababa, which is the largest market on the continent of Africa.
00;15;22;22 - 00;15;23;02
Ed Gillentine
Yeah, it's.
00;15;23;03 - 00;15;23;15
Allison Karnes
Kind began.
00;15;23;18 - 00;15;25;06
Ed Gillentine
Intimidating Place.
00;15;25;08 - 00;15;47;21
Allison Karnes
Is an intimidating place, but you always want to take an Ethiopian with you because it's terribly intimidating and you get lost. But I went there and began hunting fabrics, and so we found vinyl in the mercato at that time. So vinyl doesn't crinkle. So we used vinyl and we found some flannel and we found a lot of nice products at that time.
00;15;47;21 - 00;15;54;06
Allison Karnes
And that's how we kind of began with all of our products were coming out of the Mercato Yeah.
00;15;54;09 - 00;16;08;06
Ed Gillentine
So we started what year was the was the, the genesis of this when you and Ingo were like, Hey, what's going on? And then how long did it take before you were sort of really doing it?
00;16;08;08 - 00;16;34;26
Allison Karnes
Okay, so we started in 2014 and like I said, she trained almost a year, maybe six months in her house. And then I asked the hospital had a lot of shipping containers that were just empty or empty. And I asked, could I have a shipping container to start this business? And so they met, discussed it, and they said, Well, you can have half of the shipping container.
00;16;34;28 - 00;16;56;22
Allison Karnes
I was thrilled with that. I thought, That's great, you know, So I got get I love flowers, I love gardening, I love making things beautiful. That's what I did before I started reps. I worked at the hospital making the grounds really nice. So we put I planted flowers and I put a new windows in the shipping container and we painted it and made it put better lighting and we really made it.
00;16;56;22 - 00;17;18;16
Allison Karnes
It was really nice. You could have lived in it. So we started with just a couple of home sewing machines and Angie's husband is x ray. I want to I was going to say radiologist and but he's really good with carpentry. His dad was a furniture builder, so he helped me, made some furniture for us, tables and things, and we took off.
00;17;18;16 - 00;17;43;03
Allison Karnes
So we started making the kids. But you can't imagine. You can't make very many out of a home sewing machine. But we had we hired four workers at that point and we started making these pads and we started first experimenting with taking them around and giving them out for free. So we took them to our cleaners at the hospital and we did a little training and then we took them to some of the nurses and, you know, trained.
00;17;43;03 - 00;18;09;16
Allison Karnes
And then from there we took it to a private school in town and did like one class, maybe six graders. I can't remember now. And we gave these these pads out free and so we just kind of developed and we created a different pattern over time. We found that the pattern that they'd given us in the US wasted too much cloth and we didn't.
00;18;09;16 - 00;18;29;25
Allison Karnes
The cost is way too expensive here and we were going to give these away and sell them. So we had to change our pattern and we tweaked it quite a bit. So it took that. So we grew slowly, slowly. But the shipping container wouldn't hold more than four workers at a time. It was really quite small and again, we're just using these whole machines.
00;18;29;28 - 00;18;56;18
Allison Karnes
So I had a friend here that was working with an NGO called Children's Cross Connection, and that was an orphanage. And at that time adoption was very big in Ethiopia and this orphanage was quite large and they had several orphanages. Actually, she was from South Africa and she really encouraged me to join this orphanage because they were trying to find a way to create income to support the orphanage.
00;18;56;18 - 00;19;20;19
Allison Karnes
And she thought I could sell my reps kids, we thought we could do. So. We decided we would join an NGO. So at that point, I should tell the best part of the story. Let me back up a little bit. As we began to grow in this shipping container, I could see that this was going to take off that we had we had something and God was in this.
00;19;20;22 - 00;19;38;12
Allison Karnes
And so one Sunday afternoon it's quiet on our compound. I said to Mark, I'm going to go over to the shipping container, shut myself inside, Don't tell anybody I'm there and I just want to pray because I don't know what to do. You know, this is growing and it's bigger than I thought. I don't know what it I just don't know what to do.
00;19;38;16 - 00;19;54;04
Allison Karnes
Right? So I prayed and prayed in the shipping container just cried out to the Lord. And it was one of the few times in my my life I heard an auditory borders of God and he whispered into my left ear and he said, Alice, they'll always be enough.
00;19;54;06 - 00;19;55;10
Ed Gillentine
Well.
00;19;55;13 - 00;20;26;02
Allison Karnes
They said to me, and I have hung on to that all these years. So shortly after that I left to go to South Africa to be with my daughter and her husband and three children, and I had about $25 in the WRAPS account. I paid all the salaries, but that's all the money we had to work with. And at that time, Mark and I and Indian Carl were pretty much funding it and a few people would give us donations when I wrote in our newsletter, but not very much.
00;20;26;04 - 00;20;44;18
Allison Karnes
And when I was in South Africa, I got a check in DART, our global outreach account. That's our missionaries sending agency from Tupelo, Mississippi. They I got a $500 check. Wow. And I got that $500 check. We never look back. We've just grown and grown.
00;20;44;19 - 00;20;46;27
Ed Gillentine
Little like a George Miller story.
00;20;46;27 - 00;21;08;14
Allison Karnes
And and, you know, I never have ask for money. Yeah, that's not true. One time I did, Karen and I. Karen Bridges, and I did one time because I could I thought, my goodness, this is over my head. I didn't need to ask for money. God has given us more than we could ever ask for. Imagine. And that was a scripture he gave me that day in the container.
00;21;08;17 - 00;21;29;01
Allison Karnes
I'm going to do more than you can ever ask or imagine. And I took it, and I have run with that scripture, and that word from the Lord will always be enough, and there's always been enough. I have been blessed over the top. It's wonderful. The Lord loves orphans. Yeah, He loves those, you know? And that's who I want.
00;21;29;05 - 00;21;55;10
Allison Karnes
I work with orphans and widows and the absolute poorest of the poor, and he just blesses that. So that's that's WRAPS. I can't tell WRAPS about that story because that was so significant in our journey. So we went to this. We did join this NGO and I had a donor give me a lot of money and it was enough to build a building in.
00;21;55;13 - 00;22;07;27
Allison Karnes
Back then I could build a decent building and the building cost me about $12,000 to build. Not a lot by today's standards. I mean, that's only a few years ago, but inflation's insane and it's.
00;22;07;27 - 00;22;13;21
Ed Gillentine
Crazy over there and I mean, it's crazy over here, but definitely over there in was that building in SOTA.
00;22;13;24 - 00;22;45;15
Allison Karnes
That was in SODO and we built it. They had a beautiful compound and they were making a product called Midtown. And it's just a high energy food for babies that had been starving and children that were starved. So they were doing that and selling it. And so we moved on to that compound and we were on that compound about, I want to say, two and a half years when another nonprofit that came in and wanted to take over the children's cross connections.
00;22;45;15 - 00;22;52;01
Allison Karnes
And it was a real ugly time with them and with the government, it just wasn't pretty.
00;22;52;03 - 00;22;56;16
Ed Gillentine
So we're just locking down the adoptions from foreigners option.
00;22;56;16 - 00;22;59;22
Allison Karnes
We're we're we're done. They were over.
00;22;59;27 - 00;23;02;17
Ed Gillentine
I remember it was like a hard stop.
00;23;02;19 - 00;23;21;05
Allison Karnes
Right? It was like hard stop. We're done. No more finished. And this children's connection was going to go bankrupt because they didn't have any money to run the program and they still had orphans. That didn't make the orphans go away. It just stopped. There was a lot of orphans and there was no money to you know, to take care of these children.
00;23;21;08 - 00;23;44;17
Ed Gillentine
And so if you don't mind, let me interject, because that and I want to pick back up on the story that that reminds me. There's a lot of similarities. Time was in frustration was with you guys and Allen answers. So what you're explaining about the about the adoptions reminds me of some of the frustrations that I think are related to WRAPS as well.
00;23;44;19 - 00;24;09;17
Ed Gillentine
So, you know, the Ethiopian government had a problem with adoptions and what I'll just say is people making a lot of money with with it almost like child trafficking kids that that had parents and stuff. So they just shut it down. But what would they never thought about? Which probably do, but typical of most governments and bureaucracies is like, what about all these other orphans, right, that are real that we have sort of in the pipeline and created a mess?
00;24;09;17 - 00;24;31;25
Ed Gillentine
And then I remember some years ago they decided that that all the schools needed everything need to be taught in English. Right. And so, you know, then, I mean, it it was like a hard stop. You got two years to get ready. So they got all these teachers and and and all these kids sitting in kind of challenging environments, you know, those hard seats for, you know, hours at a time.
00;24;31;25 - 00;25;02;15
Ed Gillentine
There's crammed in there and then you got a bunch of teachers trying to figure it out. So they're reading I'm envisioning math from a textbook in English. And math is already hard. It's not a readable subject. Right. But right. Well intentioned, maybe thought process or I don't think there was much process but thought. But Ethiopian government, you know, I think that also kind of kind of goes back to maybe one of your original concepts you presented.
00;25;02;17 - 00;25;27;21
Ed Gillentine
So you've got young ladies that the Ethiopian government says we're going to get girls in school because that's the single biggest driver of getting them out of poverty. So all the girls got to go to school. But by the time you start your menstrual cycle and you're doing all these things and then you have your period and you miss school because you don't have feminine hygiene products, you get further and further and further behind.
00;25;27;23 - 00;25;57;03
Ed Gillentine
And it's like this maybe it's a great idea to somebody researching at the University of Addis or at Princeton or Harvard or something, but man, when it comes to executing it, this is the train wreck on the ground. And at least what I remember and I may be inserting my own sort of view or story, but that was that that sort of oversight by the Ethiopian government was one of the drivers of what you guys are doing.
00;25;57;03 - 00;25;58;10
Ed Gillentine
Is that fair?
00;25;58;13 - 00;26;24;14
Allison Karnes
I'm not really I wouldn't say I would say that drove me, but that you're right about the English. I don't think they were doing it, though, so much in the rural schools in the city. They called they had brought in South African teachers and they were called plasma teachers and they were on TV screens. So that's how the kids were educated, was where these teachers that they put a screen up and they would talk to them.
00;26;24;16 - 00;26;27;03
Ed Gillentine
So that was a that was a urban thing.
00;26;27;06 - 00;26;48;20
Allison Karnes
Yeah, that was an urban thing. But in the rural schools didn't even have electricity, so they couldn't. But that's what they were doing when they introduced English that, you know. But though the textbooks then were printed by USAID, printed lovely, lovely textbooks for the whole country about a year after I got here. And they're all in English, of course.
00;26;48;23 - 00;27;09;16
Allison Karnes
So they had those that just changed the textbooks this year. But anyways, the Ethiopian government tries really hard and they're really good at implementing programs. Really good. They get them implemented quick and I'm impressed. Yeah. So but for the rural areas they seem to be left behind is right.
00;27;09;16 - 00;27;15;29
Ed Gillentine
Okay. Yeah. So sorry for that sidetrack was a bigger story, Becca. Thanks. Sorry about.
00;27;15;29 - 00;27;44;28
Allison Karnes
That. Yeah. All right, so where I'm at. So I lost my building, which was probably in being in Ethiopia. Being here, that was probably the hardest thing I ever went through. Just not understanding how that could be taken away from me and losing what I'd worked so hard to build at that time. I had seven employees by then and I had one I had by then bought one industrial sewing machine.
00;27;45;00 - 00;28;07;02
Allison Karnes
So we were growing at that point quite a bit and we were sewing for an NGO called Linke there out of Great Britain, and they were taking our kits and taking them into the schools. So we weren't doing as much school teaching as Link was able to do a lot more. They had the the cars and the the people behind them, so we didn't.
00;28;07;02 - 00;28;27;10
Allison Karnes
So that was neat because we could sell for an NGO and they would buy our kids. And so we were growing and then we lost this building and Mark and I were visiting our children. My son is with USAID and he has nothing to do The textbooks, by the way, or our hospital, but he does a different part of USAID.
00;28;27;10 - 00;28;54;23
Allison Karnes
And we had gone to visit him in Kazakhstan, of all places. And I learned at night that they were going to take everything that I owned. They're going to just take it right, remove it. My building, the government was coming to take all my things, all my sewing machines, all my shelves on my block, everything. And so my my son, a baby on a Sunday night moved everything out of there, just came in and took everything out and stored it here at the hospital.
00;28;54;26 - 00;29;15;03
Allison Karnes
And then they moved all of my workers into my house. So we had seven workers in my living room and my kitchen and dining and we cut cloth outside. We only didn't let them have our bedroom that was off limits. But the rest of the house, It's a little house, by the way, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're all sewing in our house.
00;29;15;03 - 00;29;36;11
Allison Karnes
It was crazy. My back dining room table had three sewing machines on it, and then we had the industrial machine and. Yeah, so we stayed in my house for a couple of months. They sold my house all through rainy season. And I just believe that time I was listening to a lovely Christian teacher named Graham Cook and Graham Cook.
00;29;36;16 - 00;29;58;13
Allison Karnes
One of the teachings he did was when things get really bad, you know, there's usually an upgrade in your in what's going to happen. And I just kept saying, God, what is the upgrade? Who do you want to be for me right now? And and I had just some wonderful things happen in my life at that time. And we found a building that was quite close to my house.
00;29;58;13 - 00;30;22;26
Allison Karnes
I could walk there in 10 minutes. I didn't have to take it. We take Bajaj's Sierra, little like the tuk tuks they call them, I think, in Thailand. And I didn't have a motorbike, so that was helpful. So that the new place has has a toilet. It had running water. It has his electricity. Well it was plenty big.
00;30;22;26 - 00;30;28;17
Allison Karnes
It was a little villa. It was surrounded by a wall. They call them villas here. But don't get excited with that one.
00;30;28;19 - 00;30;30;12
Ed Gillentine
Yes.
00;30;30;15 - 00;30;52;25
Allison Karnes
That's true. We did. We moved into this little villa, which is just very close to us, and we made it work. We had to hire a guard, which was a little more expensive, but every time God provided God provided, He just gave me everything I needed. I had enough money to pay the rent for a year. I had enough to, you know, get a guard and more people gave to donate.
00;30;52;25 - 00;31;19;11
Allison Karnes
I needed donations and I couldn't run it without donations. And that's where Karen Bridges comes to them, because I didn't know Karen very well. I only knew she was in Ethiopia and all is, but her sister in law and brother in law were in Dun Ann Arbor. Menge, which is 2 hours from me, and I knew them. So we had a connection and we were in the same mission sending agency.
00;31;19;13 - 00;31;46;10
Allison Karnes
So I this was getting in over my head because Ingi now had left, she had retired and she had moved back to Norway. So now I'm running WRAPS. This is about 20. Look at my links here. This is about 2018, 2017, 18. So I'm doing this on my own. And I was just crying out to the Lord at night, What am I going to do?
00;31;46;10 - 00;32;02;02
Allison Karnes
God? What am I going to do? I can't do this. I need to help her. This is too much, you know, And I'm just crying out like, wow, I was. And he said, you need to. I've heard him again. Speak to me in my mind. You need to call Karen Bridges. And so then I began to argue with the Lord, Lord, I don't know.
00;32;02;02 - 00;32;21;09
Allison Karnes
Karen Bridges. You know, I hate to make phone calls. I can't call here. Well, I'm telling you, you need to call Karen Bridges. So then two weeks go by and I'm in that again at night. Mark's asleep and I'm laying there like I can't sleep. And what am I going to do? Lord, I need some help. It's like speech to me.
00;32;21;10 - 00;32;40;13
Allison Karnes
So glad I told you to call Karen Bridges. So then I talk back to the Lord and I said, Well, I'm going to see her next week. Lord, at the missionary conference. I'll talk to her then. Okay. And I just felt this confirmation. Okay, I've been telling you to call her so we get to the conference in Kenya.
00;32;40;16 - 00;33;01;27
Allison Karnes
I've never had a conversation with her in my life. I've met her has, but I've never met Karen. That's nonsense, right? And so I see her at breakfast, and I said, I feel like ALERT'S told me I need to talk to you. Would you at time to to chat? And she goes, Yeah, let's meet for breakfast tomorrow. Okay.
00;33;02;00 - 00;33;14;08
Allison Karnes
So she calls for breakfast and I tell her all this, the whole wrap story, and she looks at me and she's just like, Well, I'm in. I'm like, What? Your and just. Yeah, I mean.
00;33;14;11 - 00;33;16;23
Ed Gillentine
That sounds like her.
00;33;16;25 - 00;33;41;21
Allison Karnes
Know anything about. I don't know her ministry. I honestly, I'm clueless what Karen's doing but she Simon And then we met a few more times because, well, I really think you need to get to know this organization I'm working with called Forsaken Children, and I said, Really? And I said, Yeah. Do you really like what you're doing? Working with girls and trying to improve the lives of girls?
00;33;41;21 - 00;34;01;01
Allison Karnes
That's what they love to do. And okay, you know, I'd love to meet them. What Forsaken Children has been the backbone of my ministry now for the last two years. All but really, they really, really have. And I just you got to listen to the Lord when he speaks to you. That's the moral of.
00;34;01;04 - 00;34;03;05
Ed Gillentine
Story, when it's uncomfortable, right?
00;34;03;08 - 00;34;10;27
Allison Karnes
Especially when it's uncomfortable and you don't want to make a phone call. But I you know, I didn't make that phone call, ended up talking to her in person. And yeah.
00;34;10;29 - 00;34;33;22
Ed Gillentine
That's really cool. And so I know we got to land the plane because you got a meeting coming up. But talk about what you're doing now. And I don't know the metrics you guys use, whether it's, you know, girls that you've educated in the classroom or the number of of packs that you guys have given out. How do you think about that right now?
00;34;33;25 - 00;34;53;24
Allison Karnes
Well, what I do is over the years, I keep track of all the pads we've given out, so everything we give out is free. So I just want to describe a little bit what a WRAPS kit looks like. So we started out with ten pads in a kit that was not sustainable, that was too many. And then we moved to six and we did six, many, many years.
00;34;53;24 - 00;35;19;14
Allison Karnes
Six. We put six pads in a kit with a little tiny pearl nut, tiny, nice, sizable purse that's waterproof and that would be a pair of underpants. And then there's a teaching guide in that kit. So everything we teach, we have a printout in Amharic for the students to take home. And then there's a little paper that shows them how to wash the pads and who reps is what we're all about.
00;35;19;17 - 00;35;47;25
Allison Karnes
So that comes in a kit all sealed up for these students and we give out each year right around 4500 free kits in the school systems going out. So each kit cost us about now we give four. Now we went down to four pads because of inflation in Ethiopia, but the kits cost us around $7 a kid to make.
00;35;47;27 - 00;36;11;05
Allison Karnes
Okay. And then we have to also rent a car. We don't own a car, so we rent a four wheel drive vehicle with great driver. And it really the four wheel drive vehicle is not that expensive for us. So the kits are the expense. But hands down, you know, when you when I calculate how much the cloth cost, how much my labor is and everything that's in that kit, then that's why that's how we come up with a price.
00;36;11;07 - 00;36;12;17
Allison Karnes
So the little cheaper without.
00;36;12;17 - 00;36;26;22
Ed Gillentine
If I could just interject for a second without doing too much math, if somebody wanted to impact where there were 10,000 kids, they could give you 70,000 bucks.
00;36;26;25 - 00;36;28;08
Allison Karnes
They put Yeah.
00;36;28;10 - 00;36;34;14
Ed Gillentine
I mean, it's super expensive. That's not easy. But yeah. Does that make sense?
00;36;34;17 - 00;36;38;16
Allison Karnes
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
00;36;38;18 - 00;36;40;22
Allison Karnes
Sorry. Go ahead. No, go ahead.
00;36;40;24 - 00;37;06;17
Ed Gillentine
I was going to say, you know, one of the blessings of what you're doing is it is pretty simple to explain. Right? Right. And when you have kind of a direct you know, this this costs ten bucks and it has this level of impact, that's kind of a blessing because a lot of a lot of NGOs and, you know, foreign impact organizations, it's a lot more nuanced.
00;37;06;17 - 00;37;23;04
Ed Gillentine
I mean, how do you know, you know, how an says 55, 60% women working for them like, well, okay, but what does that do? Seven bucks, ten bucks, whatever it is, direct impact, low overhead. That's that's really kind of a match made in heaven. But but go ahead, start.
00;37;23;06 - 00;37;46;18
Allison Karnes
Yeah, Well, I just want to say that when we go out to these schools, we do usually around 35 schools we can do in a year, maybe 40. And we go out to the schools and we teach the sixth, seventh and eighth grade in the primary. We just that's where kids drop out of school. The dropout rate is very high once they hit puberty.
00;37;46;21 - 00;38;07;23
Allison Karnes
And so we feel like that's where we need to direct our focus is that the primary school level? So we'll separate and we'll do a fifth and sixth grade together, and then we'll teach seventh and eighth grade together. And usually we'll have around 100 girls. If it gets more than that, then we have to do three sessions. At that time, the girls are wonderfully attentive.
00;38;07;23 - 00;38;31;05
Allison Karnes
They they just love what we're doing. We have big posters and we teach on the biology of menstruation. We teach on sexually transmitted diseases because they're quite prevalent here. Really, really prevalent. We teach on one when to see a doctor visit. We've got 100 girls in the room, you know, you've got ten girls in there that are having problems with their menstruation, Right.
00;38;31;08 - 00;38;51;26
Allison Karnes
And what what that looks like and when to get some help and there's help available. You don't have to suffer. So we talk about that. We talk about rape because we see so much rape here in our clinics. My husband sees a rape case every week and that that's in a private hospital. Imagine in the government hospital. And so we talk about that.
00;38;51;26 - 00;39;17;01
Allison Karnes
We talk about the sexually transmitted takes a long time. We talk about pregnancy, and then we move on to just how to care for our our kids. So it's about an hour of teaching. Interestingly enough, the girls rarely, rarely ask a question. Rarely they just listen. They're very good listeners. But I think it's important that we send home that sheet of paper that they can go over that again.
00;39;17;08 - 00;39;37;19
Allison Karnes
They can read it to their moms or their sisters or aunts. So that's what we're doing. And the schools, our biggest challenge in the schools is probably the boys. They feel left out and they want to be part of it and they want to peek in the windows and they want to harass the girls. And so that's been a bit of a challenge for us in doing that.
00;39;37;19 - 00;40;02;26
Allison Karnes
But anyway, so that's what we do. So I just wanted to get that across here that your listeners understand what we're doing and how that works for us. I think other organizations do things differently. This is just what is worked for us and we also work through the well. We're in the will like to try that. So we work with like two people and so we work with their their educational system, like their main offices here in Soto.
00;40;03;01 - 00;40;16;25
Allison Karnes
So does just become the capital of the new state in Ethiopia or new state, south Ethiopia or southern Ethiopia, right? Yeah, southern Ethiopia. And so we are the capital now. So this is a big deal for Soto.
00;40;16;28 - 00;40;47;07
Ed Gillentine
Yeah, that is that's a really big deal. And I know is we try to land the plane or keep trying because I want to talk about a bunch of different things that you very succinctly described, what you guys are doing, but it's almost impossible to describe how difficult it is. You know, you've you've got Amharic is the official Ethiopian language, but you've got a bunch of different dialects that right, frankly, so many of them don't feel anything related to them.
00;40;47;07 - 00;41;17;03
Ed Gillentine
Hark, you've got the the male female dynamic there in Ethiopia that is more pronounced in rural Ethiopia. I think about, you know, one of the reasons the girls probably don't talk is because they're told not to talk. Not not to mention that is a ton of information they've never heard. I think about the impact, frankly, of them going and telling their moms and aunts and they've never heard a lot of this stuff.
00;41;17;05 - 00;41;41;19
Ed Gillentine
And it's it's just super hard. So I want our listeners, you know, to to appreciate that, you know, there's the embarrassment factor to even talk about stuff like this. And when we you know up in the mountain that a match should be like you start talking about things like germs, right? They you know, if they can't see it, it's many times is not real.
00;41;41;19 - 00;41;50;17
Ed Gillentine
So that's it. You know, you talk about sexually transmitted diseases. That's a very difficult concept to get across to too many rural people.
00;41;50;19 - 00;41;55;24
Allison Karnes
So I mean, but they know about HIV and that's that's a big.
00;41;55;27 - 00;41;57;12
Ed Gillentine
It's a big I presume.
00;41;57;19 - 00;42;15;03
Allison Karnes
Yeah. We intro with that because they right away they know HIV. And so then from HIV we can segway into the other you know something transmitted so they've really been taught about HIV the government's done great job educate him on HIV. So that's what we do.
00;42;15;05 - 00;42;36;23
Ed Gillentine
So that means super fascinating. I'm going to force myself to not keep asking. Question Going back to stuff we may have to read or we have to read up on another follow up podcast. But let's just kind of sort of wrap up like we normally do with things I like to ask interesting people, what about one book?
00;42;36;26 - 00;42;50;29
Allison Karnes
I would say right now, my favorite book, I've got a of favorite books, but probably a gentleman in Moscow has been one of my favorite books to read. I read almost all historical fiction and a lot.
00;42;51;02 - 00;42;54;12
Ed Gillentine
Started on that book and I didn't get very far.
00;42;54;15 - 00;42;57;09
Allison Karnes
you didn't read it? my goodness. Go back and read that book.
00;42;57;09 - 00;43;00;15
Ed Gillentine
All right. I'm going to go back and read that.
00;43;00;17 - 00;43;04;19
Allison Karnes
Probably one of my all time favorite books with that. All right.
00;43;04;19 - 00;43;23;25
Ed Gillentine
Well, you may have to send me a list because I love his store. I love history. I'm trying to read less intense stuff. So I'm looking for historical fiction. But now that I know that the new York Times bestseller list is gamed, it's it's kind of frustrating for me.
00;43;23;25 - 00;43;30;18
Allison Karnes
So every book is a New York Times bestseller list. So if you guys haven't noticed. So yeah, something's up there.
00;43;30;20 - 00;43;41;02
Ed Gillentine
Yeah, exactly. All right. Lastly, one name, one person you would say significantly influenced your life in 30 seconds, the last thoughts? Well.
00;43;41;05 - 00;44;05;02
Allison Karnes
My husband. My husband has significantly influenced my life. He is the kindest, most gentlest human being ever. He has a servant's heart. He led me to the Lord through love. I saw his love for his fellow man, for the church. And I thought, I want that. So he he was my biggest influence.
00;44;05;02 - 00;44;29;26
Ed Gillentine
And that's pretty cool. Did you know that this is the second interview in a row that the spouse named the husband is their number one person and which is, like I said, to the other interviewee, that's that's high praise. They live with you every day. And so to be able to say that, that's that's really remarkable. So we may have to get him on here to figure out.
00;44;29;26 - 00;44;30;22
Ed Gillentine
Amazing.
00;44;30;24 - 00;44;32;09
Allison Karnes
Can you.
00;44;32;11 - 00;44;40;12
Ed Gillentine
So where can where can our listeners go to learn more about what you guys are doing, website or social media wherever.
00;44;40;14 - 00;44;54;23
Allison Karnes
You know what we're working actually on a website. My son in law told me I really need a website if I want to do what I want to do in the future. You never touched on our sustainability, so there's so much more to WRAPS.
00;44;54;24 - 00;44;57;05
Ed Gillentine
Then We definitely need to do that because that's a big.
00;44;57;05 - 00;45;21;08
Allison Karnes
Gap. Because I mean, we are becoming sustainable with our pads, with our whole outreaches by doing selling things. That's why I'm doing bazaars and addresses next month. But with our cafe, that's a whole nother story. This is funding the WRAPS outreaches. And so yeah, so that's a whole nother how do we get there? What are we doing now?
00;45;21;08 - 00;45;24;20
Allison Karnes
Because it's we're on a roll. It's amazing.
00;45;24;22 - 00;45;26;03
Ed Gillentine
That is awesome.
00;45;26;05 - 00;45;37;17
Allison Karnes
Like we know. So you can we only have a Facebook page right now called Reps for Girls. One word for Girls and you can find us there on Facebook.
00;45;37;19 - 00;45;46;15
Ed Gillentine
And if somebody gave you a lot of money, would they email you or even a little money to their email you? Or what's would they give?
00;45;46;15 - 00;46;02;04
Allison Karnes
All of our money runs through global outreach a5a1c3 global outreach in Tupelo, Mississippi. So we actually have a wrap account with global and people can donate just directly right to address account.
00;46;02;05 - 00;46;06;15
Ed Gillentine
And I guess they can also go through the forsaken children and just say we want this to go to your kids.
00;46;06;15 - 00;46;13;17
Allison Karnes
And they sure could go this forsaken children. The Forsaken Children is a really amazing organization.
00;46;13;20 - 00;46;37;12
Ed Gillentine
I can't tell you how I am that we got to do this. You genuinely are one of my heroes, having spent as much time as I have in Ethiopia. And so I can't wait to get to meet you in person. And Mark, but you've you've been a source of inspiration for Liz and I for all the team at Highland Harvesters.
00;46;37;15 - 00;46;58;04
Ed Gillentine
So I really, really appreciate it. And also to our listeners, a big thank you. Hopefully this has been as helpful to you as it is to me on my own journey to impact. You can learn more about Impact and EdGillentine.com. We like to think it’s a great resource for impact articles, white papers, links like to the WRAPS and the Forsaken Children.
00;46;58;06 - 00;47;19;03
Ed Gillentine
You can purchase the book Journey to Impact, which also talks about some of the thought and process of the WRAPS journey. And it's on any major digital platform or you can buy it printed through Amazon, Barnesandnoble.com. Again, thanks for listening and until next time all the best.