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Home>Service> Awardees of Fervent Global Love of Lives Award> 13th Fervent Global Love of Lives Award 2010> The Heart of Africa—Janine Maxwell from Canada
The founder who controls the market; the activist who rescues Africa
      Janine Maxwell—the founder of the National non-profit organization “Heart For Africa ,”— whose mother was pregnant without marriage and was expelled from home at the age fifteen. After she was born, Janine Maxwell was in good hands with her Canadian foster parents. At the age of twenty-four, Janine founded the largest marketing company Onyx Marketing Group in Canada . Owning a group of profit-making customers including Kellogg Canada, Walt Disney Studio Home Entertainment and Campbell Soup Company , the company had once created a profit of 0.6 billion NTD . However, the September 11 attacks rewrote Janine's life completely. This incident caused her to suffer from depression and brought her to the darkest corner of Africa , looking for a new meaning of life. In 2004, she adamantly decided to close her business and threw her self into charity aid for Africa . Based on her faith, she established a non-profit organization, “Heart For Africa.” She contributed her best to alleviating the hunger, orphanhood, poverty and education inequality of Africa , and wrote this experience in the book, “It's not ok with me,” striving for making the reality of African children known to the public.
 
 
Nothing is an accident
      Janine Maxwell was born in 1963 in a small town of Northern Ontario , America . Her mother was pregnant with her at the age of fifteen. After the pregnancy was known, her grandmother locked her mother in a room and isolated her from the outside world. Soon after that, her mother was discreetly and infamously sent to a four-hundred-miles-away correctional center that housed teenage pregnant girls.
      Fortunately, Janine was adopted by a Christine couple with happy marriage. They loved Janine wholeheartedly and treated her as one of the family. She was not the child that got everything upon birth, but her foster parents raised her with love and care, giving whatever they could to her.
      After Janine graduated from the Gospel University at the U.S., she established a marketing company, which later became the largest marketing company － Onyx Marketing Group, with her intelligence and determination. Her company owned a group of profit-making clients and brought her company the annul profit of 0.6 billion NTD. These clients include Kellogg Canada , Walt Disney Studio Home Entertainment, The Gillette Company, and Campbell Soup Company, which made Janine Maxwell an outstanding entrepreneur. Before age forty, her marketing company was already one of the most notable companies in North America .
 
 

The day that changed her life
      “Run! Leave the building; The Central Station just exploded!” her co-workers yelled. The hotel Janine stayed in was right above the Central Station. She witnessed the attack of the second flight through the window of the hotel. She and her co-workers were afraid to stay in the building, since no one knew if they would be the next target of attack. She grabbed her purse and brief case hastily and stormed out of the building with her panic co-workers. The 42 nd Avenue in New York , moving black and white police cars, and grating siren drove flurried people to move forward. Although people tried to remain calm, their faces failed to conceal the terror.
      The morning of September 11, 2001 was as peaceful as usual. The stores were open, magazines were stacked on the self, and people took the train with coffee and moved toward their workplaces. Everything was quiet as before. Passengers who did not watch TV or listened to the radio did not know that the World Trade Center was attacked by two flights. Their eyes were wide open when they saw the panic runaways. Janine went downstairs and asked the bartender to turn on the news. The unexpected attack caused the World Trade Tower and the World Trade Center to collapse in short seconds. As if a living hell, the scene of panic people jumping down in a hurry were repeatedly played like videos in front of her eyes and hovered in her mind.
      Living in Canada , Janine only came to New York for the international toy exhibition on every February or on the international authorization exhibition every June. This time, she and her biggest client Kellogg, came especially for the market development meeting. Now, who would care about this business? She cannot return to her sweet home. She and her husband might be separated permanently. She might not embrace her children, Spencer and Chloe, once again. She told herself not to be defeated and she must find a secure route to return to her family safe and sound.
      In the next few hours, she started to flee. She tried to dial the phone, and hoped that it could operate as a connection to the outside world. To her disappointment, nothing happened in the next five hours. Sometimes the phone could be dialed out, but it could not receive calls. The only thing she could do was to stay idle and let chaotic thoughts hover.
      Later, Janine finally got contact with Kellogg and was promised that she would return to Canada safely. However, despite prolonged waiting, she could not rent a car to leave New York , and neither could she find a safe place to stay. When she was mired in fatigue and low spirits, she finally found a car for rent. Like a drowned rat, Janine and her co-workers fled New York exhaustedly. They reached New Jersey and were housed by a couple. After a short rest, Janine got in contact with her husband Ian and briefly talked about the plan going back to Canada. They said “I love you” to each other and hanged up the phone.
      In the next day, Washington Bridge was announced to be open. With the help of Kellogg, Janine and her co-workers were put on the car back to Canada. Silence prevailed while they were on their way home. After seven hours of travel, they were finally home. She ran quickly to the front door and reached her family, who opened their arms for her. Their faces were covered with tears.
      Though being safe at home, she neither ate nor slept. She became very paranoid and installed TV at every corner at home and company in order to know what was happening around the world. Just for knowing about the potential disasters, she not only bought a thousand dollars worth of escape equipment, but also came up with an escape plan, including where to put the keys, emergency contact system when departed with her family, and she even prepared antidote for anthrax for her family. She was made into a different person after 911.
 
 

The experience that stirred the heart
      Janine slipped into the chasm of despair after surviving from the 911 incident. Every day, she lay on the bed but could not fall asleep sedately. In 2003, she was invited to attend a Canadian Christian program and ran into her college classmate—Reynold Mainse, the Vice President of Missions of Crossroad. Being curious about his missionary work in other countries, Janine was enthusiastically looking for a new life meaning with the passion she never had for the past thirty-eight years. She asked him to let her join the missionary work. Reynold responded positively after a brief discussion. Therefore, Janine arrived in Africa for the first time.
      Janine was taken to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. Children were crowdedly on the dirty street. Janine saw millions of orphans wandering on the street, picking up garbage, eating discarded food and even maundering around the margin of death. Many of them had AIDS, but more of them left home at the age of six for avoiding their abusive mothers or cohabitants.
      On the street, Janine encountered a nine-year-old boy and learned about his story. His parents died when he was six. His relatives threw him and his brother out on street. He strayed away from his brother and was forced to become a sexual slave to street people. In order to survive, the boy dug the food out of the garbage, and warmed himself with garbage bags. Janine's mind was occupied with the image of the boy. She could not accept to leave without saving even one child, so she took the boy away from the street and placed him in a safe place. Despite her endeavor, there were 70,000 street kids in Lusaka, and more than one million in other African countries.
      Janine deepened into the darkest core of Africa upon her first time visit. She visited the boy's home financed by Lazarus Project at Lusaka, Zambia, and the children's home and teenage detention center at Nairobi, Kenya. She saw millions of orphans wandering on the street full of violence, drugs, death, who were maundering at the border of death. She felt unprecedented sorrow and despair. At the end of her journey to Africa, Janine returned to Canada and back to her normal life with her husband and children.
 
 

Wholehearted devotion
      Back to her job, Janine was unsettled for the scene she saw in Africa. She could not forget about those African kids, their mothers and grandmothers who fought against AIDS, hunger and disease for survival. She told herself that she was not OK because she could not just sit there, knowing that these things are happening. This belief made her find a new goal and defeated her depression. Encouraged by her co-workers, she established the Hope & Dreams Team, and started fund-raising and collecting materials in Canada for setting up amusement parks and clinics in Africa. In October, 2003, she and other teammates started another journey to African, and had unforgettable memories themselves and even to the Africans.
      Janine could no longer focus on her job once she decided to devote herself to the rescue work. In 2004, she closed the company that she ran for sixteen years firmly, and left for Kenya for the third time. This time, she took ten-year-old Spence and left her husband Ian to clean up the mundane things left upon the closure of her company. Ian was persuaded by her and her co-workers to participate in the rescue work. The ultimate goal of the organization was to take Africa away from famine, poverty, and AIDS. The first plan of the organization was called “Never Ending Gardens,” which called on large groups of volunteer workers to work in Africa, helping people who could only afford to eat corn soup and teaching people to plant vegetables. The aim was to let African people maintain their lives on their own without begging others.
      Janine and Ian worked as volunteer workers and became the leaders of the organization. For making the name of the organization more attune to its goal, they changed the name from “the Dream of Africa” to “the Heart of Africa”—namely, a heart that cares about others and harbors a dream of helping others.
 
 

The power that changes the world
      The work of organization was oriented toward combating hunger, orphanhood, poverty and quality of education. It was the organization's belief that education brings hope to life and can eliminate poverty, orphahood, poverty and AIDS. As a result, the objective of the Heart of Africa was to make the four components—hunger, orphahood, poverty, education—widely known to African people. To make things change step by step, the flame of hope was lightened by volunteer workers, who were short-term volunteer workers of Africa appreciating the Heart of Africa and everything given by it and learned to embrace African people. Within these four years, Janine and Ian had led more than 45,000 volunteer workers from the Europe and America to offer humanity service in Malawi, Kenya, and Swaziland.
      By virtue of volunteer workers' participation, the flame of hope in people was lightened.
      In the past, the objective of the Heart of Africa was to make children self-sufficient. And now, four phases of the objective are more clearly defined, helping children get over the sense of guilt and move towards the self-provision. The first phase is to provide basic materials for living—food and water, to give assistance to the children's home that adopt orphans, to reclaim the land for crop rotation, and to teach children cultivation techniques. Though learning how to cultivate is not the ultimate goal, it is still the plan for solving the urgent needs. In the second phase, the organization expands the plow land of the children's home, plant more crops, build more houses and increases economic sources. In the third phase, the quality of life is improved by virtue of children's sense of beauty such as drama, football, guidance counselor, cross-cultural learning, personal etiquette as well as human relationships and the understanding of culture. In the fourth phase, the organization sustainably recruits volunteer workers to help the children's home fulfill its staged work. Only through this could changes and sustainable service be made.