Bazaar to help Zambian students

Alicia Robinson

Antiques scoured from flea markets, handcrafted jewelry and paintings

by local artists have been collected with one goal -- to help

students nearly 10,000 miles away.

Members of Grace Fellowship Church are holding a bazaar today to

benefit Northrise University in Zambia, which was founded by one of

the church’s former pastors.

Moffat Zimba was a pastor at Grace Fellowship Church for seven

years before he and his wife returned to his native Zambia to start

the school, which is one of three universities in the country and the

only private one, said church member Brett Craig, whose husband is a

pastor at the Christian church.

“[Zimba] was raised in the slums in Africa and he learned to write

in the dirt, and he had a vision to start a university,” Craig said.

After returning to Zambia last year, Zimba raised enough money to

build a five-story facility for his school of agriculture and

computer science. The school’s 60 students began their first classes

in January, Craig said.

Proceeds from the bazaar will go toward running the university and

sponsoring students’ tuition, which is $1,200 a year.

Visitors to the bazaar will be able to peruse brochures about the

school or watch a video of some church members’ visit to the school.

“It’s a real hands-on thing,” Craig said. “It’s not just some

random mission thing that we don’t know much about.”

Most of the bazaar’s 25 vendors don’t dedicate their full time to

their crafts, but sell things mainly by word of mouth, said Diane

Cotton, who is hosting the bazaar in the backyard of her Santiago

Drive home. Unique items for sale will include stationery and

invitations, handmade stuffed animals, monogrammed canvas bags,

jewelry and art.

“You will not come here and find little crystal bracelets and

crocheted doilies and that kind of thing,” Cotton said. “It will be

very upscale, very special.”

Also pitching in at the bazaar will be Brittany Edmonston, a

church member and junior at Newport Harbor High School. After hearing

about Zimba’s school, Edmonston and her friend Stephanie Dorr formed

a club and solicited donations to help pay Zambian students’ tuition.

They’ve already raised $3,000, but they hope to generate enough to

sponsor three or four students, Edmonston said.

She’ll be selling drinks, which she convinced someone to donate,

at the bazaar to raise more money for students. She said she hopes

the event will get more people interested in helping to raise money

for the Zambian university, which aims to get students to use what

they learn to benefit their country.

“We’re so fortunate here, and these people [in Zambia], they

barely get food every day,” Edmonston said. “The purpose is to make

them stay there and spread it to other students. It’s a foundation to

build a better country through agriculture.”

The bazaar will be held today from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 2424

Santiago Drive, Newport Beach.