Taking Back Lives wins grant for African classrooms

MANATEE — Through the Facebook social networking site, local nonprofit Taking Back Lives has won a $20,000 grant to help build classrooms in the impoverished African nation of Malawi.

Taking Back Lives was founded several years ago by Lakewood Ranch High School student Cassandra Yoder, 16.

Yoder is now a junior at the University of Florida studying microbiology with plans to go on to medical school.

She recently returned to Malawi for her fourth visit. During the visit, Yoder and her teammates — Dan McNeillie, who runs a graphic design web company, and Nina Venter, a New College of Florida student — helped villagers construct a classroom building in the Nkhata Bay District.

The construction of the two-room classroom, a first for Taking Back Lives, was the realization of a dream for Yoder.

“To see that right in front of you is pretty amazing,” Yoder said of the new classrooms in a phone interview from Gainesville.

She said she hopes the classrooms, set among such poverty, serve as a catalyst for other projects in the future.

“They don’t have food, blankets or clothes. It’s eye-opening,” McNeillie said.

McNeillie said the classroom gives the villagers an opportunity to change their lives through education and be self-sufficient rather than settling for a life in poverty.

“The community had already made the bricks. They were just waiting for someone to help them with the construction,” McNeillie said.

With Cassandra Yoder attending college, her mother, Tara resident Kay Yoder, has assumed the role of executive director for the nonprofit.

Kay Yoder said supporters of Taking Back Lives campaigned for votes for the grant on college campuses, including University of Florida, University of South Florida, State College of Florida Manatee-Sarasota and University of Central Florida.

Each of the 1,548 votes cast on Facebook was valuable, worth about $13 each toward the eventual $20,000 grant.

Taking Back Lives was ranked 179th of the 200 projects funded in the Facebook contest.

The grant money will be used to build more classrooms next year, said Kay Yoder.

Villagers have already made 50,000 bricks in anticipation of the next round of construction, McNeillie said.

“Yes, what we did was fairly small,” McNeillie said, but to appreciative villagers it was no small gift.

“The construction is very different there. You don’t have the crane, the cement truck. Everything is by hand,” he said.

Kay Yoder said her daughter first learned about conditions in Malawi when she was a student at IMG Academy.

Before an injury cut her athletic career short, she was an aspiring tennis player.

At IMG, Cassandra met a woman and her granddaughter from Malawi.

“The grandmother was always talking about the poverty there and was al- ways doing fundraising events to send money back to an orphanage,” Kay Yoder said.

Cassandra Yoder made her first visit to the African country at age 16, and the visit changed her life, said her mother.

“She needed something to refocus on after tennis,” Kay Yoder said.

The grant is the largest received by Taking Back Lives. The organization also received a $12,000 grant from the Sarasota Open tennis tournament in May.

Taking Back Lives is planning a sunset walk-a- thon with a picnic and live concert at Siesta Key Beach on Oct. 23 for Make a Difference Day, Kay Yoder said.

James A. Jones Jr., East Manatee Editor, can be contacted at 745-7021.