SILVERHILL — What began as an idea nearly a decade ago continues to grow beyond their wildest dreams and now a charity started by a local couple designed to provide suitable drinking water for villages in Africa has a place to call home in Silverhill.

According to Lisa Brodie, the idea for Maji : Hope was born out of a dream she had of going to Africa when she was a little girl. In 2007, her dream became a reality when she got the opportunity to participate in a medical mission trip.

“The trip was primarily for doctors, but anybody could go who was willing to help out,” she said. “God put it on my heart that this was something I needed to do, so I went.”

She never planned on starting a charity of her own, but she says the idea came when she was sitting talking with a group of doctors.

“I asked them, ‘What is the biggest need of the people here,’” she said. “I was thinking they would say something like malaria, AIDS or some other type of disease.”

The answer they gave surprised her.

“They said the biggest problem was a lack of clean drinking water,” Brodie said. “After seeing some of the horrible conditions where the local people had to go and get drinking water, I went back to my husband and said, ‘I don’t know what we have to do or how to do it, but somehow we have to help them.’”

Lisa, a long time educator who now homeschools their three younger children (they have two children currently in college), and Curtis, a teacher at Fairhope Intermediate School, did the only thing they knew to do.

They began talking to other teachers and parents and started a penny-drive fundraising campaign within the local school system. They also started their own non-profit originally called DigDeepGiveWell, which was later changed to Maji : Hope (maji means water in Swahili).

Within three years, Brodie said, they had raised enough money to start their first project and they are now on their 15th and currently have several projects going in four different countries.

“We are now at the stage where we have several different projects going in various stages of completion,” she said, “from the beginning stage of going with a presentation to the finished product, a well that provides residents with clean drinking water, rather than having to walk for miles to get water that might be full of disease.”

While the organization has always sold things like T-shirts, hats, mugs and other items to raise money, Brodie said, the idea of selling goods made by local villagers actually came from the villagers themselves.

A group of mothers from the Endevesi village calling themselves the Imani Group (imani means faith in Swahili) approached the organization about doing something to help raise money for the water project in their village, Brodie said.

“They offered hand-made items that could be used as jewelry, Christmas ornaments, things like that,” she said. The items were collected and sold for $10 each.

“For years, we were offering the items for sale from our homes, but it just got to be too much,” Brodie said.

So they began looking for a place they could call home in order to sell the items and after an exhaustive search, found a place on the corner of Highway 104 and Ninth Avenue, across from The Station in Silverhill.

“We have a lot of volunteers without whom this would not be possible and we’ve never had any overhead,” Brodie said. “But we asked some of our larger donors, one’s who give regularly, if we could use some of their donations to help with the cost of the facility.”

On Nov. 29, the organization held an open house at their new location, showing off some of their wares to the public. In addition to jewelry and ornaments, other hand-made items are available including scarves and blankets.

In April, the group plans to open an ice cream and coffee house called Cream & Bean. The ultimate goal, she said, is to make enough to be self-sustaining and offset the costs of having the facility.

Currently, Brodie said, because she is booked for speaking engagements with local schools and other organizations, the business does not keep regular hours.

“The best way is to schedule an appointment through our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts,” she said. You can also schedule an appointment through the group’s website, majihope.org, or through email, info@majihope.org. The website also includes background information and information on various projects, Brodie said.

Hopefully, she said, after the first of the year, they will be able to set regular hours.