Making a difference
“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything. But still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.” – Helen Keller
When faced with a seemingly insurmountable task, 22-year-old Joy Hardt didn’t give up.
During the summer of 2006, Hardt, a Spokane nursing student, went to Kpando in Ghana, Africa, as a hospital volunteer. She found grim conditions that would never happen in America.
Appalled, she watched a newborn needlessly die because of inadequate staff nursing skills, despite her own intervention. “It was a ‘you’ve got to be kidding’ moment,” she said. “I couldn’t believe this still happens in the world.”
There, AIDS victims and their children (some infected), are outcasts. Disabled children lack access to the most basic therapeutic help.
Hardt became friends with Richard Edem Adjordor, a well-connected, youth-involved Ghanaian. “We began diagramming an AIDS orphanage and farm for Kpando while on a hellish 14-hour bus ride,” she said. “I couldn’t help being excited. I met some kids, and Edem told them we’d be coming for them.”
Hardt spent the next two years and $10,000 of her own money bringing her vision to life, sometimes feeling overwhelmed.
“I’d think, I could be at a movie or with my friends, instead of at my computer working on grants. But Edem always encouraged me,” she said. And her commitment kept her focused.
She traveled twice more to Ghana to slog through endless bureaucracy, broken promises and a maze of details.
Finally, the HardtHaven Children’s Home opened this past June.
Some grandparents accompanied children at pickup time, wanting to maintain connection; others were absent. The AIDS stigma and inability to care for children is a huge burden.
“Some children have loving parents,” Hardt explained, “but with HIV or AIDS, no one will give them work, or they’re sick and dying. They’d say, ‘You can have our kid; would you take our older kids?’ “
HardtHaven offers a loving home, treatment and education to AIDS victims’ children 15 and under. With 14 (three HIV-positive) out of 18 planned children enrolled, Hardt hopes to expand to 100 beds and start a work-training program for the children, an international nurse volunteer program and a disabled daycare, all eventually self-sustaining.
Wisely, Hardt didn’t go solo, but found support and assistance from her parents Peter and Carlene Hardt, friends, hundreds of Americans and several Ghanaian nationals. An MTV Staying Alive grant ( www.staying-alive.org/en/foundation/winners) provides additional funding. All funds go directly toward orphanage expenses and wages for matrons, who live with the children.
The orphanage Web site, www.hardthaven.org, reveals Hardt’s compassion and grasp of practical details. The Keller quote above is HardtHaven’s motto.
Hardt, a shy teenager, didn’t seem bound for such a future when she graduated from Cheney High School. Then, after her first year of college, she studied for five months in Australia, where she took up extreme sports. She gained confidence and nerve, and found herself thinking, “If it can’t kill you, why do it?”
Back home, she became an EMT search and rescue firefighter and joined the Red Cross, which sent her in 2005 to Louisiana two weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck. The devastation, death and need combined with low education levels “was too much for any government,” she said. “Katrina helped prepare me for what I saw in Ghana.”
Hardt, a gregarious, feisty, yet modest young woman, doesn’t draw on sentiment for her Ghana project. “I don’t see myself as a caring humanitarian, a cuddler,” this pragmatist explained. “I care, but I’m a doer. Something needed to be done.”
What gives her such energy? “Chocolate, and macaroni and cheese,” she jokes. An Edmund Burke quote inspires her: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Peter Hardt says of his daughter, “Of course I have been concerned from time to time about the safety or sheer scope of some things Joy’s attempted. It still amazes me that someone so young has managed to make the world a better place so far from home. She certainly keeps us praying and trusting God.”
In December Hardt graduates from Spokane’s Intercollegiate College of Nursing and will then briefly return to Ghana. In March she begins a 5-year Navy Nurse Corps stint at Camp Pendleton’s Marine Corps base hospital and hopes for eventual deployment to the Middle East and Horn of Africa. After her Navy service, Hardt is considering either flight/trauma nursing or international work; she’ll continue her Ghana work and wants to travel the world.
Creating an orphanage in Ghana “has changed every little possible thing about my view on life and the world,” Hardt said. “I pay a lot more attention to things going on. It’s great to be doing all this while I’m still young.
“I think having already done something good and important in my life has freed me; my fear of death is gone and life is more enjoyable. I’ve created something lasting and bigger than myself.
“With the orphanage, I’ve left a legacy.”