Throughout December, Thump Coffee in downtown Bend showcases art created by children living at the Vima Lupwa Home in Luanshya, Zambia. Vima Lupwa, the locally-based nonprofit founded by Bend native Malerie Pratt, provides a loving foster home for a handful of the most needy among Zambia’s more than one million orphans.

Writes Vima Lupwa boardmember Steven Douglas: “For the children of Vima Lupwa Home, art helps facilitate the transition from an abandoned, seemingly hopeless child, into a secure, confident, productive adult ready to make a contribution to a better Zambia for themselves and their peers.”

Purchases of Vima Lupwa children’s art are a “contribution to that better future for them, and for children everywhere.”

Violet Membe, a Zambian social worker and mother of two, co-founded the Vima Lupwa Home with Pratt. She and her husband raise the foster children as part of their family, providing a truly Zambian upbringing where they are raised with their own culture, values and religion.

For more about the Vima Lupwa Homes project, as well as photos and biographies of the children, go to www.lupwahomes.org.