Posts Tagged ‘Empowering Women’
Thank God for Women â Weâre Hiring
Thank God for Women is a blog series rooted in gratitude for the strength, courage, and incredible capacity women demonstrate.
No one in their right mind would apply for a job that had no vacations, no pay, and a workload that more than doubles around the holidaysâespecially a holiday in your honor. More than any other holiday, Motherâs Day evokes the full range of emotions in people.
The propensity for a vast pendulum swing of sentiments is both deep and wide when it comes to Motherâs Day because mothering has so many different stages and phases.
There are the mommas that are in their first few moments of mothering. They are new to the journey and deep down inside they are wondering will I ever sleep again.
There are those in the trenches with little ones that wear the badge of food stains and puke on their shirts wondering, âwill I ever take another uninterrupted shower in my life?â
There are those wading in the choppy waters of the testing years of motherhood. You have colored many grey hairs and your knees are wobbly and skinned from praying that your children would find a path that leads them to wholeness and freedom.
There are the single momâs that are more than deserving of adorning themselves each morning in a super woman cape as they shoulder the responsibilities of being both parent and provider outside of a partnership.
There are those rejoicing with vibrant and fulfilling relationships with their children.
There are those mourning in the grief of a miscarriage, failed adoption, or loss of a child.
There are those walking the desert road of infertility. Feeling alone and discouraged choking back tears at every other womanâs baby shower and birth announcement.
There are the adoptive moms, foster moms, mentor moms, and spiritual moms that pull children into their hearts and homes and love them as their own.
There are those who experience disappointment, heartache, and distance with their children and this day highlights and underscores the ever-present ache that you carry.
There are those who lost their mothersâŠand the missing of their own Momma vibrates through their being.
There are those who experienced abuse at the hands of their own motherâand they feel conflicted, challenged and even confused as to how to hold their range of emotions within their being.
There are those who are single and long to be married and mothering their own children and they try to hold their head high on this day when their heart feels tender with unmet desire.
There are step-moms, maneuvering their way through the intricacies of blending families together.
There are those who placed children up for adoption that still hold that child in their hearts.
There are those whose nests have become emptier and they are now steering a new ship with less cargo and the shift in weight has left them feeling unbalanced and uneven.
There are many more categories and complexities and certainly not enough sections in the card department for all the different âmothersâ in this world.
Today on Motherâs Day, where we celebrate a job well done, a job that is often thankless & profitless and rarely deposits resources into our retirement funds.
Letâs choose to celebrate one another instead of comparing one another.
Letâs choose to delight in one another and the distinct ways in which we mother instead of disregarding our differences.
Letâs sprinkle praise and blessings and encouragement on all momâs everywhere instead of remaining silent and secluded.
Letâs see and celebrate our childrenâŠ. All children that we have the privilege to mother as sacred teachers sent from God that bring with them a spiritual curriculum to grow our souls to deeper levels of perseverance, character, hope and love.
Hereâs to you Moms, may you delight in all the beautiful benefits from this crazy job called MOTHERING.
Jeanne Stevens is one of the lead pastors of Soul City Church in the dynamic West Loop neighborhood of Chicago, IL. Jeanne has had the opportunity to teach, pastor and speak in to the lives of thousands of people across the US and around the world. Her passion to develop leaders, encourage people to live from the fullest part of themselves and to live boldly give her a unique voice of hope and challenge. You can follow Jeanne on Instagram & Twitter â @JeanneMStevens and become her friend on Facebook â Jeanne Stevens.
Thank God for Women â Heroes in the Fight for Justice
Thank God for Women is a blog series rooted in gratitude for the strength, courage, and incredible capacity women demonstrate.
A few years ago, a dear friend gave me a book titled, Women Are Heroes. It is filled with beautiful portraits and stories of women around the world whose very existence is heroic. I flip through it often and I am constantly inspired by the resilience, strength and grace that women posses.
You donât have to look very far to find disturbing statistics about women across the globe. Women, on average, still make less than men. We are more prone to being victimized by sexual violence. We have less access to education. The list goes on. But somehow, despite all of the data, there are women who continue to defy the oddsâfighting for justice in their communities, raising families with inadequate resources, building businesses out of nothing, and striving for educational opportunities to not only better themselves but the people around them as well.
My line of work has afforded me the privilege of traveling all around the world and wherever I go, I am always in awe of the women I meet.
I have visited with women in war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. Women who have lived through atrocities of war and sexual violence against their bodies. But in spite of all they have experienced, they continue to work towards the healing of themselves, their own, and the healing of other women in their communities. These women speak of forgiveness, hope and peacebuilding in their communities.
I have listened to women in Kenya share how they started a savings group so that they could pay for their kidsâ uniforms and school fees. They were soon able to start their own businesses, and then began to pay the school fees for other children in the community who were in need.
I have sat with women from both Israel and Palestine as they shared their painful stories of loss, what forgiveness looks like and how they can begin to lead their communities to understand the narrative of the âother.â
I am surrounded by countless womenâmany whom I am honored to call friendsâhere in the United States who have committed their lives to advocate for those who suffer under the oppression of racial, gender, and economic injustice.
When women are not allowed to fully express their God-given potential, it is affront to our Creator and a disservice to all of humanity.
Throughout history, countless women have ignored the limitations that society has placed on them and fought, against all odds, for the opportunity to flourish. Women like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Malala Yousafzai, Yuri Kochiyama, Berta CĂĄceres, Katherine G. Johnson, Septima Clark, the millions of refugee women around the worldâthe list goes on. These women have blazed trails, smashed ceilings, fought countless battles so that the next generation could dream bigger, soar higher and achieve things they never thought to be possible.
The fight for women’s rights means equal rights for all. Women work for the betterment of families, communities and nations. There is a deep understanding that we are all connected to each other and we all rise and fall together.
So todayâand every dayâI thank God for women. The dreamers, troublemakers, peacemakers, bridge builders, trailblazers, ceiling crushers, and image bearers of the Creator. The women who see injustice in our world and refuse to stay silent. Those who work to infuse radical love and hope into our world.
Women are heroes and I stand on the shoulders of the ones who have gone before me, and I link arms with the present day warriors. Together, we continue the fight for justice for all people.
Chi Chi Okwu is a Senior Church Advisor for World Vision USAâworking with churches and parachurch organizations to build strategic partnerships focusing on community development and relief work globally. She is passionate about issues relating to faith and justice specifically in the areas of race, gender and reconciliation, and enjoys speaking and writing on those topics. Chi Chi currently resides in Chicago and enjoys traveling, cooking, watching sports and spending quality time with friends and family.
Thank God for Women â The Village Nearby
Thank God for Women is a blog series rooted in gratitude for the strength, courage, and incredible capacity women demonstrate.
The Village Nearby is an chapter from The Mother & Child Project: Raising our Voices for Health and Hopeâcompiled by Hope Through Healing Handsâ Faith-based Coalition for Healthy Mothers and Children Worldwide.
Deborah Dortzbach currently serves as World Reliefâs Senior Health Advisor. Her extensive background in international public health has equipped her to oversee maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, child development, adolescent health, and anti-trafficking programs for over twenty-five years.
In 2015, Zondervan published The Mother & Child Project: Raising our Voices for Health and Hope, featuring personal stories from women around the worldâincluding Deborahâs. Her story covers her work in the late 1970s, and journeys through a time when she was held hostage while pregnant. She applauds the strength of the women who surrounded her at that time. We thank God for Deborah and the work she continues to do to empower women. Hereâs an excerpt her story…
I thought I would deliver my firstborn child by myself in a makeshift lean-to on a windswept hill far from a health facility. I was terrified.
There was no one to give me prenatal care. No one to coach me. No one to talk to about my fears. No emergency backup for complications. No one exceptâŠsoldiers, hovering.
I am a nurse and was taken hostage while pregnant by the Eritrean Liberation Front and held in a remote, desolate location near the Sudan border. One day, as I wandered in allowable short distances, I discovered others like myself in a nearby village. They were Tigre women, clustered around each other as they framed their nomadic huts. Some were pregnant; some had children tugging at their long, faded skirts as they stretched straw mats over simple poles. One woman stood alone. She had no children and looked sad and abandoned.
I went to them, and we chatted, each in our own mother tongue, as together we thrust grass mats over the acacia sticks, bounced babies in our arms, and laughed at each otherâs strange expressions. I put their weathered hands on my bulging bump of baby, and they seemed to curiously question, âWhat are you doing here?â
I have had many years now to reflect on that question. I was eventually released, received good medical care, and delivered a healthy baby boy. But my newfound friends were never freed from the captivity of unsafe motherhood and the future opportunity to participate in decisions about their families and their own well-being. Were I to return to the same hill today, I wonder if they would ask me the very same question, in the past tense, and what my answer would be. âWhat have you done, for us?â
The Tigre moms and millions like them, let us know that before us is a choiceâto improve maternal health, or to actually increase maternal harm through just doing nothing. While we get genuinely interested for a brief season or for some project silos in maternal health, we all know the deeper issues of behavior and structural change take time and perseverance. Our commitments must be unswerving and unending.
Fundamentally, as Christians, we work and strive to improve maternal health because itâs about valuing who a woman is as God made her and treasures her, not because of a role or function, marital status, maternal status, or even because of need, as great as that may be. Needs and resources will come and goâbut the intrinsic worth of woman as God sees her, will always warrant our highest efforts to esteem her and fight for her equality and full expression of honor, dignity, safety, and health.
The account in the Gospels[1] of the bleeding woman healed by Jesus demonstrates this. The unnamed woman, bleeding for 12 years, was stigmatized, spiritually ostracized, extremely weak, and economically impoverished. Yet, drawn by the working of Christ in her life, she ventured into a crowded social space and touched Jesus. He cared so deeply and so thoroughly for her, that He allowed her blood-impure status to spiritually defile him. It instantly healed the woman.
What a beautiful picture for us of the spiritual healing soon to come through the defilement Jesus took upon himself on the cross! God chose the body of woman through which to be born (Mary) and now the body of a woman to bring a foreshadowing of His healing power through death. Can there be any doubt He loves, treasures, honors, and redeems women and seeks to bring His redemption and completeness to all humankind in brokenness and suffering?
[1] Matthew 9:20-22; Mark 5:25-34; Luke 8:43-48
Join us as we support those whose work raises the value of women and provides the opportunities for growth and progress.
Thank God for Women â Saving Funds and Communities
*Some information has been changed to protect the individualâs identity.
Thank God for Women is a blog series rooted in gratitude for the strength, courage, and incredible capacity women demonstrate.
As a pastorâs wife in rural Kenya, Elizabeth Ewoton saw glaring financial needs all around her community. She decided to lead by example, using her influence to mobilize 15 local women to join a community savings group at Full Gospel Church in Lokitaung, Kenya, which had implemented World Reliefâs Savings For Life back in 2014.
Savings For Life is a holistic, community-based savings and credit program that offers safe and reliable financial services to people who are often excluded from more formal banking institutions. As time goes by, consistent savings allow participants access to appropriately-sized loans, without impossible fees and interest rates. This allows members of the group to take care of daily household needs and to establish and invest in their own income-generating activities.
Prior to Elizabeth’s involvement, no one had ever heard of working together as a community to save their own funds. But one woman, Hellen Esekon, caught Elizabethâs vision and decided to give it a try.
Both womenâs families soon benefited substantially from the Savings For Life program, as each gained access to money to pay unexpected school fees for their daughters. Both Elizabeth and Hellen say there is no way they would have been able to pay the feesâwhich were demanded on very short noticeâif it werenât for the savings group.
Elizabeth, who is now chair of the group, and Hellen have become bold advocates for the Savings For Life program at Full Gospel Church. They have experienced first-hand the transformation and security that comes with financial stability, and they want that experience for others as well!
Give to World Relief to create a better world for women.
Thank God for Women â Defiant Love
*Some information has been changed to protect the individualâs identity.
Thank God for Women is a blog series rooted in gratitude for the strength, courage, and incredible capacity women demonstrate.
Six years ago, I was sitting at a small, unsteady table, in a room that was oppressively hot. Aamiina, a young refugee woman sat across from me. A few months prior to that, the word ârefugeeâ had not really been part of my vernacular, but it was now an everyday term.
We opened the roomâs small window to try to let in a breeze, and the cacophony of the streets soon invaded any sense of peace and quiet. Aamiina began to share her refugee journeyâa story of sorrow, suffering, and loss.
To this day, I have never been able to repeat what I heard, though I can still remember every detail. I still think of the two daughters Aamiina lostâone to death, and one to kidnapping. I wonder if her daughter is still alive somewhere, and if she knows how her mother longs to find her.
When Aamiina finished her story, she said something that I will never forget: âAll the people that did these things to me, they want me to hate. But my act of defiance is to love.â
Amiinaâs love and gentleness defied all odds. Despite such loss, Aamiina later took young women under her wing and loved them as if they were her own daughters. Her love changed these women. Her love changed me.
Since that day, I have met many women like Aamiina in some of the most violent corners of this earth. I have connected with mothers from Syria, who have made dangerous journeys across deserts and seas to seek refuge for their children. I have cried with women who have pulled their children from beneath the rubble of destroyed homes, schools, and hospitals. I have witnessed young women who have had to discontinue their education because of conflict, and instead have chosen to invest in the education of children in their communities. I have seen young women return to their destroyed homes, and begin the courageous work of rebuilding, even in the midst of uncertainty. I have seen women volunteer long hours to serve others, even when their own needs were profound. I have watched my friendâafter ISIS killed everyone in her family except for her younger sisterâwork long hours to pay for her sisterâs education.
These women inspire and fuel much World Reliefâs work in the Middle East. We work with Syrian women who volunteer in Child Friendly Spaces, providing psychosocial, education, and health support to children. We partner with women in Iraq who provide support to children and youth in their communities. We stand with women that are working to rebuild their communities and restore livelihoods to their families as they return to cities in Iraq.
Women are leading, creating, and defining the work that we do across the Middle East. I am profoundly grateful to know these women and to witness the work that they are doing.
The women World Relief partners with and serve have taught me to love courageously. Love is not weakness in the wake of hatred and violence. Love is not passive. Loveâlike my friend Aamiina sharedâis an act of defiance. The love of women across the Middle East is driving out darkness, and making the way for peace.
I thank God for women because women defy the darkness.
I thank God for women because in places of destruction, women rebuild, restore and reclaim peace.
Give to World Relief today.
Together, we can create a better world for women like Aamiina.
Maggie Konstanski has been a part of the World Relief team for over 4 years, and currently serves at the Middle East Programs Technical and Operations Coordinator. With a passion for international human rights, Maggie often uses work-related travel as a platform to tell the powerful stories of the vulnerable families and communities we serve.
Thank God for Women â A Conversation with Rhona Murungi
Thank God for Women is a blog series rooted in gratitude for the strength, courage, and incredible capacity women demonstrate.
Rhona Murungi was born and raised in rural western Ugandan by a single motherâwho, Rhona says, was her biggest cheerleader while she pursued an education. After finishing graduate school at Vanderbilt, Rhona was looking to begin her career in economic and country development. With a passion to address the needs in her home country, she was connected to World Relief, where she now serves as Program Officer for the organizationâs Developing Countries Unit. Recently, Cassidy Stratton, World Reliefâs Marketing Coordinator, spoke with Rhona about her story and her passion for working with women around the world:
Cassidy Stratton: From Uganda to Taylor University, and then to Vanderbilt. How did you get connected to World Relief?
Rhona Murungi: I had just finished graduate school at Vanderbilt, and I was looking for a job! And I knew that I wanted to do development work. I knew that I wanted to do work that was in some form or fashion directly connected to Africa, because thatâs where Iâm from. Thatâs what I know. Thatâs what Iâm passionate about.
I got this email from World Relief, looked it up and got really excited about the Program Officer role and applied. The rest is history.
CS: Could you tell us more about your work within World Relief?
RM: I was a Program Officer, stationed in the U.S., working for the East African region for close to 3 years. And then I was itching to get back to [Africa]. I had been away from home for 9 plus years. I really wanted to go back home. I wanted to grow and be challenged, and get the opportunity to do this work in the African context. So, when the [Directors of Programs] role became open again, I jumped at the chance to fulfill it and go to the region, and the Rwanda office welcomed me for 2 years.
Iâm doing a PhD program at the moment, so I decided to come back to [World Reliefâs Baltimore] office so that I could better balance my school work and the service opportunities within World Reliefâsort of similar to the Program Officer role, but in the Developing Countries Unit.
Itâs really exciting to plug back in. Iâm grateful that the role that Iâm in at the moment still allows me to have a significant opportunity to support programs in the region. I [now] oversee Haiti, Rwanda, Burundi, and Kenya.
CS: What work have you done with women throughout your time with World Relief or even before?
RM: I could talk about that for ages! Our work, actually, is very heavily focused onâand targetsâwomen. Women and children, in many ways, make up a significant portion of beneficiaries.
CS: Why is it important for our work to intentionally address the needs of women?
RM: If your programs are intentionally involving and welcoming the participation of women (not at the exclusion of men by the way) itâs most likely to not just succeed, but actually benefit beyond the individual woman to the household and entire community. Itâs proven, but I can also really attest to that from my own personal upbringing. Women glue the home together.
CS: Could you provide some examples?
RM: For example, one of my favorite programs in World Reliefâand to be honest, I have a little personal bias to itâis our Savings For Life work. Seventy-two percent of our beneficiaries are women in this program. Which, in a way, makes sense because women areâat least in the communities in Africa that Iâm from and have been exposed toâ the backbone of households. And when you target women, when you empower women, when you engage women, and bring them in and allow for their participation, it actually benefits the entire householdânot just one individual.
CS: Has there been a particular experience within the Savings For Life group you can recall?
RM: A few months ago, I was doing a field visit in one of our Church Empowerment Zones in Rwanda, and visited a savings group. I shared with these women that this [moment] took me back to when I was little. My mom was part of a savings group growing upâsaving a little at a time, investing in setting up a small business, putting food on the table for my siblings and I, and sending us to school. I am, in many ways, a product of this program.
And I tell the women, âLook, Iâm a product of what you are doing. And the Lord remain, 15 or 20 years from now, your kids, that are running around your feet, are going to be meâapproaching the very work that youâre diligently doing in order for you to feed them, send them through school, and support your family.â
This particular program brings me to tears because it is a full-circle momentâthat I have the privilege and honor to approach work that actually transformed my family and my life.
CS: Youâre very passionate about the work youâve done with women, children, and men. Has there been a specific time when your life has been transformed because of a womanâs impact?
RM: There is not two ways about it for me; by far the most impactful woman in my life has been my mother. She is just an incredible example. To be honest, we could sit here for a couple of hours and I would be able to exhaust the stories about my mother and the ways in which she has shepherded our family, and brought us so far and as single mother, too.
CS: You said yourself that âevidence shows that women tend to think beyond ourselves, beyond our own interestsâto the interests of others.â Thatâs powerful. Why do you thank God for women?
RM: I thank God for the resilience of women and the way God has and continues to use women to be the backbone and the lifeblood of many households, communities, and nationsâin ways that go both recognized and unrecognized.
You too can make a difference in the lives of women around the world.
Thank God for Women â The Remarkable Story of Beatrice, A Tangible Experience of Joy
Thank God for Women is a blog series rooted in gratitude for the strength, courage, and incredible capacity women demonstrate.
Occasionally, in life, we are blessed to experience joy in its purest, most unadulterated form. It can come in a quiet moment of prayer, an incredible experience, or even through a person.
For me, one of these precious moment of joy came in the form of a beautiful wife and mother, named Beatrice, who lived in the Bushenge district of Rwanda. Beatrice is an individual who radiates the love of Jesus. When I think of her, I immediately think of Proverbs 31âclothed in strength and dignity, laughing without fear of the future.
For Beatrice, however, that was not always the case. For years, she longed to repair the broken relationships within her family to prepare her children for their future. Beatrice spoke with a tangible sadness when she explained how isolated she was from her children. âI was too shy to talk to them about their health and their bodies, or to counsel them on difficulties of being a teenager. They were lost, and I continued to build a wall between us, higher and thicker with each passing year.â
As Beatrice struggled to understand how to relate to her new adolescents, she joined a parenting group run by a local church as a part of World Reliefâs “Mobilizing For Lifeâ program. She began learning about Godâs vision for family, and the opportunity and gift sheâd been given in motherhood. Beatrice learned to rise above her embarrassment and enter into discussions with her children around health, dating, sex, and HIV/AIDS. And it wasnât long before Beatrice broke through yet another social barrierâencouraging her husband, Gracian, to join her.
Less than five years later, Beatrice and Gracian are pillars of inspiration and faith in their community. Today, Beatrice and Gracian lead kids-clubs throughout their community. Each week they spend time with nearly 100 adolescents, counseling them and fostering a safe and open environment where kids from all walks of life can share their struggles and ask questions. And what they have achieved is truly remarkable. In her own words, through a smile that reached ear to ear, Beatrice told us about their work.
âIn 2014 we started a kids club counseling youth. We teach the kids the word of God, but we also talk about how to make good decisions. We focus on how to pick good friends, to stay away from drugs and alcohol, and avoid HIV and early pregnancy. We even started hosting soccer games and offering free HIV testing at matches. Last match we had over 80 kids come to play and get tested!
It is truly amazing, and our initiative is only growing. We are fostering an environment of openness where everyone comes to us for advice. We are so happy that weâve been able to learn and share so much and be a part of change in our community.â
I truly believe that supporting, celebrating, and investing in women like Beatrice is the most effective and impactful way to change lives. To watch a once-struggling wife and mother in rural Rwanda be transformed by a renewed understanding of Godâs calling for her life has an unparalleled beauty and power.
To be in her presence is to experience God in a beautiful and tangible way.
Beatrice is why I Thank God for Women each day.
Women of incredible faith, uniquely and purposefully placed to experience and reveal Godâs plan for the world in the most unexpected ways and places.
Capable of restoring brokenness with one smile.
Laughing without fear of the future. Rather, embracing it. Transforming it.
These are brave kingdom warriors, beautiful and courageous women of God, stepping out in faith to transform their families and ultimately, their entire communities.
Give to World Relief today. Together, we can create a better world for women like Beatrice.
Francesca Albano currently serves as Product Development Lead at World Relief. With a background in strategic marketing communications, she connects her interests in brand strategy, audience engagement, and storytelling around her passionsâchildren, disaster and humanitarian relief, human rights, and poverty alleviation. Francesca best describes herself as a storyteller, writer, foodie, globetrotter, and humanitarian.
Thank God for Women â You Have Taught Me
Thank God for Women is a blog series rooted in gratitude for the strength, courage, and incredible capacity women demonstrate.
World Reliefâs calling does not single out women.
And yet, each year our work impacts around 7 million people, some 80% of them women and children. In subâSaharan Africa, where the impact of climate change is accelerating and the ravages of severe drought are increasingly common, destroying even the meager livelihoods of the rural farming community, it is women and primarily young girls who suffer the most. In the Middle East, as in many other conflict zones, the violence women have suffered or seen is almost unimaginable. And for those who have courageously left behind all that is familiar, journeying to a new land where culture, faith, language, and economic viability are all unknown, the burden of anxietyâeven in the midst of hopeâcan be crippling.
This picture, the very fodder of non-profit fundraising efforts, tells only half of the story. It does not tell the story of the amazing courage, strength, resilience, selflessness, dignity that I encounter in the midst of such suffering. It does not express the capacity for joy, laughter, and love even in the midst of unspeakable hardship. It does not speak to the role I see women playing in helping transform lives through our savings group programs or acting as outreach volunteers in our Church Empowerment Zones in Africa. It does not speak to the expertise and selfless commitment of our staff here in the U.S.A., the majority of whom are women. Nor does it speak to the fullness of creativity and intelligence that is manifest in our organization when men and women labor side by side in this Kingdom work.
And yet, the reality still stands that we live in a world that continues to give precedence to men and boys over women and young girls. Nothing justifies these injustices nor the denial of equal opportunity to women.
These images give me pause for reflection about the women in my own life and their influence upon the man I am today. I look back on my life and I ask myself: If love is the greatest calling, where and how did I learn to love? Where and how did I come to understand the limits of worldly success, of competitiveness, and of ambition? Where and how did I learn to see strength as Jesus saw it?
I cannot speak for other men, but for me I learned these things because of women.
Because of a mother who courageously brought up four boys on her own after my father deserted us. Because of my wife, Michele, who always seems to access a deeper wisdom than I canâeven when I think I âwon the argument.â Because of three daughters, each expressing their own uniqueness and joy of life, while all wired with compassion in their DNA.
So, I thank God for the women in my life, unique in their manifestations of strength and dignity, intellect and wisdom, industry, compassion and generosity of heart, gentleness, and care. And for the life-giving spirit they share so selflessly and often sacrificially.
You have taught me.
More than 80% of the beneficiaries of World Relief’s programs are women and children. Give today to help create a better world for women.
Tim Breene served on the World Relief Board from 2010 to 2015 before assuming the role of CEO in 2016. Timâs business career has spanned nearly 40 years with organizations like McKinsey, and Accenture where he was the Corporate Development Officer and Founder and Chief Executive of Accenture Interactive. Tim is the co-author of Jumping the S-Curve, published by Harvard Publishing. Tim and his wife Michele, a longtime supporter of World Relief, have a wealth of experience working with Christian leaders in the United States and around the world.
Happy International Women’s Day!
Today on International Womenâs Day and every day, we are proud to empower vulnerable women around the world with opportunities, skills, resources and a strong sense of their inherent dignity and worth.
Women are often marginalized in many ways, sometimes lacking access to the most basic services. We know that the women we serve possess nearly unlimited potential to be change agents in their homes, communities and nations. Depending on the specific needs in the areas we work, we establish home-based care groups to improve household nutrition, address the holistic needs of those at risk for HIV/AIDS, provide necessary skills and resources for mothers, prevent human trafficking, address the comprehensive needs of trafficking survivors, resettle refugee women and form local savings groups to bring financial services and opportunities to unreached women.
Our Savings For Life is particularly important in empowering women. Women work together to collectively save and provide loans to one another. The groups are sustainable, eventually becoming self-led, small financial institutions in communities where there are none. The groups provide women with the ability to establish financial independence, provide for their families and start their own businesses. Most importantly, savings groups become places of fellowship and community. Along with savings skills, women learn about the power of the Gospel in transforming their lives and address issues like HIV/AIDS and best practices for farming.
The following stories are taken from our field offices and provide just a small snapshot of empowered women in some of the worldâs poorest areas. Help us STAND for and with women like these.
Monica is from a small village in Kenya. A year ago, Monica joined a womensâ association called the âGood Hopeâ savings group. Since 2011, the group has been participating in village savings and loan associations, a program implemented by World Relief and local partners. Group members save and lend their funds among themselves and contribute a small amount to a social fund each week that can be used during times of need. Members are able to start projects for one another, providing the resources for needed home repairs and school expenses. Since joining this group, Monica has been able to use small loans to start her own clothing business. She is also able to set aside savings for her baby, Rachael.
Christine is from the DR Congo, where extreme conflict makes women particularly vulnerable to violence and extreme poverty. Christine watched a neighbor participate in a savings group and use her resources to buy a goat for the family and pay school fees. Christine decided to join a savings group and now invests some of the income she makes as a farmer. âI was taught by my field officer from the Bible that âwhoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously,ââ She said.
Judith is 40 years old and lives in Makamba province in Burundi. She is married with six children, two of whom are in school. She is the president of a village savings and loan association in her community. Prior to joining the group, she was unable to pay for needed home repairs, her childrenâsâ school fees or for medical care when her children were sick. She said, âWe save our money, get credits and make a small business. This makes our family happy. If someone (a member) gets a problem, we help him/her with the social fund. We talk together as members of an association and study HIV/AIDS.â After witnessing his wifeâs success, Judithâs husband also joined a local savings group.
Are you interested in empowering more women like Monica, Christine and Judith? STAND for vulnerable women with us today.
Happy International Womenâs Day!