Women and Girls

Community Health Volunteers Create Change

Grace Tia — Tue, 27 Jul 2021 03:55:51 +0000

Community Health Volunteers Create Change Grace Tia Tue, 07/27/2021 - 03:55

Community Health Volunteers Create Change

Anne, 42, is a single mother of four children in Kenya. After her older sister got pregnant as a high school student, their father vowed to never educate another daughter.

Anne’s brother helped fund a tailoring course—without schooling, she would have had no marketable skills. For a while, Anne ran a sewing business. But then her sewing machine broke. During this time, her husband was away to find work in Nairobi; Anne didn’t have any source of income.

Over the two-year span that her husband had to be away, Anne’s community surrounded her, providing for her and her family in ways she never imagined. When the family was struggling to survive a critical time, they were surrounded by their church and their neighbors.

Now, Anne’s children have grown a little older – her oldest daughter is a student at university. She has more time on her hands, and she wants to use it to give back to the community that helped her.

“I am delighted to be even of small assistance to my community...”

The Church of the Nazarene, where Anne has long attended, is part of a new integrated community health project in partnership with Nazarene Compassionate Ministries. At the heart of the new project are the community health volunteers, community members who are trained and equipped to educate and aid their neighbors. They meet regularly and travel to remote areas in the community teach good sanitation practices as well as provide basic first aid care.

Anne was thrilled when her pastor about the volunteer program, and she dove in immediately. It felt like the vehicle for change in her community for which she had been yearning.

“I am delighted to be even of small assistance to my community,” she shares. “They stood by me when I needed them the most, and they still do.”

The project, like the issues of clean water and good health, is multi-faceted. One of the problems it seeks to address is access. In rural areas, medical care is often miles away, and many people don’t have access to reliable transportation. The misconception is that it is easier or safer to stay home rather than making the miles-long trip by foot. If the injury or illness is serious, though, this decision becomes the impossible between risking the walk or risking staying at home without medicine.

Anne, second from left, with other Community Health Volunteers

Community Health Volunteers act as a connection point between their neighbors and medical care. The volunteers aren’t providing medical care themselves; they work closely with clinics, hospitals, and other health institutions to strengthen a network of communication. For instance, they provide resources for mothers so they don’t give birth at home, where infant mortality rates are much higher.

“These activities have influenced family, my community, and me a great deal,” Anne says.

Volunteers in a training session

The effort of the volunteers, combined with the water, sanitation, and hygiene elements of the projects, are already beginning to transform communities. In one county, volunteers visited nearly 1,500 households in one quarter. They connected people with illnesses to their closest clinics, provided resources to expecting mothers, and led hygiene events at schools to empower children to stop illness from spreading through good hygiene practices.

“I am grateful for the training that has made me a community health volunteer,” Anne says.

Women and Girls

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7 Days of Praying for Women and Girls

Grace Tia — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 09:00:50 +0000

7 Days of Praying for Women and Girls Grace Tia Thu, 04/22/2021 - 09:00

7 Days of Praying for Women and Girls

We see in scripture that God creates both men and women in His image, sharing equal value and worth in His eyes. But in many places around the world, gender inequality leaves women and girls disproportionately vulnerable to discrimination, poverty, and violence.

Nazarene Compassionate Ministries partners with local churches around the world to support women and their families through self-help groups and small business creation, vocational training, small-scale farming, literacy education, child development centers, and other programs that help them see themselves as people who are valuable, capable, and equal because they are made in God’s image. When girls are able to continue their education and women are equipped to learn and pursue productive work, they lift the well-being of their entire families and eventually their communities.

This week, take time each day to pray for women and girls.

Day 1

In many societies where sons are preferred, unborn girls are aborted at higher rates than boys. Girls who survive until birth may be neglected, abandoned, or even killed. Pray for girls to be protected from all who fail to see their value.

Psalm 139:13–14, CEB You are the one who created my innermost parts; you knit me together while I was still in my mother’s womb. I give thanks to you that I was marvelously set apart. Your works are wonderful—I know that very well.

Day 2

Economic challenges and disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic can lead children, especially girls, to drop out of school. In some places, girls who lack a complete education are at higher risk for early marriage and pregnancy. Pray for girls worldwide to have equal access to education. Thank God for the opportunities that child sponsorship affords girls who might otherwise struggle to stay in school.

Proverbs 3:13, CEB Happy are those who find wisdom and those who gain understanding.

Day 3

In many places, women and girls often spend more than twice as much time as men and boys gathering water for their families. When they have to spend so much time gathering water, they aren’t able to go to school or work as often. Pray for clean water sources to be built in communities that lack easy access to water, and for protection for women and girls who spend hours every day on this task.

Isaiah 49:10, CEB They won’t hunger or thirst; the burning heat and sun won’t strike them, because one who has compassion for them will lead them and will guide them by springs of water.

Day 4

An estimated 71 percent of victims of human trafficking are women and girls. Pray for the safety of women and girls who are vulnerable to trafficking and for the healing of those who are survivors. Pray for their perpetrators to be brought to justice and repentance.

Proverbs 31:8, CEB Speak out on behalf of the voiceless, and for the rights of all who are vulnerable.

Day 5

The World Bank estimates that the pandemic pushed up to 124 million people into extreme poverty during 2020. Pray for women and girls struggling to support themselves and their families to have access to job skill training, like the Liberia Empowering Women With Dignity Program, which is empowering women to find hope for a better future.

Proverbs 16:3, CEB Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will succeed.

Day 7

For many women around the world, when their husbands die, they must cope with both their grief as well as losing a social safety net. Of the approximately 245 million widows globally, more than 115 million live in extreme poverty. Pray for the needs of widows to be met and for them to know they are valuable in God’s sight.

Deuteronomy 10: 17-18, CEB ...because the Lord your God is the God of all gods and Lord of all lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God who doesn’t play favorites and doesn’t take bribes. He enacts justice for orphans and widows, and he loves immigrants, giving them food and clothing.

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Stitch and Gather: Providing Community for Those Living as Refugees

Grace Tia — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 06:53:38 +0000

Stitch and Gather: Providing Community for Those Living as Refugees Grace Tia Thu, 01/09/2020 - 06:53

Stitch and Gather: Providing Community for Those Living as Refugees

On an early spring morning in Kent, Washington, a group of women are gathered around a tall cutting table, watching Sandy Appl demonstrate how to use a rotary cutter. The device, which looks a lot like a tiny pizza cutter, makes cutting strips of fabric as easy as drawing a line.

Photo: World Relief Seattle

The four tables spanning the room are brightly illuminated by a wall of windows, making it easy to see small stitches. On the side opposite the windows, ironing boards stand ready to use; above them are posters with helpful English words and phrases. When one of the instructors isn’t teaching, the room is filled with chatting and laughter. Each of the eight sewing stations has a machine, a nameplate, and a small plastic crate of supplies and half-finished projects. Over the course of six weeks, the women will make a pillowcase, an oven mitt, a baby quilt, a tote bag, and a zippered pouch.

The women are part of Sewing With Purpose, a ministry of Kent Hillside Church—an International Church of the Nazarene, in partnership with World Relief Seattle. They are also all refugees who are resettled in Washington. Three times a week, they come to the church for two-hour classes and complete projects of increasing difficulty at their individual sewing stations.

Photo: Callie Stevens

CREATING COMMUNITY

Mursal Alemi had been in the United States for a little less than a month when her caseworker at World Relief Seattle told her about the class. She was a young mother with toddler-age twins, and she and her husband came from Afghanistan without any other family. Being here on their own was extremely lonely, she says; for a while, she cried every day.

Mursal with a blanket she made in the class.
Photo: Callie Stevens

So when she learned about a place where she could practice English and build community, she joined the sewing class for the very first cohort. Alemi is still friends with the women she met there. They regularly have gatherings at each other’s houses.

“Not the first time I’m coming, but after that ... I’m friends with a lot of people,” Alemi says. “Now I’m friends with a lot of people in the class.”

Sewing With Purpose was started in 2017 after World Relief Seattle conducted a focus group with some of the Afghan families who were being settled in Kent, though not all of the women who attend are from Afghanistan. Many, including Alemi, come on a special immigrant visa, or SIV, usually awarded to families in which the men worked as translators or other specialists with theUnited States military. So while their husbands had the opportunity to learn English, many of the women haven’t even had the opportunity to learn to read and write in their own languages.

Like Alemi, the women end up being isolated at home, unable to speak the language in a new country or develop any sort of community. They craved community and the ability to learn English without worrying about mixed-gender classes, which would be viewed as culturally inappropriate.

Photo: World Relief Seattle

With roles at both entities, Tahmina Martelly helps bridge the gap between World Relief Seattle and Kent Hillside. Martelly herself was an asylum seeker; she came to the United States from Bangladesh. For years, she has worked with those living as refugees or asylum seekers and knew there are challenges unique to women. She started wondering what could be done to help women with stories like Alemi’s. Martelly called around, but no one was offering a sewing class—certainly, there were none nearby with an ESL component. “[We were] basically figuring out, ‘Well, how could we do this?’” Martelly says. “And of course, I knew I could leverage our church.”

TRANSFORMING THE CHURCH

Kent Hillside had the space that World Relief Seattle didn’t; there were several classrooms in the building that were mostly being used as storage. But they still didn’t have supplies for the classes. They needed sewing machines, a curriculum that taught sewing and English, cutting tables, volunteers, childcare—the list seemed nearly insurmountable. Then, as the idea for a class was forming, a woman approached Martelly to offer her 10 sewing machines she had stored away. The woman, Jeanine Boyle, was an instructor for Singer Sewing Machine Company, and she knew how to write sewing tutorials. The class was starting to seem possible, after all.

Boyle and Martelly developed a curriculum that incorporated outcomes for learning English. Then Appl, the current main instructor, helped modify it.

“We’ve tried to make it as complete as possible and build well from the beginning to the end,” she says. “What they make in six weeks with just three mornings is mind-boggling.”

A few of the men in the church built the cutting tables, reducing the cost to $150 each instead of $2,000. Volunteers came to clean out the classrooms, transforming them into craft space, childcare space, and the sewing room. What used to be storing old choir robes and decorations became a place of life and stories.

—

The first cohort of classes started in January 2017. Martelly says they are always tweaking things in their curriculum, trying to get better each time. Initially, the ESL component was a little bit hard to pull off in addition to the large amount of sewing in each session. No one was really trained, and there wasn’t a specific time set aside. Now, an AmeriCorps service member is usually connected with the class through World Relief Seattle. In each session, the volunteer leads the students in 20 to 30 minutes of directed ESL exercises.

—

The church also hosts another non-traditional ESL class: Four days a week, the church hosts a Family Literacy Class run through World Relief Seattle for mothers and their children, from infants to 5 years old. The mothers and children engage in age-appropriate English classes before coming together to practice and learn activities that can be replicated at home. Women have the opportunity, then, to learn both English and ways to engage with their children. “So then they really learn together,” Martelly explains.

Photo: World Relief Seattle

Taken from the latest issue of NCM Magazine. Click here to read the article in its entirety.

Women and Girls

Community Health Volunteers Create Change

“I am delighted to be even of small assistance to my community...”

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7 Days of Praying for Women and Girls

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Stitch and Gather: Providing Community for Those Living as Refugees

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