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The focus of this project is to help develop sustainable and transferable youth leadership development and ministry across the countries that SIM is involved in. This project will help young people understand and own their faith in ways that are relevant. It will seek to equip and develop the vast number of national youth leaders who struggle to lead without adequate training, support and encouragement. It will help churches in developing appropriate ways to connect with young people and to see them become life-long followers of Jesus Christ.
The project is the work of Sean Marston, SIM International Youth Champion, as well as SIM NZ Mobilization. You can read more of his work with youth and global youth issues here, at his site www.youthmesh.org.
To help in the launch of this project, you can make donations here. Reference “Youth Leadership Training” Project # 99632.
Dr Julie Lincoln writes of a patient’s story from one of the clinics she works with – a story of hope and change!
63 year old Puse came to the Jumla Leprosy Centre with an ulcer on his left foot. He used to work in India to earn money. Puse had no feeling in his left leg for many years and didn’t care for it. Gradually it grew worse and he started to worry about it. Many times he used herbal treatment but without success. Puse showed his leg to a witchdoctor but he also couldn’t do anything. The wound remained infected and having spent lots of money unsuccessfully, he then came to Jumla for examination and treatment.
Puse was diagnosed with leprosy. When he was told he had leprosy he sadly remembers: “I felt like I had fallen from the highest tree and wanted to die rather than to live. I searched for ideas how to die and wept a lot. I wondered how my family would respond if they found out I have leprosy. For a while I stayed far away from them. My wife and son found out that I had leprosy as my behaviours changed. Even so, they were kind to me, showed love and reassured me. Only then, I calmed down and started to take the medicine. Now, I am well again even though there is no feeling in my feet, so I need to care for them responsibly. The ulcer on my left leg is healed and I can walk home easily. I have to do lots of work in my home and if an ulcer occurs in my leg again I will come to the leprosy centre right away.”
Accessibility to basic health care and specialty treatment for diseases like leprosy can make a world of difference for patients like Puse, enabling them to be treated with dignity and have hope for a future.
To support the work of Julie Lincoln and the centers she works in, click here. Reference Julie or Good Neighbour Nepal Project #98383
Kenneth teaching a visiting short-term missions team on approaches to HIV and AIDS.
Why this project?
Recent statistics put the HIV infection rate in Thailand at over 40 people per day, half of them youth. With globalization and a rapidly changing culture having an effect on sexuality and relationships and where people are constantly moving across boarders Radical Grace is proactively working with local people to find a meaningful response. Radical Grace is about restoring relationships in community as a model of HIV prevention and promotion of care.
Radical Grace: Relational Approaches to HIV and AIDS is an initiative that equips local pastors and community leaders in culturally respectful ways to understand the HIvirus and its impact. Using World Vision’s Channels of Hope programme, among several others, Radical Grace comes alongside churches and communities to equip them to respond effectively to needs arising out of HIV and AIDS. Tools include training for participants to run workshops in their own communities, extending the reach of awareness and response. It also offers an enriching and challenging opportunity to explore a Christian response to the issues.
Kenneth and Kim Fleck, SIM workers from New Zealand, lead this project from their home in northern Thailand. They believe that at its core, HIV and AIDS is a symptom of broken relationship with each other, with God and within communities. Thus, the foremost response must be found in life-transforming relationships that offer hope— to those living with HIV and AIDS, people vulnerable to getting HIV and to those called to minister to them. As people encounter love, relationships are restored, hope rebuilt and faith can be created.
In the past Thailand has done amazingly well in the area of HIV and AIDS but increasingly today there seems to be a global culture of ambivalence. There is a worldview which maintains that you cannot change what fate gives you, and if you engage people living with HIV and AIDS, you may bring their bad luck upon yourself.
A big challenge is helping society address the issues of HIV in a holistic way by helping the societal drivers be recognized. During the Radical Grace workshops, participants assess local cultural, political, social economical drivers for HIV and injustice as well as exploring cultural entryways. Creating a vision for community unity and transformation from within. Thus issues of injustice can be remedied rather than directing prevention and care with an ‘us and them’ motivation.
Kenneth and Kim have a relaxed, easy-going manner combined with a deep passion and giftedness for the work. Kenneth works strategically with other organizations active in HIV and AIDS ministry. Already the fruit of collaboration is expanding the reach of the work.
A very qualified Thai team includes community worker, Taan, as well as Dang and Ann, a couple who will join part-time in 2013.
Donate here and quote HOPE for AIDS Thailand: Radical Grace: Relational Approaches to HIV. Project: # 98382
Jean Whittaker spent nine years in Malawi ministering in a variety of ways before retiring last year and returning to her home in New Zealand. Little did she know that God would bring her back to Malawi only nine months later.
“Even when I left I felt that God wanted me to come back,” she said. “I knew I’d only be able to come back short term, but I felt it was worthwhile to come back and do some follow-up and some more teaching.” Continue reading
Latest Update: The construction on the fistula center is progressing well and a grand opening is planned for February 2012. Thank you for all your prayers to make this ministry happen. We couldn’t do it without you!
WHY THIS PROJECT?
An estimated 100,000 women and girls suffer from obstetric fistulas in Niger Republic, with approximately 8,000 new cases added annually. Child birth at a young age and malnutrition predispose adolescent girls to developing fistulas. In Niger more than one-third (36%) of girls ages 15 to 19 have already been pregnant and/or have children. Niger has both the highest fertility rate and one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. While significant strides have been made toward combating obstetric fistula, the scope of the problem remains immense.
SIM Niger is partnering with Worldwide Fistula Fund to build and operate a new surgical center which will offer a comprehensive range of short- and long-term services to women suffering from fistula. Further, the WFF plans to advance the message of hope by replicating this Center in other developing nations of the world.
Within just five years, the Center will:
WHAT’S A FISTULA?
What is fistula? Fistula is an internal injury that occurs during difficult or obstructed labor when a woman doesn’t have access to proper medical care. The vaginal injury hinders a woman’s ability to “hold” her urine or feces. Instead, her waste leaks or flows out freely. Terrified, ashamed and often grieving the loss of a stillborn child, fistula sufferers are cast out of their marriages and homes. They are unable to work, socialize or even feed themselves. As one might expect, this condition is so devastating that it can lead to severe depression and even suicide. Fistula and its horrible aftermath often strike the youngest mothers—ages 12, 13, or 14—whose pelvises are not large enough to pass their babies through. Fistula has devastating effects on a woman’s physical, psychological and emotional health.
The Center for Health and Leprosy (Centre de Santé et de Leprologie) in the town of Danja, Niger, is the larger facility in which the Fistula Center will be located. Founded in 1956, CSL Danja is blessed by a staff of 63 employees who treat about 35,000 patients a year, mainly in the general dispensary.
Donate here and quote Danja Fistula Project #97516
Through this project SIM researches the latest appropriate means of providing arsenic removal for individual household wells and advertises these in the affected areas. This project assists the government and other agencies in implementing remedial solutions for the arsenic contamination in our target areas.
The ongoing arsenic-related SIM development work of the past fiscal year met the numerical goals established with the Bangladesh government. The first goal was to raise public awareness of the dangers posed by high arsenic levels in the drinking water. We conducted informational meetings in a variety of public formats. We taught at schools, community centers, tea shops, household meetings and a variety of other localities. We exceeded our goal of 65 meetings by conducting 99 meetings attended by around 1900 people.
Our second goal was to provide remedial solutions for households that drink arsenic-contaminated water. We are fortunate that in our city there is a high quality filter produced locally that can reliably remove arsenic. The filter is called a SONO Filter and it costs about US $32. The filter can daily produce 150 litres of water, which more than meets drinking and cooking needs. The filter is a stand-alone unit, gravity-fed, and can be placed in the kitchen or other appropriate area. We sell the filter at a subsidized rate of about US $8.
Our goal last year was to provide 100 filters, and we ended up providing 130 filters that benefited about 1300 users.
Can you buy a SONO filter at $45 that will provide uncontaminated drinking water to 100 people?
Donate here and quote The Arsenic Alleviation Project ID# 98335.
Thank you for investing in the future of South Sudan.
Update: 10 February 2012
Donate here SIC Secondary School ID # 98019 needs US$273,532 over the next two years.
The Children’s Uplift Programme (‘CUP’) is part of SIM’s work in Mirpur, Bangladesh. This is an extremely poor country with 50% of its population living in poverty. CUP is working with street children to provide a safe place for those children living and working on the streets, especially young girls.
The Children’s Uplift Programme (CUP) began in March 2008 to meet the needs of children who live and work on the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The initial six month research stage found that girls are in particular need of services and support because they are more vulnerable to sexual abuse and sexual exploitation than their male peers. CUP, therefore, made the decision to concentrate on working with girls in street situations. However, as they began to build relationships with homeless girls, they discovered that there are many young homeless mothers who receive little support. It was felt that working with these women and teenagers was essential and the most effective way of ensuring the well-being of their young children.
CUP’s vision is to see children and mothers who have been in street situations independent, living in society, helping each other, understanding God’s love, and developing holistically.
A drop-in centre was opened in 2009 to provide a place where children and mothers could wash, rest and receive first aid. CUP began a training programme for mothers in 2010 to prepare them for employment and CUP opened a night shelter in the same year.
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Outreach involves street-based intervention such as building up relationships, health advice, taking mothers and children to clinics and referring them to other services when appropriate.
The majority of CUP’s mothers survive/ survived by selling sex or begging for money and their children are at high risk of doing the same. CUP runs a training programme that mothers with young children are able to be part of for up to two years. The training programme includes literacy classes, teaching in life skills, parenting and values, emotional support and vocational skills. Each participant receives a payment that enables them to leave the streets and rent a home. CUP has partnered with the business Basha Ltd. to provide employment for the graduates of the training programme.
Children and mothers are able to rest and wash at the CUP’s drop in centre. Children, heavily pregnant homeless mothers and mothers on the training program are given a free meal.
CUP builds up positive, consistent and trusting relationships with children and mothers. Through these relationships and spending time talking through life experiences CUP provides emotional support.
CUP runs a small play group for children under five years old, encourages older children to attend local educational facilities and holds non-formal reading and writing classes for mothers. Additionally CUP provides a nursery for the babies of those mothers on the training program.
CUP informs service users of the health services in the area, provides medicines and takes them to clinics when necessary. At the drop in centre CUP provides health teaching and first aid.
CUP runs an emergency night shelter for mothers in crisis situations and four to six girls at high risk of sexual exploitation.
You can read more updates from CUP here
Donate here to help the Children’s Uplift Programme Project # 98336. They need US$80,000 over the next four years to ensure its running.