A life restored

35-year-old Sita* lives in a village with her mother and three children.

When she was 13, she was forced to marry a 40-year-old man who abused her, and then when their children were still young, deserted her to live with another woman. Sita started feeling depressed and suicidal because of the domestic violence she suffered, the shame of being deserted by her husband and worries about her future. She had no education, skills or ideas of how to support her family. Her own children had to drop out of school due to lack of finance, and she was struggling to feed them. Brokers were pressuring her and her mother to become involved in prostitution as a fast way to earn money.  Sita felt she had no other option.

Then, our local partner organisation held a village meeting to start a women’s group and income generation in the village. Local staff visited Sita, counselled her and encouraged her to become involved in family business training. She was inspired, joined the group, attended training and began goat and vegetable farming. After a year of doing well, she took a loan from the group to expand her business and added more goats.  Her children are back in school; school fees paid partly from her business earnings and partly from scholarships that the group helped her apply for.

Sita says, “the continuous motivation, support and encouragement from the group has transformed me from a scared, vulnerable low caste woman with no hope to an independent businesswoman. I am planning to expand goat farming in large scale family business over the next few years to generate more income and possibly create job opportunities to offer to other vulnerable women in the future.”

*name changed.

A meeting place restored

A migrant fellowship who regularly meet each week to study His Word on Saturday evenings and hold services on Sunday mornings and afternoons as well as programmes on public holidays were facing the loss of their rented premises as the network previously funding the rent for them were unable to continue.  They were unable to fully fund the rent themselves, had no other place to meet or store their resources and equipment and didn’t know what to do.

Our team met with them, heard their story and prayed together.  Within a few weeks we were able to link up the migrant fellowship with a local fellowship who offered to pay half the rent and provide a van and driver to bring members to Saturday night study and Sunday services.  With the funds saved from transport costs, the migrant fellowship is able to pay the other half of rent cost. We helped them to prepare an annual budget and plan required by the local church and facilitated their meeting together. They are now able to continue meeting together, hold outreach programmes and have the benefit of local fellowship input and oversight.

Learn more about how you can make an impact by partnering with SIM NZ today.