Last updated on: January 31, 2023 at 8:55 am By GFA Staff Writer
Gospel for Asia (GFA World), Wills Point, Texas – Discussing the stories of Bridge of Hope center’s impact on the lives of thousands of children.
Hope. An optimistic state of mind based on an expectation of positive outcomes. Hope is a reason to keep on keeping on. It is a reason to keep on living. People without hope live in despair.
No one can reasonably say how many people live in despair. It is fair to say, however, that most people who live in abject poverty eventually lose the hope they once had. It is impossible to know exactly when that hope is lost, but for many, it is sometime during their childhood years when they begin to realize that the obstacles in the way to what they hope for are insurmountable.
As the hopes and joys of early childhood are clouded by the realities of their inability to escape their destitute life, despair creeps into their hearts until every ray of hope is replaced by a dark cloud of doom. They can’t get to where they had hoped to go from where they are.
Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported Bridge of Hope centers build that bridge for tens of thousands of school-age children who have little or no opportunity for making a better life. That requires learning the fundamental skills and habits necessary for building that life. Each day spent at a Bridge of Hope facility is proverbially another plank in the bridge to returning to the hope they thought they had lost.
Staff members lead them in community service projects where they can apply what they have been taught in a practical way. Think of the spark in a child’s mind when they realize, “I can help others to learn and help them to hope!”
Hope Renewed for Ratan
With an alcoholic father, young Ratan struggled with physical weakness and faced challenges socially. He struggled in his studies and spent much of his time at home, too fearful to speak to others or make any friends. At this rate, a bright future seemed unlikely for the scared and sickly little boy.
But then Ratan was enrolled into a Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported Bridge of Hope center in his village. The Bridge of Hope staff had recognized Ratan’s need for assistance and decided to give him the opportunity to participate in the activities at the center and receive help with his education.
Ratan flourished at the Bridge of Hope center. Through the daily meal and the hygiene items he received, his sicknesses faded away, and he gained the strength of a normal young boy. He also grew stronger academically and improved in his studies.
The Bridge of Hope teachers and staff invested in Ratan’s life, encouraging him to take part in extracurricular activities. The teachers’ caring involvement in his life touched Ratan’s heart.
Ratan—once too shy to talk to strangers—now aspires to serve alongside his countrymen. He admired the love and concern for others that was demonstrated at the Bridge of Hope center and embraced those same values, laying a foundation that can guide him wherever he goes in the years to come.
Bala’s grandmother, Udita, was left to care for the little girl, but she was too old and feeble to work. With no one to help them, she and Bala struggled to get through each day.
When Bala arrived at the Bridge of Hope center, she wore shabby clothes and struggled to read and write, but the staff quickly began working with her. Instead of seeing her as a problem to be fixed, they showed her genuine love, treating her as their own daughter. As a result, Bala was completely transformed.
Today, Bala has been an orphan for six years, but she doesn’t live with the despair usually attached to her status. Instead, she comes to the Bridge of Hope center eager to sing and dance, certain that her life doesn’t lack anything—even parental love.
Last updated on: November 26, 2022 at 7:08 pm By GFA Staff Writer
WILLS POINT, TX – GFA World (Gospel for Asia) founded by K.P. Yohannan, which inspired numerous charities like GFA World Canada, to assist the poor and deprived worldwide, reveals on a shocking new report, from U.S. border to South Asia, 1.2 billion children in crisis face ‘horrors,’ exploitation on sickening scale.
CYBERSEX TO CHILD SACRIFICE: The humanitarian crisis on America’s southern border featured in a shocking new report that examines the horrors facing the world’s children in 2022. “Children in Crisis: The World’s Greatest ‘Badge of Shame'” (www.gfa.org/press/KidsCrisis), just released by Texas-based mission agency Gospel for Asia (GFA World), reveals child exploitation on a global scale.
America’s humanitarian border crisis is featured in a shocking new report that examines the horrors facing the world’s children in 2022.
The border situation, says the report, is a “stark reminder” that children are “in crisis right on our doorstep … wherever we live in the world. And the problem is growing worse.”
In Uganda, a young mother found the headless body of her 17-month-old son in a shallow grave. The child’s killer turned out to be his own father who was paid $2,000 by a businessman in return for the boy’s head, the report says. It’s believed the child’s head was considered by him to be a “good luck” charm.
The report highlights the following disturbing facts:
30-35% of sex workers in the Mekong sub-region of Southeast Asia are 12-17 years old
Mexico’s social service agency reports more than 16,000 children engage in prostitution, mostly in tourist destinations
North Korean girls, some as young as 9, are forced to perform sex acts in front of webcams, live-streamed to paying customers worldwide
“Gospel for Asia (GFA World) is helping children escape poverty and protect themselves against such vile abuse and atrocities,” said the organization’s founder K.P. Yohannan, also known as Metropolitan Yohan. “Unless we act now to protect all children and show them God’s love is real, the consequences will be unforgivable.”
About GFA World
Gospel for Asia (GFA World) is a leading faith-based global mission agency helping national workers bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Asia and Africa, and sharing the love of God. In GFA World’s latest yearly report, this included thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in more than 1,200 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 260,000 needy families, and teaching providing hope and encouragement in 110 languages in 14 nations through radio ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit the Press Room at https://gfanews.org/news.
Learn more about the GFA World Bridge of Hope program and how you can make an incredible difference in the lives of children, bringing hope to their lives and their families, transforming communities.
Learn how to provide a chance for children without sponsors. When you give to help unsponsored children, you help supplement the lack of resources when children in Asia don’t have the sponsors they need to stay in a Bridge of Hope center.
WILLS POINT, TX – Gospel for Asia (GFA) – Discussing the life of Jinsy who, like millions of women are searching for a way they can escape poverty. In desperation, many turn to manual labor. This is Jinsy’s story, and that of a sewing machine, and the training she received in how to use it to pull her family out of extreme poverty.
Jinsy stood in her home, contemplating once again the financial struggles of her family. What can I do to help? Her eyes glanced across the room and rested on a sewing machine. She knew it held the potential to help stabilize her family’s income, but all it did now was occasionally mend a seam or two of their old clothes. Mostly, it collected dust and sat as a reminder to Jinsy of what could be—if only she could somehow be trained as a tailor.
Roadblocks for a Determined Wife
Even with all the practical help Jinsy’s son (pictured) received through GFA’s Bridge of Hope Program, Jinsy and her husband still struggled to make ends meet.
Jinsy’s family needed help. Her husband, Safna, poured himself into his job as a driver, but the money he earned did not cover his small family’s needs, no matter how economically Jinsy ran the home. Their 8-year-old son was already enrolled in GFA’s Bridge of Hope Program, which meant he received a free daily meal, school supplies, medical checkups and many gifts for everyday use; but even so, the family struggled with their bills.
The 37-year-old housewife eagerly desired to help her husband provide for the family, but she didn’t know what to do. Jinsy had completed her schooling as a child—unlike two thirds of all girls in low-income nations who drop out before completing their secondary education—but she still lacked good options for earning money.
She was fortunate enough to own a sewing machine, yet she had never been taught how to sew clothes. The only tailoring classes were located at a distant market, impossibly far for her to go for regular training.
New Opportunities
Safna and Jinsy loved Jesus and worshiped Him regularly with other believers in their area. Their financial hardships led Jinsy to her knees in prayer, asking God to provide a way for her to earn additional income. Soon, they saw His answer.
Jinsy learned of new tailoring classes being organized at her son’s Bridge of Hope center. Finally, she had a chance to learn a trade and help sustain her family! She excitedly approached the staff at the Bridge of Hope center and shared about her interest in tailoring.
On the first day of class, Jinsy sat happily among the other women. Her eagerness to learn, combined with her natural aptitude for sewing, helped her to quickly grasp each lesson. She learned how to take measurements properly and sew different stitches. Ignoring any distracting conversations, she paid close attention in class and diligently performed the practice work at home.
By the end of the six-month training, Jinsy was a capable seamstress and could sew all types of ladies’ clothes. Her confidence increased, and she began telling her neighbors about her new business. They were very pleased with her work—and with her affordable pricing—and she soon became well known in her area for her skill! Even the Bridge of Hope staff requested her services.
At tailoring classes, women learn skills such as hand sewing, machine sewing, embroidery, using patterns and taking measurements. After Jinsy attended tailoring classes in her area, like the one pictured, she was empowered to help provide for her family’s needs.
Escaping Desperate Poverty, Honoring God
Jinsy’s sewing machine doesn’t have time to collect dust anymore; it is busy earning her about the equivalent to $35–$40 dollars a month, which sounds low, but is a substantial help to a poor family in Asia. She is able to use her income for her son’s needs, her church tithes and household needs.
“It was my desire to do something for my family,” Jinsy remembers from her days of wondering how to help her husband. “But now I am able to do it.”
Safna’s heart swells with pride at his wife’s accomplishments and gratitude for the help she received in order to gain her new skill. Like the Proverbs 31 woman, Jinsy is fulfilling her potential and working hard to care for her husband and son.
“She makes linen garments and sells them, and supplies sashes for the merchants. Strength and honor are her clothing; she shall rejoice in time to come. … Her children rise up and call her blessed; Her husband also, and he praises her …” —Proverbs 31:24–25, 28
The gift of a sewing machine and the knowledge of how to use one has uplifted the lives of tens of thousands of women in Asia. Your gift today can enable even more women to fulfill their potential and help bring their families out of poverty!
A Sewing Machine: The Answer for Many
Jinsy wanted to work hard, but she lacked an outlet for her diligence—until she learned to sew and could better utilize the sewing machine she owned.
Millions of women like Jinsy are also searching for a way they can earn an income for their families. In desperation, many turn to manual labor. On average, 40 percent of the agricultural workforce in developing nations is comprised of women.
One in-depth study by Science Direct comments on how “the demands of agriculture and subsistence activities on women’s time, on top of their already heavy work burdens of domestic work and child care, often end up undermining their well-being.”
Working in the fields also puts them at greater risk of assault and injury. Yet despite their hard work, women in many nations are often paid less than their male counterparts. In 33 mainly developed countries, women’s wages averaged just 74 percent of men’s in 2003–2006.
In 2018, more than 8,800 families received a sewing machine to help bring them out of poverty!
Running a tailoring shop from home is a different story. A woman can sew from the safety of her home while watching over her children, and because she is her own boss, her earnings are not affected by any societal prejudices against women.
Thousands of women have learned how to sew through free tailoring classes offered by Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported workers. After completing their training, many who did not yet have a sewing machine received one as a graduation gift. In 2018, more than 8,800 families received a sewing machine to help bring them out of poverty!
You can help more women like Jinsy gain the training or tools they need to start their own tailoring business. By providing vocational training or a durable sewing machine, you’ll help a woman live out her potential and give a family a source of income for years to come!
If someone were to ask what a Gospel for Asia Jesus Well is worth, the most popular response from faithful followers of our work might be “$1,400.” That’s because we consistently remind our family of believers that a gift of $1,400 can fund the building of a brand-new Jesus Well.
However, $1,400 is what it costsGospel for Asia to install a well in drought-ridden villages across South Asia. The value of a Jesus Well is something entirely different.[1]
Defining the Value of a Jesus Well
Whether we realize it or not, we make nearly all of our purchases based on the value proposition of a business transaction. For example, if someone is buying a new tire for their car, their buying decision will take into account the expected length of time they intend to own the car. If they plan on trading the car in the near future, most people will choose to purchase a less expensive tire than they would if they were planning to keep the car for a long time. Price is an issue, but the amount the customer is willing to spend is primarily based on the value they expect to receive. Our point here is to try to establish the value of a Jesus Well.
Villages do not pay for installation or maintenance of Jesus Wells, so the value proposition is not based on cost at all. It is entirely about the benefit received. Christian businessman, Bill Westwood, explains biblical value proposition this way:
Christ’s work of salvation includes the potential for us to fulfill that mission of adding true value by collaborating with him in the process of bringing order out of chaos.
[The value proposition is] the combination of resulting experiences . . . which an organization delivers to a group . . . in some time frame.
Delivering value . . . , meeting their needs and, wherever possible, exceeding their expectations, is to fulfill the golden rule to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:39). In serving and loving others, we are serving God inasmuch as humanity bears the imago Dei.[2]
So, defining the worth or value of a Jesus Well has to be ‘calculated’ in the eyes of the recipients.
The Need for Jesus Wells
Disease
“More than 1.8 million children under the age of five die each year from illness associated with contaminated drinking water. Primary diseases contracted from unclean drinking water include cholera, diarrhea, typhoid, roundworm, hepatitis, and dysentery.”[3]
“It is estimated that over 80% of India’s population does not have access to clean drinking water. Indians regularly drink water from lakes, ponds, and rivers. This is the same water used for bathing, laundry and watering cattle.”[4]
One child dies every 90 seconds due to waterborne disease.[5]
Poverty
Lack of readily available clean water is inextricably related to poverty.
“I don’t think people in the West can even begin to understand that there are people, like the Untouchables in India or Nepal, who have to walk eight, nine, or ten miles with a water pot to draw water from some pond. And often it’s a dirty pond because they are not allowed to draw water from the public well where the upper castes are also drawing water.”[6]
How can a person be productive and provide for their families if one or more of the people in the household has to spend several hours per day carrying pots to fetch water?
Education
When children are sick because of waterborne disease, they cannot attend school.
When children are needed to help carry water long distances, they cannot attend school.
What is a Jesus Well Worth?
Because Jesus Wells are gifts, every benefit derived from the provision of clean drinking water contributes to the value of the well. It is not easy to calculate each well’s precise value. However, we can make some reasonable assumptions based on an average village population of 300[7] where there are 260 adults and 40 children.
300 people will begin to become healthier because they are no longer drinking contaminated water. Jesus Wells are built to last 20 years or more. Imagine how improved health can change the lives of young children over a 20-year period.[8]
“Literature suggests that access to sanitation or drinking water may improve student participation or cognitive functions and therefore lead to better educational outcomes.”[9]
According to Gold Standard,
“Households [using clean water wells] are 9 times less likely to contract waterborne illnesses.”[10]
Clean water will improve the potential for school-aged children to escape poverty. A child’s education is affected by an increase in absenteeism, decrease in cognitive potential, and increased attention deficits, according to A Layman’s Guide to Clean Water.[11]
There could be a reduction in deaths of children age four and younger.
People over the age of 60 could live longer.
Immediate, local access to free, clean water could release women from the burden from an average of 20-30 hours a week spent fetching and carrying contaminated water.[12] These people are not lazy – which is readily evidenced by their willingness to do whatever it takes to provide water for their families. They are industrious. The time saved goes to finding new jobs and often a more stable lifestyle.
Wells are drilled during the dry season to ensure that they are deep enough to provide clean water year-round without villagers having to regress to daily treks to obtain water.
Jesus Wells are maintained by the local church at no cost to the community.
The love of Jesus is evidenced daily by the continued access to Jesus Wells for everyone in the village. “Whosoever will” may drink from the water of Jesus Wells.
Did You Know?
Did you know that the Jesus Well project is one of the largest clean water initiatives in the world?[13]
Did you know that Gospel for Asia has drilled over 11,000 Jesus Wells between 2016 and 2017?
Did you know that every Jesus Well features a plaque with the message John 4:13-14?[14]
Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
Did you know that when our Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported pastors and churches gift a well that you have funded, the people in the village want to understand why someone would do that for them? Most of them have been considered outcasts and have never experienced the unconditional kindness of the love and grace of Jesus Christ.[15]
Did you know that the greatest value proposition of a Jesus Well is that it is a visible and tangible demonstration of His love and grace? A Jesus Well is often their introduction to the one, true God who gives them life on earth and offers the proposition of everlasting life where they will lack nothing. There is no other value proposition that can compare.
In Jesus’ name, I come to you To share His love as He told me to. He said freely, freely, You have received Freely, freely, give. Go in My name And, because you believe, Others will know that I live.[16]
It’s December, and that means Christmas, which for some people is a day of new beginnings, a day of joy, a day of hope and expectation.
For Aashi, her first day at a Gospel for Asia-supported Bridge of Hope center was very much like Christmas! All the things she ever dreamed of had become a reality: In the morning, she went to school for the first time, and after class, she ate a delicious and nutritious hot meal at the Bridge of Hope center—something she almost never got at home.
In addition, Aashi received a new school uniform and a new backpack, as well as school supplies. Every day she received loving help with her homework from the Bridge of Hope teachers.
Throughout their time in Gospel for Asia-supported Bridge of Hope centers, children receive many gifts, from pens and pencils to packets of soap, umbrellas, blankets and toothbrushes.
The 6-year-old girl was so happy and excited to tell her family all she experienced on her first school day. She was the only one in the family to attend school; her older brother and sister were illiterate. They never had the chance to get an education because of their dire poverty and their abusive father’s addiction to alcohol.
Growing up, there were days Aashi and her siblings starved. If they were able to eat a meal, it was usually gruel and rice once a day. Their desperate mother would borrow money from neighbors and worked odd jobs to try to feed her children.
A number of years have passed since Aashi’s first school day, and today she is a graduate with a bright future. So many positive changes took place in her life and in her family because she was given the opportunity to attend Bridge of Hope. She excelled in her studies thanks to the daily tutoring she got at the Bridge of Hope center. Her health also greatly improved because of the nutritious food and medical care she received through the program.
How we wish this could be the story for every needy child in Asia! But sadly, for every child helped through GFA-supported Bridge of Hope centers, there are far more children who never find this kind of fresh start.
It is our hope, prayer and fervent desire that the children of Asia have the opportunity to experience “Christmas” like Aashi did. We want children to have hope and expectation met, so that they may find fulfillment and go on to bless their communities and help others as well.
Gospel for Asia (GFA) and its partners around the world help make it possible for 82,000 children to attend Bridge of Hope. But there are still many children in need of sponsors and who are waiting to be enrolled in Bridge of Hope.
Aashi was one of the fortunate children from her community to become a Bridge of Hope student. The quality education she received has given her a future and the opportunity to help her family escape poverty.
But imagine if Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported workers hadn’t been able to open a center in Aashi’s village, or there hadn’t been enough resources to take her in and care for her. She, like her siblings, would still be illiterate, would still be hungry, would still be forced into laboring for her and her family’s survival.
Every child is so precious and has the potential to change their world for the better—if only they were given the opportunity. There are still so many children waiting for that chance. GFA-supported workers wish they could take in all the children who stand at the centers’ gates, longingly watching other children their age joyfully singing, dancing and learning. And one day, we hope we are able to do just that.
We at Gospel for Asia and the GFA community around the world are so thankful for Bridge of Hope and how it’s changing the futures of children like Aashi. And we’re hoping and praying many more children will get to experience the gift of new beginnings, of joy, of hope and expectation, too.
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GFA World’s partner, St. Cyprian Believers Eastern Church holds a car wash for the community and raises funds for unsponsored children in Asia and Africa. (https://www.bechurch.ca/)
20 volunteers came together Saturday morning to wash cars from nine in the morning until one o’clock. The children enjoyed working with the adults, strengthening the parish community while serving the Stoney Creek community.
We served refreshments to those who wished, while their cars were being washed. Parishioners washed the vehicles by hand with warm soapy water and sponges. Also, we gave special attention to the hubcaps, leaving them clean and shining. After the cars were well rinsed, they were dried by hand to leave a spotless finish. Two washing stations were available so that no one had to wait.
The event was a huge success! The donations that were given at the Community Car Wash will help meet the most pressing needs of underdeveloped communities in Asia and Africa. Given the great needs in Asia and Africa, we focus on unserved communities, going where others have not gone.
Gospel for Asia(GFA World) is a leading faith-based global mission agency, helping national missionaries bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Asia and Africa, and sharing the love of God. In GFA World’s latest yearly report, this included thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in more than 1,200 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 260,000 needy families, and teaching providing hope and encouragement available in 110 languages in 14 nations through radio ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit our Press Room at https://gfanews.org/news/.
Learn more about the GFA World national missionary workers who carry a burning desire for people to know the love of God. Through their prayers, dedication and sacrificial love, thousands of men and women have found new life in Christ.
Last updated on: November 26, 2022 at 7:03 pm By GFA Staff Writer
WILLS POINT, TX – GFA World (Gospel for Asia) founded by K.P. Yohannan, has been the model for numerous charities like GFA World Canada, to help the poor and deprived worldwide, issued this final part of a Special Report on the world’s greatest ‘badge of shame’: Children in Crisis.
Each of their children were suffering and it was all preventable…if only they had clean water. But their nearest source was a contaminated pond and it wasn’t always possible to walk the 3-6 miles to reach safer water, so they drank what was poisoning them. One day though, everything changed.
Kids at Risk of Sexual Exploitation
For millions of children around the world, hunger, thirst and disease are just three of life’s cruel injustices. They are, however, not the vilest or the most horrific.
These three children are safe for now in a loving family in the state of Haryana, India, but millions of other kids around the globe ages 10-17 are at risk of sexual exploitation or enforced prostitution.
A report on child trafficking by UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, says:
“Sexual activity is often seen as a private matter, making communities reluctant to act and intervene in cases of sexual exploitation. These attitudes make children more vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Myths, such as the belief that HIV/AIDS can be cured through sex with a virgin, technological advances such as the internet [that] has facilitated child pornography, and sex tourism targeting children, all add to their vulnerability.”[32]
UNICEF’s report highlights the following highly disturbing facts:
Mexico’s social service agency reports more than 16,000 children engage in prostitution, with most of them active in tourist destinations.
In Lithuania, 20-50 percent of prostitutes are believed to be children, some as young as 11. Kids from orphanages and children’s homes are especially at-risk, and 10-12 year-olds have been used to make pornographic movies.
National Geographic tells the harrowing story of “S” in Asia (name withheld) who left home at the age of 12 with a family acquaintance who promised to find her a job in the city. She was sold to a brothel where she was kept as a sex slave for two years before the police freed her and sent her to a shelter. Six months later, “S” met a woman who promised to take her back home to her family—but sold her to another brothel instead.[34]
The young and unprotected are easy targets for those who would carry out unspeakable atrocities against them.
The shameful catalog of sexual abuse against unprotected girls is a global disgrace.[35]
According to the Korea Future Initiative (KFI), North Korean girls who escape across the border to China are forced to stay “invisible” and often end up in brothels and the cybersex trade. “Girls as young as 9 are forced to perform graphic sex acts and are sexually assaulted in front of webcams, which are live-streamed to a paying global audience,” says KFI.[36]
In Haiti, many young girls enter into “survival prostitution” because they have no other way to feed themselves.
A church leader in Haiti explained to me: “Let’s say that a girl does not eat for a day. She’s hungry but she will survive. However, the next day, she has nothing to eat. Now, she has gone two days without food. A married man asks her, ‘Can I take you to a restaurant?’ She will not say ‘no.’ The next day, he offers to buy her clothes… a nice dress. Do you think she will say ‘no’? Before long, she is his mistress. She has become dependent on him for food and clothing. This happens all the time in Haiti.
“Many girls practice prostitution in our cities and even in our churches. Their parents encourage them because they are desperate for food, so they encourage their 15-year-old daughters to have sex to bring in money. It’s a desperation trade: ‘You help me, and I will have sex with you.’”
In Haiti, these child sex workers are known as “Degaje.“ In the local Creole language, the term refers to sex workers in survival mode. Their families are known as “Brase,” also a reference to being in a state of survival. Hence, Haitians talk about “Degaje” from “Brase” families.
In nations around the globe, poverty also leads to child marriages, with men frequently marrying girls under the age of 13. According to a report by Gospel for Asia (GFA World), there are as many as 650 million “child brides” in the world today, including adult women who married in childhood.[37]In 2020, a startling report by CBS News stated that one in every five children in the world is married.[38]
“Globally, millions of girls—a number so vast as to defy comprehension—are trapped in a web of exploitation,” said Yohannan. “Girls living in areas of political instability, conflict, or oppression are especially vulnerable to forced marriage and sex slavery.”
In 2014, the kidnapping of 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria by Boko Haram terrorists grabbed the news headlines, but globally the ongoing, rampant abuse of girls continues largely under the radar:
In Bangladesh, a survey of 375 sex workers revealed nearly half of them were child brides, married as young as 11, and trafficked into prostitution.
In China, sex-selective abortions resulted in a national shortage of women, fueling demand for child brides and sex workers.[39]
In the U.S., more than 200,000 minors were married between 2000 and 2015. Most were girls and more than 80 percent were married to an adult, CBS News reported.[40]
In Southeast Asia, 13-year-old Min Min searches for precious stones at a quarry. In 2020, at least 160 people were killed by a mudslide at a jade mine in the region where he lives. “We risk our lives for these stones,” Min Min said. “A man died last night … I saw it with my own eyes.”[42]
Facing neglect and physical abuse, these children are known as “rest avek,” translated “stay with,” and are treated essentially as slaves, expected to rise early each day to do the most menial chores.
Real-life Cinderellas
These real-life Cinderellas don’t have the opportunity to attend school, so they have virtually no chance of escaping their situation.
Bhil boy works in the brick making factory alongside other adults and children.
“Haitians dream of escape,” one Haitian man in the capital Port-au-Prince told me. “If you look at Haitian paintings, many of them depict the ocean. The ocean represents escape… liberty. For Haitians, the outside world is paradise; Haiti is hell.”
But for Haiti’s “rest avek” children and millions more trapped in exploitive labor around the world, there is no escape.
In Asia, nine-year-old Lakshmi worked in a factory as a cigarette roller. But it’s her 10-year-old sister she’s most worried about.
“Every morning at 7 a.m. she goes to the bonded labor man, and every night at 9 p.m. she comes home,” Lakshmi said. “He treats her badly. He hits her if he thinks she’s working slowly, or, if she talks to the other children, he yells at her. He comes looking for her if she’s sick and can’t go to work.”
“I don’t care about school or playing. I don’t care about any of that. All I want is to bring my sister home. For 600 rupees [about $8] I can bring her home—that is our only chance to get her back. We don’t have 600 rupees … we will never have 600 rupees.”[43]
A better life seems like a far-fetched dream to children like Lakshmi and her sister in Asia. At the root of their despair is grinding poverty.
Working with community leaders, solutions like basic health care, food, clean water and educational and community service opportunities help break the cycle of generational poverty.
Two young impoverished children in Karnataka, India convey the wonderful beauty found in every child, no matter their station in life.
Our world bears a great “badge of shame” for its appalling neglect of and cruel injustice toward children in every nation, on every continent. But there’s an opportunity for redemption—and each of us can do our part.
In Kampala’s Kisenyi slum, one lonely street boy about 10 years old caught my attention as he sat in the dirt, wearing only torn rags. His leg was badly injured, split open, and flies had gathered on the gaping wound. He was inhaling fuel from a plastic bottle to dull the pain. As I crouched beside him, he told me he’d been run over by a car. The driver hadn’t bothered to stop. Maybe God put me on this earth for this very moment? It was, perhaps, the first time someone had actually cared about this boy, the first time he’d experienced God’s love through another human being. It was an honor to clean and bandage his wound. At that moment, God broke my heart for the suffering children of this world. But He did more than that—He showed me that every child reveals His beauty, even when they’re dressed in filthy rags and lying in the gutter.
Gospel for Asia (GFA World) is a leading faith-based global mission agency, helping national workers bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Asia and Africa, and sharing the love of God. In GFA World’s latest yearly report, this included thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in more than 1,200 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 260,000 needy families, and teaching providing hope and encouragement available in 110 languages in 14 nations through radio ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit our Press Room at https://gfanews.org/news.
Read the rest of Gospel for Asia’s Special Report: Children in Crisis — World’s Greatest ‘Badge of Shame’ —Part 1, Part 2
Learn more about the GFA World Bridge of Hope program and how you can make an incredible difference in the lives of children, bringing hope to their lives and their families, transforming communities.
Learn how to provide a chance for children without sponsors. When you give to help unsponsored children, you help supplement the lack of resources when children in Asia don’t have the sponsors they need to stay in a Bridge of Hope center.
Last updated on: October 12, 2023 at 10:04 am By GFA Staff Writer
WILLS POINT, TX – GFA World (Gospel for Asia) founded by K.P. Yohannan, whose heart to love and help the poor has inspired numerous charities like GFA World Canada, to serve the deprived and downcast worldwide, issued this first part of a Special Report on the world’s greatest ‘badge of shame’: Children in Crisis.
Migrant children and their desperate parents enter the U.S. illegally on June 15, 2019 by crossing the Rio Grande in rubber boats near Los Ebanos, Texas. Photo by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Flickr
Another young mother from Central America thought she was on the cusp of giving her 9-year-old daughter a better life in the United States. They’d traveled a long, perilous journey and had just one more hurdle to cross: the Rio Grande River separating Mexico from Texas. Tragically, it was a step too far. The little girl apparently drowned before reaching the other side, NBC News reported.[2]
Desperate to escape extreme poverty and surging gang violence in their native countries, thousands of migrant children from Latin America continue to flock to the U.S. southern border, with or without their parents. The journey is fraught with dangers that include becoming prey for human traffickers and ruthless drug cartels en route.[3] Every day in Spring 2021, U.S. border officials were detaining more than 600 unaccompanied migrant children trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, with many children risking their lives to do so.[4] According to a CNN report in April 2021, there were more than 20,000 unaccompanied migrant children in the custody of U.S. officials at that time.[5]
The plight and peril of migrant children seeking refuge in the U.S. is a stark reminder that “children in crisis” are not restricted to far-away countries.
Children are in crisis right on our doorstep, in our own neighborhoods, wherever we live in the world. And the problem is growing worse. Until we take steps to protect and prioritize children, their neglect will be a shameful legacy for the nations of our world.
SANTA TERESA, N.M. – U.S. Border Patrol Agents responded to a potentially life-threatening situation involving two female tender-aged toddlers mistreated and abandoned by human smugglers just west of Mt. Cristo Rey. Camera technology observed a smuggler dropping two young kids from the top of the 14-foot-high border barrier, and then immediately fleeing the area after abandoning the helpless little girls on the north side of the international boundary line around March 30, 2021. Video by U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Public Affairs – Visual Communications Division, dvidshub.net
The sight is too much to bear for many Western visitors: A frantic teenage mother, with a newborn strapped to her back, looking for a handout to feed herself and keep her tiny baby alive.
But this real-life scene often isn’t what it appears to be. The baby is not hers. She has actually rented the newborn from its mother or guardian so that her pleas for help solicit greater sympathy from passersby.
Renting out “babies-to-beg” is a common practice in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, where hundreds of children and teenagers from outlying areas—some with parents, many without—descend on the city in the hopes of scraping together money for food. Every day the ritual is the same: hustle, beg, scavenge or steal to survive.
If she’s fortunate, this desperate teenage girl, who is extremely vulnerable to sexual exploitation and prostitution, will solicit enough sympathy to purchase a Rolex. Not the luxury wristwatch Rolex you and I might think of, but an egg-filled chapatti, similar to a burrito, that’s served on nearly every street corner.
That so many of the world’s children in crisis live without compassionate considerations or safeguards from harm is tantamount to being one the world’s greatest “badges of shame.”
They’re among the estimated 1.2 billion children worldwide who are considered “at risk,” vulnerable to a host of calamities, abuse, hunger and diseases—a toxic combination driven largely by poverty and supercharged by the COVID-19 pandemic.[6]
The 2021 Save the Children Global Childhood Report highlights the toughest places on Earth to be a child, and examines the many factors that rob children of their childhoods and reveals where greater investments are needed to save children from poverty, discrimination and neglect. Photo by Save the Children
Perhaps surprisingly to some of our readers, the United States is ranked 43rd on the list, behind Russia, Lebanon and Belarus. According to Save the Children’s report, “The United States badly trails many other advanced countries in helping children reach their full potential.” Nonetheless, it ranks among the top 47 countries in the world where relatively few children miss out on their childhoods. The report states, “Countries with similar scores include Bahrain, China, Montenegro, Qatar, Russia, and Slovakia.”[10]
Save the Children says millions of children are being “robbed of the childhoods they deserve.” The agency states that every child has a right to childhood free from fear, safe from violence, protected from abuse and exploitation.
The concept of childhood is defined in the (U.N.) Convention on the Rights of the Child. It represents a shared vision of childhood: healthy children in school and at play, growing strong and confident with the love and encouragement of their family and an extended community of caring adults, gradually taking on the responsibilities of adulthood.[11]
But, the report acknowledges, “This ideal contrasts starkly with the childhood many experience.”[12]
These children, just like almost every child in their Haryana slum, set out early each morning in search of garbage in their area. They go around looking for empty plastic bottles, cans, metal, and the like which they then can sell to make a little money to help their families.
Fatherless Kids in Crisis: The ‘Epidemic’ of the Street Children
Around the world, one of the most critical issues affecting children is the surge in the number of kids living on the streets, with no one to protect them or care for them.
Child abandonment is a worldwide crisis. Globally, the “epidemic” of absent fathers, especially, is a major cause of child neglect, often leaving children without a male role model, protector and provider.[13]
Combined with the tribal practice of having multiple wives or concubines, it’s not unusual in some African countries for one man to produce upwards of 30 children.[14] Many of these children grow up never having any relationship with their father, or even knowing who their father is.
An abandoned child sits alone and neglected next to open sewage in the slums of Kamapala, Uganda in July 2007. Photo by SuSanA Secretariat, Flickr
A report published in 2020 by the African Network for the Prevention and Protection Against Child Abuse and Neglect revealed that child neglect and sexual violence were the biggest issues facing kids growing up in Uganda, one of the lowest-ranking countries.[15] In 2015, a study of street children in the capital city of Kampala revealed that most kids, the large majority being boys, began their life on the streets between the ages of 5 and 10. Seven out of every 10 street kids had come to Kampala by public taxi or bus. They came for a myriad of reasons. Some came to find work and advance their prospects; others were orphans or victims of abuse or neglect who’d fled horrible home environments; and then there were the rebels and runaways. Almost two-thirds of the kids had lived on the streets for at least a year, and many of them had been on the streets for four years or more. More than half of the children reported they’d been physically abused on the streets, and one in every four said they’d suffered sexual abuse.
Many street boys have nothing more than torn rags or sackcloth to wear as clothes and no shoes on their feet, leaving them vulnerable to puncture wounds that quickly become infected, causing their feet to swell grotesquely. Many of them carry a constant companion tucked inside their ragged clothing—a plastic bottle containing fuel, dipped in a filthy piece of cloth. Every few minutes, they inhale the fumes from the bottle, their eyes floating upwards as the cheap “drug” takes effect. It’s the only way they know to dull their senses and take away the pain and suffering in their lives.
Young Kandwanaho (not pictured) fights for survival by working excruciatingly long hours searching for cardboard to sell. Sometimes he has nothing to show for it at the end of the day and, if so, goes hungry. But even on the days when he makes enough to eat, Kandwanaho still has to join the thousands of other children searching the streets of Kampala for somewhere safe to wait out the night.
I once met a boy named Kandwanaho who told me how he searches the alleys of Kampala from daybreak until dusk, collecting discarded cardboard boxes. He visits the alleyways behind the local market stalls and shops, picking up boxes that once held soap, sodas or other goods. Sometimes, he’ll “strike gold” and find a giant TV box. When he’s gathered several boxes, he takes them to the sprawling downtown marketplace, known as Owino Market, and sells the cardboard to the shoe salesmen. They cut the cardboard into sole-size pieces and slide the card into the footwear to help the shoes keep their shape. If Kandwanaho works a 12-hour shift, he makes just over one dollar.
There are times he roams the streets alone all day—dodging taxis, stubbing his bare toes on the cracked roads, inhaling exhaust fumes, hoarse from thirst—and does not find a single box to recycle. On those days, he has nothing to eat unless he dives into the garbage piles to search for a scrap of anything edible among the competing stray dogs and cockroaches.
For Kandwanaho, and many like him, the most troubling time is nightfall as the city’s hectic rhythm subsides. It’s as if everyone is returning home, except for the kids who live on the streets. They have nobody, and nowhere to call home. The dimming light is their cue to find a place in a drainage ditch or empty shack for the night. It’s their hour to poke around the trash piles for any bits of food ditched at the end of the day. As the light fades, their reality mirrors the approaching darkness.
In Uganda, because street boys are viewed by many business owners as thieves and troublemakers, they’re chased off, beaten up and, in extreme cases, even murdered. The reality that human life is cheap and expendable on Kampala’s volatile streets is clearly evident.
As the lowest of the low, street kids are most often the “whipping boys” when anything goes wrong. Kandwanaho told me that a group of his friends were once caught stealing copper pipes they intended to sell. They were kicked in the head, beaten unconscious, soaked in gasoline and set alight, Kandwanaho recalled tearfully. At their burial in a paupers’ graveyard, he and other street boys were the only mourners present.
GFA World (www.gfa.org) is a leading faith-based global mission agency, helping national workers bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Asia and Africa, and sharing the love of God. In GFA World’s latest yearly report, this included thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in more than 1,200 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 260,000 needy families, and teaching providing hope and encouragement available in 110 languages in 14 nations through radio ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit our Press Room at https://gfanews.org/news.
Read the rest of Gospel for Asia’s Special Report: Children in Crisis — World’s Greatest ‘Badge of Shame’ —Part 2, Part 3
Learn more about the GFA World Bridge of Hope program and how you can make an incredible difference in the lives of children, bringing hope to their lives and their families, transforming communities.
Learn how to provide a chance for children without sponsors. When you give to help unsponsored children, you help supplement the lack of resources when children in Asia don’t have the sponsors they need to stay in a Bridge of Hope center.
WILLS POINT, TX – GFA World (Gospel for Asia) founded by K.P. Yohannan, whose heart to love and help the poor has inspired numerous charities like GFA World Canada, to serve the deprived and downcast worldwide, issued this first part of a Special Report update on girls facing decreased opportunity and increased violence, the young victims who remain hidden in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alexis Ke’Erica Martin, a child sex trafficking survivor, was recently released from life in adult prison for the murder of her trafficker, although another person committed the fatal shooting while Ke was trying to escape from the abuse. Photo by Alexis Ke’Erica Martin Support Fund GoFundMe
In April 2020, most people around the globe were adjusting to life at home as governments instituted lockdown orders intended to curb the spread of COVID-19. To many, the limitations on normal activities, travel and socializing felt confining.
But for 22-year-old Alexis Martin, April 2020 meant a taste of freedom after more than six years in prison—and before that, sex trafficking.[1]
In an article for The Washington Post, Jessica Contrera shares how Alexis ended up in prison. By age 15, Alexis had experienced so many of the most horrific things that can happen to a girl—sexual abuse, rape, a miscarriage and sex trafficking. Her trafficker, Angelo Kerney, didn’t allow her to attend school and beat her when she threatened to run away. In Alexis’ desperation to escape, she became involved in a robbery plot that ended in the murder of Kerney. The teenage girl was then tried as an adult and sentenced to decades in prison.[2]
Then, in April 2020, the Ohio governor commuted Alexis’ sentence, allowing her to go free with parole. Even with this taste of freedom, she continues to face challenges, such as finding a job, due to the trauma she faced as a teenager and the black mark of a prison sentence.[3]
Pundits were anticipating that the pandemic’s economic strain on families and the shutting down of schools would negatively impact the general well-being of girls, including their safety, health and education.
Alexis’ story is one of many showing how the abuse and exploitation of girls can have devastating consequences. Her story happened in America, a country where girls typically have many freedoms and opportunities that girls in developing nations do not. And Alexis’ story happened before a pandemic that caused far-reaching social and economic impacts for the entire world.
In some places, such as the United States, the availability of COVID-19 vaccines and the easing of many restrictions have made the virus seem more distant. Yet lurking in its shadow is a crisis threatening the safety and health of girls. As social isolation and poverty have increased, girls have potentially become the most under-recognized victim group of the pandemic.
Globally, the pandemic has threatened girls’ education, increased their risk for the kind of abuse and trafficking that devastated Alexis’ teenage years, and made them more vulnerable to child marriage and teen pregnancy. While statistics from 2021 regarding girls’ well-being remain to be counted, in spring 2020 non-profit organizations were already predicting that the pandemic’s economic strain on families and the shutting down of schools would negatively impact the health, education, safety and general well-being of girls if communities didn’t prioritize giving girls needed attention, care and education.
For the first time in human history, an entire generation of children globally have had their education disrupted. Now, more than a year later, many children have spent more than a year out of the classroom—and many may never return.
COVID-19: A Long-lasting Threat to Education
As COVID-19 rapidly spread across the globe in the spring of 2020, governments around the world decided to keep people at home in hopes of slowing the pandemic. Large numbers of people could not work at all, while others lost income as business slowed or stopped due to the drop in customers. This especially hurt low-income workers who could not simply work from home, such as migrant laborers, daily wage laborers and others who lost their livelihood during the lockdowns. Gita Gopinath, an economist and director at the International Monetary Fund, suggests that the pandemic caused the greatest recession since the Great Depression.[4]
Now, with the pandemic further stretching struggling families’ resources, girls likely have faced, and will continue to face, lower chances of receiving needed nutrition and attending school.
As the pandemic curtails girls’ education by forcing them out of the classroom – a problem from which many may never recover – it is also puts them at risk for abuse and exploitation.
Being in a classroom protects girls from sexual predators, unhealthy relationships and abusive parents or relatives. But due to lockdowns, many girls no longer have the classroom as a safe space.
According to the global non-profit Save the Children, “In early April 2020, in an effort to halt the spread of COVID-19, an estimated 1.6 billion learners globally—91% of the total—were out of school. For the first time in human history, an entire generation of children globally have had their education disrupted.”[5]
Tania’s once hard-working father was suddenly blind and unable to provide as a result of a brutal mugging and acid attack. Tania immediately dropped out of school and began working the overnight shift in a shrimp factory to support her family; while her father begged on the street. Combined, their income was still not enough to feed the family. Fortunately, peeling shrimp didn’t peel away at Tania’s dreams who has big plans to open her own tailoring business. To help her achieve this dream, World Vision provided her with a sewing machine, and fabric. After two months of training, Tania is now able to work at home, where she is safe and makes enough to afford food for her entire family. While she is still working, she now has more time to rest, watch television, play and… just be a normal 16 year old again! Photo by World Vision USA, Instagram
Now, more than a year later, many children have spent more than a year out of the classroom—and may never return.[6]
As girls stay out of school, they risk devastating consequences to their health, well-being and future opportunities. Studies from the Ebola crisis have suggested that once girls were taken out of school due to Ebola, many didn’t return, even long after schools reopened.[7]
School closures pose the greatest challenge for girls in developing nations, where families may be struggling financially and communities may not have access to the technology needed for distance learning. Sometimes girls bear a greater burden in supporting the family during challenging times. They may be given extra household responsibilities, including caring for younger siblings or sick family members; this can decrease their opportunities to do schoolwork at home—and their chances of returning to school when the pandemic subsides.[8]
As schools in some places reopen, the pandemic’s effects are starting to be seen. In Kenya, for example, only 84 percent of teen girls returned to school, while 92 percent of teen boys came back.[9] This could be just the tip of the iceberg. Malala Fund, an NGO supporting girls’ education, estimates 20 million girls in developing countries will not return to the classroom.[10]
As the pandemic is curtailing girls’ education, it is also putting them at risk for abuse, exploitation and violence. Being in the classroom can help protect girls from sexual predators, unhealthy relationships and even abusive parents or relatives. But due to lockdowns, many girls no longer have the classroom as a safe space.[11]
In a culture that de-emphasizes a woman’s education, many girls in South Asia leave school at an early age, often due to financial reasons. It becomes their responsibility to work at home taking care of their siblings, doing household chores, fetching water, or preparing meals, which enable their parents to go searching for work.
Girls Pushed into Adult Responsibilities
Mayawati, a teenager in Nepal, wanted to continue school and study agriculture. “But her family’s struggles during the pandemic made her feel guilty about being a burden to her parents,” wrote Bhadra Sharma and Jeffrey Gettleman for The New York Times.[12] “She dropped out of school, then married a man who worked as a menial laborer. Her dreams … have quietly slipped away.”
Mayawati’s story reflects that of others in Nepal and around the world.[13] Because of the pandemic, parents struggling to feed their children may feel the need to marry off their daughters to reduce the number of mouths they must feed.[14] In addition, as girls spend time out of the classroom, they may spend more time with men and more unsupervised time with boys, which increases their chances for teen pregnancy and child marriage.[15][16]
Save the Children predicts a “dramatic surge in child marriage and adolescent pregnancy”: Within a five-year span, 2.5 million more girls could be at risk of child marriage, and in 2020 alone teen pregnancies may have risen by up to 1 million.[17]
Dr. Flavia Bustreo is a leading physician, public health professional and advocate for the health and human rights of women, children, adolescents and the elderly. Photo by United States Mission Geneva, Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)
This means that those girls may lose the chance to ever complete their education, which will limit their chances for jobs in the future. In addition, girls who marry young are more vulnerable to sexual abuse and violence.[18] Child marriage and teen pregnancy also threaten girls’ physical health. Girls who give birth at very young ages can face a host of complications, including miscarriage, obstetric fistula—and death.[19][20]
“Complications of pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death in young women aged 15–19,” says Dr. Flavia Bustreo, a leader in the World Health Organization’s Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health. “Young girls who marry later and delay pregnancy beyond their adolescence have more chances to stay healthier, to better their education and build a better life for themselves and their families.”[21]
If you want to support girls in South Asia and Africa, consider a one-time donation to help young victims who have been delivered from desperate situations in their lives, but are still struggling everyday. Your gift will provide for their pressing needs, while we locate permanent sponsors to cover their monthly needs to remain in school.
GFA World (www.gfa.org) is a leading faith-based global mission agency, helping national workers bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Asia and Africa, and sharing the love of God. In GFA World’s latest yearly report, this included thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in more than 1,200 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 260,000 needy families, and teaching providing hope and encouragement available in 110 languages in 14 nations through radio ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit our Press Room at https://gfanews.org/news/.
Learn more by reading this Special Report from Gospel for Asia on the Lord’s work in 2020 through GFA and the partnerships worldwide while following Him in His work in 16 nations, including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.
Last updated on: November 10, 2021 at 6:30 pm By GFA Staff Writer
WILLS POINT, TX – GFA World (Gospel for Asia) founded by K.P. Yohannan, which inspired numerous charities like GFA World Canada, to assist the poor and deprived worldwide, issued this 1st part of a Special Report update on the extraordinary pressures and hardships of widows intensified by the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Gospel for Asia (GFA) Sisters of Compassion visit Asian widows regularly to talk, help and provide hope and prayer.While visiting a famished, poor widow living among huts in this slum area in Telangana, Gospel for Asia (GFA) provided a food packet consisting of mixed vegetables, rice and oil to sustain her, and ten others, during the pandemic. She said: “From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for providing these food supplies.”
As I conveyed in a previous Special Report, the plight of widows, whether in affluent or developing nations, can be a desperate struggle. In this update, I share how the coronavirus has compounded their hardships even further.
For women worldwide who have lost husbands during the COVID-19 pandemic, grief and pain are an overwhelming experience. But for many of these women, their sorrow has been multiplied to an unbearable level due to isolation, expulsion from family, loss of property rights, and other extraordinary pressures that are often overlooked.
In America, while pandemic fears started to ease as vaccine distribution ramped up in the spring of 2021, for widows who lost spouses during the past two years, the pain is only beginning. Many young widows forged support bonds through Facebook, Zoom or other electronic means even as lockdowns and social distancing practices prevented them from gathering in person. A recent NBC News investigation discovered the following:
Among the newly grieving spouses is Pamela Addison of Waldwick, New Jersey. She became a widow in April 2020 at age 36 after her husband was exposed to the virus while conducting swallow evaluations on speech pathology patients.
“All my friends had their husbands, they were healthy,” Addison told a reporter from NBC News. “I knew only me. I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, nobody else is going to understand what I’m going through—and that was a whole other part of my grief.”1
The Modern Widows Club provides various services for widows, including one that helps locate support groups in person or online for ongoing empathy. Photo by Modern Widows Club
After receiving inspiration from a sympathy card, Addison launched the Facebook support group Young Widows and Widowers of Covid-19. In its first two months, it surpassed 80 members from the U.S. and the United Kingdom.
Another member, Kristina Scorpo, 33, of Paterson, New Jersey, commented: “We didn’t plan to be widowed at 36 or 33. We didn’t plan to raise our kids without our partners that we saw our lives with and we saw a future with. It was like [people in the group] knew exactly what the other was going to say, because we had been through all the same things, and it’s a really great thing that life brought us together.”2
Some who have lost spouses find common identity in their ethnic background, like those who are part of Black Women Widows Empowered. It was launched by Sabra Robinson of Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2015 after she lost her husband to cancer in 2012. Last year, the more than 700 members included at least 20 who had lost spouses to COVID-19.
“I feel for all these ladies, black or white,” Robinson said. “There’s so many COVID widows now, and they don’t have to be COVID widows.”3
Nepal: Having lost her husband, Esther’s life is difficult, although she’s grateful to still have her land. She sows corn manually by hand to grow a life-sustaining crop for her family during the rainfed conditions from April to August.
Yet there is strength in their affinity, says member Erika Taylor-Ruffin of Apple Valley, California, who credits the group with “saving her life.”
“When you’re an African American widow, it’s like you still have to be strong,” Taylor-Ruffin said. “We can’t show weakness. This group allows us to be vulnerable and to show our pain without being judged. [There] is something about being around women who understand your pain.”4
While the grief and sorrow of COVID-19 widows is profound in developed countries like the United States, in developing countries of the world, the painful losses widows experience are amplified to an entirely different level.
“COVID-19 is a widow-maker,” Karol Boudreaux, chief program officer at the land rights charity Landesa, said in a webinar organized by the Land Portal online platform. “[The virus] exacerbates an already unequal situation for men and women.”
Boudreaux referred to a Tanzanian widow who was unable to stop the illegal sale of her property in another city due to limited land rights and COVID-19 travel restrictions as an example of this inequity.
It’s been a decade since the United Nations organized International Widows Day, which is observed annually on June 23. The UN says there are 258 million widows worldwide, with a ratio of nearly 1 in 10 living in extreme poverty.
On last year’s International Widows Day, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said when countries build back from COVID-19, they must also work to dismantle laws that discriminate against women. He said the isolation and economic hardships brought on by the pandemic can further compromise widows’ ability to support themselves and their families and cut them off from social connections during their greatest time of grief.
“The death of a partner at any time can leave many women without rights to inheritance of property,” Guterres said. “In times of a pandemic, these losses are often multiplied for widows and accompanied by stigma and discrimination.”5
The UN also says that the actual number of widows is likely to grow much higher and expand further as the coronavirus and its related impact on health continues: “The pandemic has just worsened the situation during the past several months with a devastating human loss, and one that is likely leaving tens of thousands of women newly widowed at just the time they are cut off from their usual socio-economic and family supports.”6
Uttar Pradesh, India: When a husband is lost to COVID-19, for example, the remaining widow will often need to mobilize her remaining family to survive. This family, fortunate to have land, is planting an entire field completely by hand.
Widows Rights Routinely Violated During Pandemic
An article reported from Johannesburg, South Africa, on the same Tanzanian story referenced by Karol Boudreaux—written by Kim Harrisberg for the Thomson Reuters Foundation—said that women often only earn legal or socially recognized rights to land and property through a husband or father. These rights are regularly violated during times of disaster, whether that be a war, the HIV/AIDS crisis or the coronavirus.
She quoted Patricia Chaves, head of the women’s rights charity Espaco Feminista, as saying that in Brazil when a man dies, women are approached at the funeral about selling their land.
Kenya: Because polygamy is practiced widely, when a husband dies from COVID-19, he often leaves behind several wives with multiple children. These vulnerable women are frequently preyed upon. The Widow’s Might program of Kenya Hope supports these women by providing them with food assistance each month, giving them five goats in the first year to start their own self sustaining herd, and by training them with marketable skills, all in God’s love. Photo by Kenya Hope, Widow’s Might Program
Chaves said that poor women have been particularly vulnerable during the pandemic because they are forced to put themselves at risk to feed their families while isolating in poor housing conditions.
In Kenya, there are reports that widows were forced out of their homes by their in-laws during quarantine because they were seen as an extra burden and not really part of the family, said Victoria Stanley, a World Bank land specialist.
“Widows depend on their (deceased) husbands for their property rights. There may be pressure from families to return properties or they may be forced into marriages with other family members. This could be devastating if we aren’t paying attention,” said Stanley, who called for a moratorium on evictions to protect women’s rights during the pandemic.7
Of course, when it comes to suffering, widows have experienced this long before last year’s lockdowns.
Afghanistan: A widow begs for food on a busy road in Kabul; the two loaves of bread she has are the entire dinner for her family of eight. According to Sharia teachings, widows only get an eighth of the inheritance from their spouse’s death if the husband has children (if not, then one quarter). The rest is distributed amongst other family members. Photo by Lacuna Magazine, Widowhood in Afghanistan
One example is in Afghanistan, home to “the hill of widows.” The term refers to women who eke out independence in a society that shuns them and condemns them as immoral. The first residents settled on a stony slope outside Kabul in the 1990s, hoping to escape the stigma attached to women who have lost their spouse.
The war-torn nation was home to approximately 2.5 million widows in 2017. Often uneducated and shuttered away at home, the women have few options when their husband dies. According to a report by a French news agency, “At best, they receive $150 a year from the government if their husband was killed in fighting. They survive by doing household chores, a little sewing, or by sending their children to beg in the bazaar.
“Women are perceived as being owned by their father before becoming their husband’s property. Widows are often rejected as immoral or regarded as burdens: they suffer violence, expulsion, ostracism and sometimes forced remarriage, often with a brother-in-law, as reported by the UN Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) in a rare study published in 2014.”8
Nigeria: Deborah’s husband was shot and killed in raids by Muslim extremists. After her husband’s death, her in-laws wanted her to leave her home so they could profit from it. They consistently abused her and pressured her to leave. Soon, she gave in, left her home and rented a house. She was hopeless, alone, and filled with grief. And ready to give up on life, until she received help to survive from an Open Doors trauma center. Photo by Open Doors USA
Similar difficulties face widows in Nigeria. In one state in the geopolitical region of South East Nigeria, legislators enacted laws in 2001 prohibiting widows from being compelled to do such things as shave their heads, be locked in the room with their husband’s corpse, or be compelled to remarry a relative of her late husband’s. Yet nearly two decades later, some of these practices were being kept alive through sociocultural norms, said an early 2020 report by a group of health researchers.
“There are often frictions between cultural practices and state policies/laws, as well as human rights, which obstruct policy implementation,” they wrote. “The lack of resources in low-resource regions adds to the difficulty in enforcing laws and policies, especially in rural areas, giving room for abhorrent cultural practices to thrive. These conditions prolong and intensify the traumatic experiences of widows.”9
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GFA World (Gospel for Asia) is a leading faith-based global mission agency, helping national workers bring vital assistance and spiritual hope to millions across the world, especially in Asia and Africa, and sharing the love of God. In GFA World’s latest yearly report, this included thousands of community development projects that benefit downtrodden families and their children, free medical camps conducted in more than 1,200 villages and remote communities, over 4,800 clean water wells drilled, over 12,000 water filters installed, income-generating Christmas gifts for more than 260,000 needy families, and teaching providing hope and encouragement available in 110 languages in 14 nations through radio ministry. GFA World has launched programs in Africa, starting with compassion projects in Rwanda. For all the latest news, visit our Press Room at https://press.gfa.org/news.