Last updated on: November 25, 2019 at 9:37 am By GFA Staff Writer
Wills Point, Texas – GFA (Gospel for Asia) – Discussing the transformative, life-changing impact a Bridge of Hope center can make in the lives of children through the power of God’s love.
One class session was all it took to convince me not to be a teacher. Going in, I had been undecided. But that one class solidified that I have neither the patience nor the motivation to be the guiding light children need. But Aayush, a Bridge of Hope student, has these qualities. Aayush knows that children need love, encouragement, and place to thrive; he himself did not have these growing up at first.
A Broken and Terrified Family
Aayush grew up in a broken home. His father was an alcoholic, often abusing his wife both verbally and physically. Aayush and his brothers could only watch, terrified into silence. His home was an unsafe haven, and there was nowhere else to go. Aayush’s father spent all their money on alcohol, leaving barely enough for the family to survive. Any form of education was simply out of the question for the young Aayush.
This is Aayush. As a little boy, he was troubled by his family situation, but when he enrolled in Bridge of Hope, his life began to change.
A Bridge of Hope: Transformative Love in the Lives of Children
“Witnessing Aayush’s transformation sparked something inside his father; if his son could change, so could he.”
Fortunately for the distraught family, a Bridge of Hope center had been established near them. A relative was among the students, and he spoke of the many wondrous activities he got to participate in. Much to Aayush’s surprise, he and two of his brothers were given the chance to enroll in the center. It was then a change began to take place.
The teachers heaped love and compassion onto each child, including the timid Aayush. Little by little, the shy boy began to transform into an outgoing, happy child. The center staff visited Aayush’s family, taking the time to encourage them. Seeing the change in his son, Aayush’s father eventually quit drinking. Witnessing Aayush’s transformation sparked something inside his father; if his son could change, so could he. Now Aayush’s future was no longer in jeopardy.
Following in Their Footsteps
“Many children’s lives will be touched by God’s love through these wonderful brothers and sisters.”
As Aayush grew older, a desire began to grow in his heart: He wished to be like his teachers. Now graduated from the center, Aayush is currently pursuing this goal, continuing in his higher education. Aayush wanted to spread the same love he was shown, to be a guiding light for children like himself.Now a Bridge of Hope graduate, Aayush desires to become a teacher. The GFA-supported Bridge of Hope center gave him the tools he needed to pursue higher education.
Aayush will one day encourage and lift up the children who need it most. I know for a fact that I do not have the kind of zeal they have; but I do know that Aayush, like his teachers, will make a difference for eternity. None of this would be possible without the powerful love and compassion Bridge of Hope staff possess. Many children’s lives will be touched by God’s love through these wonderful brothers and sisters.
Last updated on: November 5, 2018 at 6:52 am By GFA Staff Writer
Wills Point, Texas – GFA (Gospel for Asia) – Discussing how GFA-supported Bridge of Hope centers change the lives of children, their families, and in turn their communities.
150,000 infant deaths per month 34,615 deaths per week 4,945 deaths per day 206 deaths per hour
The sad plight of the surviving children living in poverty in South Asia is impossible for our minds to comprehend unless we have seen it with our own eyes.
These children wake up every morning in squalor, waste, rubbish and odors—not unlike survivors of a tornado, hurricane or earthquake experience. The major difference for these children is that every morning is the same. For these children and their families, there is no likelihood for a better future. There is no hope.
Watch this short (1:14) video to understand what life is like for many of these children living in unspeakable circumstances.
GFA-supported Bridge of Hope centers have been changing the prospects for the lives of tens of thousands of children every year since 2004.
Most people familiar with GFA’s Bridge of Hope Program can summarize the work as education, nutrition and healthcare. Certainly, Bridge of Hope centers provide these three key elements, but they do much more than that.
Here are 7 things you may not have realized that Bridge of Hope centers provide:
1. Emotional Growth
Bridge of Hope staff seeks to help each child achieve emotional maturity and a sense of confidence that are essential strengths for a balanced life. Children are encouraged not to base their future on the past, but to move on to their full potential.
2. Building Character
Bridge of Hope emphasizes a disciplined, value-based environment, which builds character. The goal is to prepare children to become good responsible citizens of their nation. The children regularly learn moral values and manners that enable them to respect authority and care for the needs of others.
3. Social Responsibility
The children at Bridge of Hope centers are taught social awareness through participation in rallies and programs on social issues such as HIV/ AIDS, tuberculosis, illiteracy, child labor and unhealthy habits such as smoking, drinking and tobacco use.
4. Assisting Parents
Staff invest not only in the children but also in their parents. Staff members visit parents and conduct special training programs for them. Topics covered include general awareness on child care, health and hygiene, good parenting, child labor and family planning.
5. Equipping Parents
Bridge of Hope offers parents literacy and tailoring classes so they can earn a better living and improve their circumstances and those of their family.
6. Vocational Training
Bridge of Hope helps parents learn how to succeed in self-employment by providing them with self-sustainable gifts such as livestock, sewing machines, bicycles and push trolleys for street vending.
7. Community Involvement
Bridge of Hope centers provide opportunities for children and their families to improve and care for their surroundings by planting trees and helping neighbors.
More than anything else, the millions of children in South Asia need to know they are loved, that someone cares about them and they can have a life filled with a real hope for a better future.
We cannot help the millions by ourselves, but each child we do help is a family impacted. Each family impacted can bring improvement and change to an entire community.
Please pray for the dedicated staff members of each Bridge of Hope center. Pray that the love of Jesus will be obvious whether they are teaching literacy, cooking meals or encouraging parents.
Please pray for the children. Pray they will be attentive and apply what they have been taught. Pray that our efforts on the Lord’s behalf will change their precious lives for the better forever.
To read more posts on Patheos on Bridge of Hope, go here.
Click here, to read more blogs on Patheos from Gospel for Asia.
Last updated on: December 16, 2019 at 11:13 pm By GFA Staff Writer
Wills Point, Texas – Gospel for Asia (GFA) Special Report – Discussing widow’s plight worldwide as they face tragedy, discrimination, as well as the efforts and opportunities extended to them to give them hope.
Hope to Overcome the Challenges of Widowhood
International Women’s Day (March 8) falls on the same day as GFA founder Dr. KP Yohannan’s birthday, so it’s no wonder that he’s passionate about uplifting the lives of women around the world.
“For millions of widows in Asia, life is incredibly difficult,” says Dr. KP Yohannan, founder and director of GFA. “Many are forced into begging or prostitution to survive. There are 46 million widows on the streets and in slums. There are stories of thousands of widows committing suicide because they have no hope.”
Another widow whose story was featured in “Veil of Tears” faced rejection from her husband’s family after he died. Her nephews refused to give her food, forcing her to beg from passing strangers. Once, when she got sick and suffered from diarrhea for two days, no one would even approach her. Members of a GFA-supported Women’s Fellowship took her to the hospital for treatment, provided her food and found her a home. Most of all, they became a family.
Grassroots Aid
Such caring action demonstrates one way to address widows’ situation: at the grassroots level. This is what GFA does through initiatives such as sewing classes, providing sewing machines and training in skills like candle-making and basket-weaving. Much of this outreach is conducted by Sisters of Compassion (women who are specially trained to care for marginalized groups), leaders of Women’s Fellowship groups and pastors’ wives. As women, they are more readily received into women’s homes in the segregated society.
Sisters of Compassion are specially trained to minister to marginalized groups like widows, leprosy patients, and street children.
GFA-supported pastors and workers often help organize events to assist and encourage widows, too. For example, on or soon after last year’s International Widows Day, GFA-supported workers in many different regions distributed numerous sewing machines, goats, piglets, hygiene supplies, mosquito nets and other goods to help improve widows’ lives. They also offered encouragement and reminded them, “In the sight of God our Father, pure and blameless religion is helping the orphans and widows in their need” (see James 1:27).
That stirred reactions like one from Madhuri, a 35-year-old who is the only bread-earner for her children:
“I go house to house in search of work. The piglet I received from you, I will rear nicely and hope it will [provide] a great income for my family. I am very thankful to you.”
Damini, a widow with five children, said:
“I am very happy to get a piglet from the church. I never expected this type of help from the church, but I am lucky to receive the piglet.”
“In the sight of God our Father, pure and blameless religion is helping the orphans and widows in their need.” —James 1:27
In another area, a GFA-supported Women’s Fellowship gave sewing machines to 30 women.
“After my husband died, I was alone doing work in the tea garden and supporting my children,” said Upada, one of the recipients. “I am finding it so difficult to manage our family, but today I am so happy that the church has given me this gift. I believe that this sewing machine will greatly help our family.”
Another widow, Kanan, said, “After my husband’s death, there was no one to help me. I have three children and they are very small. The eldest child is going to school. I was finding life so difficult, but God took care of us and met our needs. … Through this sewing machine, I will try my best to earn money and support my children’s schooling and our family.”
When a church in another district gave 50 widows each a goat, it brought waves of gratitude. Lajita, a widow who received a goat, told of her husband dying four years earlier because of asthma:
“I have three children who are going to school. I worked as a daily laborer in others’ fields. Now, I will rear this goat at home, and she will produce milk. I hope my family’s condition will become better through this goat.”
Income-producing gifts like those found in GFA’s Christmas Gift Catalog are game changers for widows in need.
Baijanti added, “My husband passed away some eight years ago. I stay with my children. We have no income-generating source, and this goat is going to be a great help for my living.”
An event in Nepal for International Women’s Day in 2017 prompted similar reactions. Thirteen churches organized a women’s conference, during which they provided pressure cookers to 60 widows.
A guest speaker, who had been a widow since age 15, distributed the gifts and encouraged participants:
“Being a widow, it is hard to be alone and at home in the society. Today, many widows are abused by the family and the society. Therefore, I came forward to raise my voice and help them.”
Widow’s Challenges in America
Even in the United States, widows don’t get a pass on life’s challenges. After Artis Henderson’s husband, Miles, died in November 2006 when his Apache helicopter crashed in Iraq, she spent the first year overwhelmed by grief. Without experiencing this kind of sudden tragedy, it’s hard for someone to know how difficult it is to cope when “everything in the world shifts,” she told CNN.
Artis Henderson and her late husband, Miles (Photo credit Artis Henderson via CNN.com)
“I always remember so clearly, this woman—another widow who was a little further, maybe six months ahead of me in the process—saying to me, ‘You will be disappointed to find out what happens after the first year,'” Henderson said. “And I remember saying, ‘Well, what happens?’ And she said, ‘There’s another year.'”
Other widows report similar grief. At age 59, Ginny McKinney was out shopping with her husband, Dan, for a travel trailer for early retirement when he suddenly dropped dead from a heart attack at age 62.
“I took off for three months, driving a circle around Colorado,” McKinney told the New York Times. “I went to places in the wilderness and on the top of mountains, where I could stand outside and scream at the sky, and scream at God for taking my man. And scream at him for leaving me.”
If the grief isn’t enough, what elderly widows may discover later can also inflict pain. In early 2018, an audit report from the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) inspector general’s office found the agency had underpaid nearly $132 million to more than 9,200 widows and widowers age 70 or older.
The issue stemmed from a budget bill in 2015, when Congress curtailed a strategy where one spouse could suspend a monthly benefit to allow the other spouse’s benefits to increase as long as the second delayed drawing theirs. However, it still allows a widow to claim survivor benefits and delay applying for her own. The SSA failed to inform widows and widowers to consider this option. The inspector general identified 13,555 people who were entitled to claim such benefits; a random sample showed that 82 percent could have drawn a higher monthly benefit if they claimed survivor benefits and held off drawing their own retirement.
“I went to places in the wilderness and on the top of mountains, where I could stand outside and scream at the sky, and scream at God for taking my man. And scream at him for leaving me.”
However, the situation for widows in other parts of the world remains even more dire. For example, in a 2015 story, the India Times reported the majority of Indian widows are deprived of their inheritance rights, especially if they are childless or have only daughters. This happens despite a 1969 law that made women eligible to inherit equally with men.
Among other problems, widows in Asia may face:
Prohibition of remarriage
Being forced to follow certain mourning rites
Becoming victims of violence, much of it stemming from common accusations that they caused their husband’s death
Economic hardships
Sharing Hope
Given this situation, Yohannan also believes the ultimate answer will be found from more women, regardless of where they live, learning who they are in Christ and what God thinks about them as individuals. Widows like Gulika have found hope when they learned that God treasures them.
“We must do everything we can to alleviate suffering and do whatever it takes to help people who are forsaken in their own communities.” —Dr. K. P. Yohannan
However, Yohannan emphasizes the importance for Christ followers to provide practical assistance for widows and their children.
“God judged Israel because they did not care for the poor and suffering,” Yohannan says. “The Body of Christ is responsible to care for them. We must do everything we can to alleviate suffering and do whatever it takes to help people who are forsaken in their own communities.”
Obeying God’s command to take care of widows, GFA supports workers dedicated to ministering to widows all across Asia.
In 2017, GFA helped provided free health care training to 289,033 women, taught 50,624 illiterate women how to read and write, provided vocational training to 10,965 women desperately in need of a job, and gave out 8,763 sewing machines to vocational graduates, many of whom are widows struggling to survive. So, while widows worldwide face tragedy and discrimination, some are finding hope and a future through help from organizations like Gospel for Asia.
To conclude on a positive note, here is a letter written by Dr. KP Yohannan to friends and donors of GFA about one widow’s journey from despair to joy:
When Kaavya’s husband died as a result of his alcohol addiction, she had to work hard as a daily wage laborer to feed her six children and look after her household. No one helped her because she lived in a society where people believed it is the wife’s fault if her husband dies before she does—regardless of the circumstances. In essence, she and her children were abandoned.
Kaavya and her children lived in a small, old hut, and life was a constant struggle for survival…
Last updated on: October 26, 2019 at 9:25 pm By GFA Staff Writer
Wills Point, Texas – Gospel for Asia (GFA) Special Report – Discussing the plight of widows worldwide – raising awareness of the problems of widowhood as they face tragedy, discrimination, and suffering.
A Day for the Plight of Widows Raises Awareness
In response to stories like these, the Loomba Foundation organized the first International Widows Day in 2005 to raise awareness of the problems of widowhood. The foundation selected June 23 for the observance because on that day in 1954 the mother of the organization’s founder, Lord Loomba, became a widow.
By the sixth year, 10 nations held observances. In December 2010, the United Nations General Assembly formally adopted June 23 as International Widows Day, calling on member states, the UN system and other organizations to give special attention to the situation of widows and their children. [1]
Considering the average widow has three children and six other family members, the wider impact affects more than a billion people, about one-seventh of the world’s population.
A series of reports tied to the day give further evidence of the difficulties facing widows:
In 2001, the UN had issued a report in which it said there is no group affected more by the “sin of omission” than widows:
“They are painfully absent from the statistics of many developing countries, and they are rarely mentioned in the multitude of reports on women’s poverty, development, health or human rights published in the last 25 years.” [2]
The UN says widows in many countries often confront denial of inheritance, land rights and other forms of abuse; widows can be evicted from their homes and abused or even killed, sometimes by family members.
“In many countries, a woman’s social status is inextricably linked to her husband’s, so that when her husband dies, a woman no longer has a place in society,” stated the organization’s 2018 report on International Widows Day.
“To regain social status, widows are expected to marry one of their husband’s male relatives, sometimes unwillingly. For many, the loss of a husband is only the first trauma in a long-term ordeal.
“In many countries, widowhood is stigmatized and seen as a source of shame. Widows are thought to be cursed in some cultures and are even associated with witchcraft. Such misconceptions can lead to widows being ostracized, abused and worse.” [3]
Netramani’s entire family rejected her after her husband died, leaving her to find menial work to support herself. When she got too weak to work, she had no option but to beg on the streets.
A report released by the Loomba Foundation warned that the mistreatment of widows and women who have lost their partners produces systemic problems for societies. Unless governing powers actively safeguard the well-being of these women and their children, extreme beliefs and behaviors persist. In some nations, people commonly believe that widows caused their husbands’ deaths because of their own misdeeds in a previous life. Some cultures practice “cleansing,” where a widow is forced to have sexual intercourse with a man after her husband’s death to release her husband’s spirit.
The report explains the disturbing impact of such beliefs and practices:
“Most of the most puzzling influences affecting the plight of widows are not examined by the societies that practice them, and without questioning them they remain secret, or in other cases where they are acknowledged they exist, through their normalcy, no one acknowledges the practices cause harm, therefore the practices exist in a kind of private realm nonetheless.
“Perhaps the most far reaching impact of widows’ insecurity is the impact this has on women and families to choose to focus most of their resources on the male members of the family. This means that boys get more health care and education than girls. Boys get this focus because women’s rights are not acknowledged in many societies so that women depend on men for economic and legal security.” [4]
Watch the story of Netramani in this excerpt from Gospel for Asia’s documentary “Veil of Tears”, a film that reveals the desperate plight of women in Asia.
The Hidden Plight of Widows
If widows were gathered into one geographic location, they would make up the fourth-largest nation on earth. Yet, according to the Loomba Foundation, many people remain unfamiliar with reports about the situation facing widows, even though much of the research and analysis is not new. That’s because the evidence hasn’t moved beyond obscure books, academic journals and findings by international organizations. In addition to individual cases of extreme abuse, the Foundation argues, the structural causes of deprivation are “disturbing,” because these wider impacts affect society as a whole.
“Deprivation faced by widows therefore extends its destructive influence deep into the rest of society, and can be seen at work across large parts of the world,” the organization stated in its 2015 Global Widows Report. “Widows’ deprivation is therefore not simply about identifying one more category of people to be added to the poverty policy list. This latter point will obviously be of interest to governments, given that they rarely act because there is a moral need to do so—action happens because it helps achieve some other already prioritized objective.” [5]
Many governments could lessen pressure on widows by removing limits on women’s economic condition. Not only do widows often face the loss of land, income and poverty, but as females, many of them lack basic rights.
A 2016 report from the World Bank Group showed that 90 percent of 173 nations have at least one law limiting women’s economic participation, including constraints on their ability to inherit or own land. [6]
In response to that statistic, UN Women wrote in a 2017 statement, “Repealing these discriminatory laws is not only ethical, it is a mandate of the [UN’s] Sustainable Development Goals; the first target of Goal 5 is to ‘end all forms of discrimination against women and girls everywhere.'”
When Lalita’s husband died, she was left with four children and no income. She didn’t know where to turn or how to earn a living, and for three years she struggled to survive. After receiving a sewing machine from a Gospel for Asia-supported gift distribution, she now supports herself through a tailoring business.
UN Women points out the need to “undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and other natural resources, in accordance with national laws. Action on these could impact the lives of millions of widows who are currently dependent on their husbands for their livelihoods.” [7]
The Loomba Foundation says that in significant portions of many developing nations, prevailing social norms and lack of a social safety net mean remarriage is in effect mandatory because single women’s existence is not accepted. This means many widowed women remain “hidden” and not recorded in official statistics.
Still, research has uncovered how serious conditions can become, especially in conflict-torn areas. In Rwanda, at least 13 percent of females are widows, with half of all husbands slaughtered during the genocide of the 1990s. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, sustained warfare left some areas with a widowhood rate as high as 40 percent. In Afghanistan, the United Nations Fund for Women has reported as many as 2 million war widows, well above 20 percent of the corresponding female population. [8]
Research shows that discrimination against women and widows negatively affects the entire society.
“However, the countries with the highest percentage of widows among their female maritage populations are in Europe, where Ukraine leads with a rate of 19.2 percent,” the report says. “The Czech Republic has a rate of 13.6 percent, similar to post-genocide Rwanda, France has 12.2 percent. … Without further research on the living conditions of widows in under-studied countries, the widows’ issue will remain hidden in what are currently heavily aggregated poverty statistics.”
Fighting Tradition
The problem can’t be laid solely at government’s doorstep. Strong cultural traditions, customs and superstitions make turning back problems a long-term challenge. That is one reason why UN Women established the Fund for Gender Equality, a global grant-making body dedicated to economic and political empowerment for women. The fund provides both technical and financial support to innovative initiatives.
Since 2009, the fund has given grants totaling $64 million to 120 programs in 80 countries; in 2015 it awarded $7.3 million in grants to two dozen programs that are scheduled to be implemented by this year in six regions of the world. They will reach an estimated 325,000 beneficiaries—45 percent from low-income countries. Thus far, the agency says it has helped 23,000 women increase their incomes and another 3,000 gain leadership positions. [9]
Despite such initiatives, neither government nor non-governmental organizations can easily overcome cultural habits. In 1961, India passed a law against requiring a woman’s family from presenting her husband with a huge financial gift, known as a dowry. Yet, more than 50 years later, dowries are responsible for 80 percent of the outstanding bank loans in the South Asian country. As just one example, “Veil of Tears,” a documentary by GFA, interviewed one woman whose father was still making payments on a dowry loan years after her marriage.
This woman’s father spent years paying off her dowry after she got married.
Because so many of these women lack an education or job training, some are often forced to work in low-skilled, backbreaking labor jobs paying the equivalent to US$1.50 a day. With 80 percent of India’s 1.2 billion people living in villages and rural areas, it is extremely difficult to overcome the superstitions and traditions that keep women in subservient conditions.
Widows Worldwide Face Tragedy, Discrimination: Part 1 | Part 3
Last updated on: October 26, 2019 at 9:57 pm By GFA Staff Writer
Wills Point, Texas – Gospel for Asia (GFA) Special Report – Discussing the plight of widows worldwide as they face tragedy, discrimination, and suffering.
Accounts of the humiliations, insults and indignations suffered by widows worldwide would make anyone cringe.
Gulika, a widow in Asia, experienced helplessness after the people in her village turned their backs on her after her husband’s death.
A woman in Nigeria was harassed by her brother-in-law asking for documents of her house before her husband’s body even left for the funeral home—and then insisted she had to leave.
Another Nigerian woman’s husband lay in a hospital bed when her sister-in-law demanded a huge amount of money from their bank account. When the wife refused, her in-law swore she would regret it.
“Three days after, my husband died, his family descended on me, took his cars away and emptied the house.”
In connection with last year’s International Widows Day, CNN spotlighted the cases of seven widows, ranging from a woman in Nepal to a widow in India to the spouse of a U.S. serviceman killed 12 years ago in Iraq. Their stories varied, but they faced the same plight: difficulties with grief and loneliness, forms of ostracism, financial struggles and hopelessness.
Santu Kamari Maharjan of Nepal struggled greatly because she was a widow, until Women for Human Rights helped her and 14 other women start an agriculture business. (photo credit Womankind Worldwide via CNN.com)
The widow in Nepal, Santu Kamari Maharjan, then 55, had lost her husband to kidney failure years before. With young children to support, she had to work in people’s fields to clothe and feed them. (She had to sell her own field to pay for her husband’s medical treatment.) Her sisters-in-law would taunt her. As difficult as that was, then a serious earthquake in 2015 left her with no income—until the nonprofit Women for Human Rights helped her and 14 other women to build a bamboo shelter to start an agriculture business.
Grace Njeri Mwichigi, whose husband died in tribal violence in Kenya in 2007. (photo credit Matt Maxwell via CNN.com)
Grace Njeri Mwichigi became a widow after her husband was killed during tribal clashes in Kenya in 2007. The following months brought stress, confusion and fear, with much of the neglect and humiliation coming from family members. Purita Carlos of the Philippines lost her husband to lung cancer, which meant her fourth-grade son had to stop attending school while they stayed in Manila so she could learn how to earn a living.
“Being a widow is not easy, It is very sad, and the pain of missing your husband is always there. I don’t want to go through the same experience again. That is why I would not ever remarry. It is enough that I have my son.”
– Purita Carlos in an interview with CNN [1]
In other media coverage, headlines alone give an indication of the situation facing so many widows:
Agonies of widows hit by
harsh Nigerian traditions [3]
Stories of survival: Widows of
India’s farmer suicides [4]
USA: Social Security underpays
thousands of widows and widowers [4]
Kenya: Where becoming a widow is
the worst thing that can happen to you [6]
Widows Are at the Bottom of the Pile
Of the estimated 285 million widows in the developing world, more than 115 million live in abject poverty. [7] Eighty six million have suffered physical abuse, according to Cherie Blair, president of the UK-based Loomba Foundation, established in 1997 to empower widows and educate their children. In addition, 1.5 million children whose mothers have been widowed will die before they turn 5 years old. Considering the average widow has three children and six other family members, the wider impact affects more than a billion people, about one-seventh of the world’s population.
As president of the Loomba Foundation, Cherie Blair is on a mission to empower widows and educate their children. (Photo credit foreignoffice on Flickr)
“Their plight is one of the most important, yet under-reported, human-rights issues facing the world today,” says Blair. “Much has been made, and rightly so, of gender inequality, but widows have truly been at the bottom of the pile—visible and invisible—for too long. For many women, becoming a widow does not just mean the heartache of losing a husband, but often losing everything else as well.” [8]
Gospel for Asia reported on one widow named Gulika and her plight. [9] While Gulika didn’t live an extravagant lifestyle, her husband, Manan, earned an adequate income working as a tailor. That all changed the day Manan hurried across some railroad tracks, unaware of the train just around the bend.
The sorrow of losing her husband was compounded by the reaction of others in her village in Asia. Believing Gulika was cursed, many feared that even passing by her on the street could bring them bad luck. Not surprisingly, Gulika fell into emotional despair. Still, she had to uphold her duties as a daughter-in-law, including retrieving water for the family. The nearest source was an old well a third of a mile walk from home.
Like this woman, Gulika walked long distances to gather water for her in-laws.
Collecting water was a grueling chore, and not just because of the lengthy walk. Women and girls feared going out alone because of the potential danger of men taking advantage of their vulnerability. Some days, Gulika faced harassment from her neighbors, and she didn’t always come home with enough water.
Gulika’s story has a happy ending: A Gospel for Asia-supported pastor arranged for a new water well to be drilled in front of her home.
Widows Do Not Often See Relief from Their Suffering
Too often, however, widows don’t see relief from their suffering. So many women in various parts of the world have lost their husbands that the term “island of widows” has been applied to locations in Nicaragua, Sri Lanka and India.
Some of these women’s husbands have died from unknown chronic kidney disease (CKDu). First diagnosed among sugarcane workers in Chichigalapa, Nicaragua, it more recently spread to a coastal town in Andhra Pradesh, India. In a village of less than 3,000 people, at least 126 women have become widows by CKDu ailments, which have stricken farmers, coconut grove workers and fishermen. [10]
There are other concentrations of widows linked to a variety of causes. The city of Vrindavan in northern India, known as a holy city because of its numerous temples, has been labeled “the city of widows.” That’s because an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 widows live in the area, almost one-fourth or one-third of the city’s population of 63,000. [11]
A “tiger widow” with her three children; a man works in a forest where tiger attacks happen often.
The Sunderbans, a cluster of islands stretching from India to Bangladesh, contain several villages that are home to “Tiger Widows,” women whose spouses have been killed by tigers.
“They think we are evil,” said one woman who lost her husband to a wild animal. “People blame us for the death of our husbands.” [12]
Widows Worldwide Face Tragedy, Discrimination: Part 2 | Part 3
Last updated on: April 30, 2021 at 8:37 am By Karen Mains
Wills Point, Texas – Gospel for Asia Special Report (GFA) – Discussing the troubling problem of the lack of toilets – basic sanitation, and open defecation for millions throughout the world.
What If You Didn’t Have a Toilet?
So I remind myself of toilet scenarios I do know about, then extrapolate some personal situations out to extreme what-ifs. Our home, in which we have lived for 38 years, has its own septic system. During that time, when we had extreme storms, the power would go out. This meant that no water could be pumped from our underground well, and this electric outage disabled our showers, our faucets and our toilets.
I used to store plastic bottles of water so when things went black we could brush our teeth, get dressed by candlelight (since there are no windows in any of our bathrooms), and—get this—flush our toilets. If the power did not come back on for a couple days, the frozen food thawed and an excess of detritus threatened to overflow the toilet basin.
A well-cleaned squat toilet in Asia.
So I extrapolate—what if this happened all the time? What if sewer lines broke, became clogged and backed up regularly? What if I lived in poverty and there were no plumbers and no money and no electric company to call to fix our difficulties? What if I had to stand in line to use a communal latrine where flies buzzed, the floor was filthy, someone had evacuated due to acute diarrhea, and no one wanted to clean the mess? Now we’re getting closer.
In the refugee camps of the world, my travel companions and I held ridiculous discussions as to who had invented squat toilets—men or women? Someone shot a photo of me holding a rickety latrine toilet door upright while a woman co-worker trusted me to guard her privacy while she did her business inside. I am laughing, howling with laughter really, at a ridiculous situation, but this is, for most of the world, not a laughing matter.
Extrapolate. What if there was no female friend to hold the door? What if the floor around the squat toilet inside was filthy and you had to pull up your sari and rest the top half of the door against your forehead to keep it from falling? What if you believed that the little structures, dark and dank and scary inside, were really inhabited by demons?
Smelling an overflowing latrine from 20 feet away might persuade even a Westerner to think similarly, even if only metaphorically. In truth, I don’t like the few outhouses I’ve been forced to use in the States, nor many of the spooky national park public facilities, and I certainly avoid, if I can help it, those portable potties hauled in on trucks for public events or construction work sites.
When Your Septic Tank Problems Bring Embarrassment
My last attempt at toilet empathy. About 10 years after we had moved into our home in West Chicago, Illinois, our neighbor across the back yard knocked on the door and apologized for needing to complain about the standing, stinking water that was seeping into his property.
“I think you may be having trouble with your septic system,” he reported, embarrassed to have to point this out.
I called two septic companies. One told me I needed to have the whole septic field replaced; it would cost us $10,000. The other service man diagnosed another problem, but his estimate was about the same as the first. Then I went to the DuPage County Health Department and asked what septic firms they would recommend. I called Black Gold, whose reps complained about the septic map drawn by the original company that laid our field that was now leaking.
“Would the health department let us get away with a layout like this?” he asked his partner. They both obviously thought the field plan had been rendered by some septic idiot. Sure enough, after spending about 45 minutes prodding our three-quarters-of-an-acre lot with long poles, I was informed: “Lady, you don’t need no new septic field. The lines of what’s there ain’t connected to the tank.” His fee was $3,000. I made a garden out of the areas that were torn up by their repairs.
Vile, brown liquid that some in Asia count on as their water source.
So what if I lived somewhere that permanently seeped smelly, vile, germ-ridden, brown liquid? What if the river at the back of the land was a running sewer, and my grandchildren couldn’t romp and splash in it? (As one writer vividly describes: “In stagnant reaches, methane bubbles up through the grey-green water, and the stench of rotten eggs—hydrogen sulfide—wafts into homes.”) What if the fields were filled not only with animal feces but the excreta of some 300 neighbors?
You come up with your own empathy-building stories.
Communities Band Together to Improve Sanitation
A family in front of a GFA-provided local sanitation facility.
Prime Minister Modi and his teams are sold on community-led initiatives, and so should they be. Change works best when a whole population is committed to seeing it happen.
Elizabeth Royte wrote: “The Indian government is rewarding certified ODF villages by moving them to the front of the line for road or drinking-water improvements. It has launched an advertising campaign that exalts Swachh Bharat mascots, like the 106-year-old woman in Chhattisgarh state who sold seven goats to build two toilets. It has enlisted cricket and Bollywood stars to exhort people to use the new latrines.”
Community development often works best when it is exactly that: an idea that grows out of the mind of some visionary who lives within the locality that has a need, a visionary who is not only capable of strategic thinking but also feels empathy and who is moved by compassion by the people nearby—his or her neighbors. And when a whole community becomes involved in “cleaning up its act,” there are few powers on earth that can withstand such initiative.
Now what’s interesting about Gospel for Asia‘s stories surrounding sanitation is that it is the local pastor in the village, who out of concern and knowing that open defecation is a deadly disease-breeding potential, exercises his compassion to love his neighbors by being concerned about the availability of latrines.
This is an excerpt from one of Gospel for Asia (GFA)‘s stories called “Welcome to Their Toilet” that talks about how one community was forced to use the open fields to defecate because they had no other proper place.
The local GFA pastor, Vidur, understood the villagers’ struggle. He himself had been ministering in the area for more than 10 years. Knowing people’s lives were at risk whenever they used the fields as their toilet, he wished there were a way to help them.
Then he found out Gospel for Asia had started a program to promote sanitation in underprivileged areas. Excited about the opportunity to help his community, he asked his leaders to build four toilets in the village.
That’s when Janya and her husband, Lalan, gladly offered some of their land for one toilet.
In January 2013, when the villagers saw a concrete outhouse rise out of the dusty ground, they poured out their gratitude to Pastor Vidur and the church.
“[This] saved the lives of people from illness,” shared one villager.
Even the village leader expressed thanks. “[The church] is always concerned about the need of people and works hard for a brilliant life for the community,” he said.
What an extraordinary example of love in practical action.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.” —Luke 10:27
For women like this tea estate laborer, having no outdoor toilet facility could mean risking assault as they go out into an open field in the dark.
“It’s not safe to send our people, our children, our wives or our daughters to the tea garden at night to use the toilet,” Iniyavan said.
Iniyavan made only 2,400 rupees a month, which was equivalent to about $37 (USD) a month. He wasn’t able to save enough money to construct a toilet.
Open defecation means there’s the risk of disease as families continually return to communal waste grounds.
GFA-supported Compassion Services teams construct outdoor toilets, also known as sanitation facilities, for people who, like Iniyavan, do not have the means to do so on their own.
“Now, since I have this toilet built in my house, I don’t have to worry. My family and I don’t have to go to the tea garden for toilet, and it is very safe here,” Iniyavan said.
On the Brink of Innovations, Change in Sanitation
Toilet technology is on the edge of remarkable, cost-effective, ecologically friendly frontiers. They’re becoming self-cleaning and solar-powered. A solar-powered toilet that converts waste into charcoal that could then be used as fertilizer.
An indoor toilet that works like a garden composter, spinning the contents and reducing odor and the number of dangerous pathogens. Portable rickshaw toilets. A community bio-digester toilet designed to convert human waste into gases and manure. Once ideas begin flourishing, there is no limit to what can happen.
I’m banking on Prime Minister Modi’s ODF Campaign to be successful. The hardest pull of any new effort is most always at the beginning, but once new ideas start rolling, they gather momentum. Some of the new toilet technologies may become catalysts as well.
In addition, there are hundreds of international organizations working on sanitation solution. They understand that one size does not fit all the variables that make up the particulars in this vast discussion, but added all together, it is a prohibitive association with evidence of remarkable dedication.
“And when a whole community becomes involved in ‘cleaning up its act,’ there are few powers on earth that can withstand such initiative.”
A Canadian doctor, one of those “creative renegades” unhappy with the condition of the world and one whom I have come to admire and love, was appointed as a Provincial Health Officer in the highlands of Papua, New Guinea.
While making an aerial survey, he and his team discovered one village that was distinctly cleaner and healthier. Far below them was the evidence of what turned out to be a pastor with some basic health training who had taught his people those lessons, and the difference could be seen from the air. That one flight changed their lives. They began to search for a more integral way of ministering and soon began using and teaching a community health evangelism methodology, which had been developed in Africa.
Sometimes we get lost in the details on the ground. We need to stand back, take deep breaths and find some way to gather broader assessments—some kind of aerial view. Progress is being made; it’s just a little harder in some places than in others. I’m proud that Gospel for Asia is one of the players. Last year, GFA helped provide 10,512 toilets for needy communities throughout Asia.
Shout Out to Toilets!
Christianity has everything to do with sanitation. We serve a God who is expecting us to help restore the world He created to its original design. That is a world, among many other things, without rampaging diseases. One day, Scripture promises, it will be a world without death and suffering. So in this interim, let’s hear a shout out for all the toilets in the world!
Saving Lives at Risk from Open Defecation: Part 1 | Part 2
Last updated on: April 30, 2021 at 8:16 am By Karen Mains
Wills Point, Texas – GFA Special Report (Gospel for Asia) – Discussing the troubling problem of open defecation and the lack of basic sanitation for millions throughout the world.
Talking Openly About Open Defecation
Another key dilemma in this discussion—open defecation, hardly a dinner-table topic or a mission committee agenda item—is the fact that accessibility to toilets does not always indicate usage. Changing habits is mostly a matter of changing mindsets in the face of the stranglehold of deeply entrenched beliefs.
Elizabeth Royte, in a comprehensive August 2017 National Geographic Magazine article, reports visiting Parameswaran Iyer, India’s secretary of drinking water and sanitation, in 2016. A hand-numbered sign on his wall tracks progress.
“You see that?” he asks. “One hundred thousand is the number of villages that are ODF today.” (ODF is the acronym for open defecation free).
Royte reports working the internal math: “Just 540,000 to go, I note; three years before Modi’s deadline.”
Other players, including the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (with $40 million dollars in prize money allocated toward innovative approaches to new toilet technologies), hundreds of concerned social entrepreneurs, engineers with altruistic motivations, East Asian water initiatives, and countless faith-based organizations are tackling the seemingly intractable worldwide dilemma of toilets, sanitation systems and sullied water.
What drives all this magnitude of interest, field research, consortiums and consultations on sanitation/water projects, awarding of grants and money prizes? Disease—plain and simple. Both waterborne and airborne.
“Some 1.5 million people die globally each year from polluted water diseases alone.”
Facing the Facts about Toilets, Open Defecation
Elizabeth Royte, who is a sanitation expert traveling widely and reporting extensively, summarizes that “Modi aims to build more than 100 million new toilets in rural areas alone by 2019.” But she notes that “deep-seated attitudes may present an even bigger barrier to improving sanitation than a lack of pipes and pits.”
That being said, let’s first look at the data regarding the state of toilets and open defecation in Asia. Then let’s examine what development organizations, sanitation technologies and mission groups, namely Gospel for Asia, are attempting in order to help Asia become ODF.
Starting with a global overview, key facts regarding sanitation highlighted by the World Health Organization are:
of the people who make up the world population use managed sanitation not serving other households, with systems in place to safely dispose or treat excreta (2015).
people worldwide still do not have basic sanitation facilities.
of the population is thought to consume food irrigated by wastewater
people still defecate in the open.
deaths annually (estimated) are caused by sanitation deficient environments, which is linked to transmission of diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid, polio, intestinal worms, schistosomiasis, and trachoma.
Now, while Modi has emphasized improved sanitation, it’s worthwhile to note that India has been struggling with these issues even before winning independence from Great Britain in 1947. In fact, Gandhi insisted, “Sanitation is more important than temples.”
Now, however, due to population growth, a conundrum exists: While the percentage that practice open defecation has dropped substantively, birth rates are creating an environment where more people live in geographic locations where fecal exposure is increasing, not decreasing.
Today, some 157 million urban dwellers—that would be 37 percent of the urban population—lack a safe and private toilet.
Even sewers are no guarantors of healthiness:
In the capitol city of Delhi, pipes are corroded; they ooze waste;
nearly a third of the booming city isn’t connected to underground lines.
Many latrines flush into open drains, and 4 percent—some 700,000—of this urban population still defecate outdoors.
Only 56 percent of the sewers are safely managed.
Flies carry disease from roadsides and open fields. Just one gram of feces can contain 100 million viruses, 1 million bacteria and 1,000 parasitic cysts. These can be absorbed through cuts in the flesh, the porous nature of skin itself, or by drinking unsafe water and eating contaminated foods.
Health figures are consequently staggering.
Some 315,000 children under the age of 5 die each year from diarrhea.
The chronically distressed digestive system doesn’t absorb nutrients or medicines well.
Underweight mothers give birth to underweight babies.
Worldwide, stunting affects an estimated 165 million children under the age of 5.
And all of the above and much, much more could be cured and eliminated by the installation and use of proper sanitation systems in slums, hamlets, rural villages and large cities across India.
In this part of the slums in Mumbai, India, many people live in close proximity in unhygienic surroundings—lacking facilities like toilets and proper drainage.
What Do the Sanitation Problems of the World Have to Do with Us?
For those of us with indoor flush toilets—and clean ones at that—with sewer lines that carry waste to treatment facilities, for those of us who live in places where waterborne and airborne bacteria are not a hazard, our response to the crisis of sanitation in the world is probably, So what? We don’t say this out loud, but like so many other dire extremes jockeying for our attention, it doesn’t really touch our lives.
However, in a majority of places, America, as has been noted, is starting to suffer from failing infrastructure. Most of us think of that in terms of roads and bridges needing repair or major overhauling, a transportation issue. Recently, reporters from the Chicago Tribune conducted an exposé of the high bills being charged for water in underserved neighborhoods around the city. Maywood residents in a western suburb pay one of the region’s highest water rates. This is simply because older pipes allow major seepage.
Of the 946 millions of gallons that Maywood bought from neighboring Melrose Park in 2016, some 367 million gallons, or 38.7 percent, never made it to taps, costing residents in an already cash-strapped population nearly $1.7 million more than residents would pay in other towns of similar size. And the poor are tapped for a disproportionate share of the bill as compared to what wealthier users in tonier neighborhoods pay. The tax rates of the poor do not allow for major infrastructure overhauls.
“What if I had to stand in line to use a communal latrine where flies buzzed, the floor was filthy, someone had evacuated due to acute diarrhea, and no one wanted to clean the mess? Now we’re getting closer.”
“In the United States, sewage treatment has not been a problem for the past half-century, but it could become one again as infrastructure ages and fails—especially if there is a lack of government money to replace it. In addition, certain regions of the U.S. are expected to experience water shortages as temperatures rise. New, water-saving, decentralized toilet technologies may need to be adopted not only in places like South Asia, but also in parts of the industrialized world.”
Indeed, we may be thinking about sanitation issues more in the near future than we ever thought plausible. Indeed, the burgeoning technologies used to solve defecation problems and to discover clean water solutions in the developing world may be solutions we also will seek not far down the road.
Women are prone to assault, disease runs rampant, and lives are at risk: all a result of using the bathroom outdoors.
Saving Lives at Risk from Open Defecation: Part 1 | Part 3
Last updated on: April 30, 2021 at 8:05 am By Karen Mains
Wills Point, Texas – Gospel for Asia Special Report (GFA) – Discussing the troubling problem of open defecation and the lack of basic sanitation facilities for millions throughout the world.
2.3 billion worldwide lack basic sanitation facilities and 892 million still defecate in the open, according to World Health Organization.Karen Burton Mains, author
For much of my adult life, it has been my privilege to hang out with the “renegades” of Christian missions, that relief-and-development crowd that rushes to help during natural disasters, struggles to alleviate the suffering and abasement of refugee displacement, and pays concerted attention to the everyday struggles of everyday living in the developing nations of the world.
The first trip I made around the world was at the invitation of Food for the Hungry, and I traveled with Larry Ward, the executive director at the time, and his wife, Lorraine. It was on this trip I became convinced this particular crew of crisis-ready, crisis-solving, crisis-adaptive humans was fueled solely by adrenaline (“When does he sleep?”).
The purpose of the trip was an international field survey with an emphasis on the refugee crisis in the world, which at that time in the 1980’s was the largest since World War II. We started in Hong Kong and ended seven weeks later in Kenya, Africa. My assignment was to observe with fresh eyes and to write about what I had seen.
The book I wrote, The Fragile Curtain, with the help of daily briefings from the U.S. State Department and the excellent international reporting of “The Christian Science Monitor” (as well as some generous coaching from a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper reporter) won a Christopher Award, a national prize for works that represent “the highest values of the human spirit.”
Eventually, I brought the accumulated exposure of my world travels—some 55 countries in all—and the learning I had gathered through journalism research and the actualities of dragging through camps and slums to the board table of Medical Ambassadors International (MAI), a global faith-based health organization.
The former international field director of MAI, now working to create a coalition of some 250 mission groups and development organizations implementing the MAI teaching methodology, made a statement I thought about for years:
“I never realized,” he said, “that I would eventually measure the impact of the Gospel by how many toilets had been built in a village.”
Women and girls are often at risk when open defecation is the only option for relieving themselves. Thankfully, these precious faces can smile because a toilet facility was recently built in their village.
GFA’s Story: Fighting Open Defecation, Helping to Improve Sanitation in Asia
So what does Christianity have to do with the defecation problems of the world?
Gospel for Asia (GFA) is an organization close to the heart of my husband, David Mains, and to myself. We met K.P. Yohannan, GFA’s founder, when it was just an impelling vision in the heart of a young Indian man—one of those divine nudges that simply would not stop pushing at him. Since then, David has traveled to Asia at the invitation of Gospel for Asia (GFA) some eight times; I have visited Asia under their auspices once. We’ve watched as K.P.’s vision grew from a dream to an actuality with numbers beyond anything we could have considered possible.
GFA’s website tells its story, and its story is vast:
In 2016, some 82,000 impoverished children were fed, clothed and schooled;
829 medical camps provided hundreds of people with free medical care and advice;
10,512 latrines with dual-tank sanitation systems were constructed.
This family stands in front of a latrine or “squatty potty” that was installed by GFA-supported national workers.
Gospel for Asia (GFA) started building latrines in 2012, setting a goal of constructing some 15,000 concrete outhouses by 2016. Potable water, of course, travels hand in hand with sanitation, and in 2016, the ministry’s field partners constructed more than 6,822 “Jesus Wells” and distributed 14,886 BioSand water filters to purify drinking water. Touching vignettes on GFA’s website make the statistics personal.
“This saved the lives of people from illness,” stated one villager—and indeed, toilets, when and if they are used, do just that.
A village elder expressed thanks:
“The church is always concerned about the need of people and works hard for a brilliant life for the community.”
There, indeed, is a thread that runs through Gospel for Asia’s stories of toilets: The pastor of the church in this village or that hamlet seems to be the catalyst for health improvement.
Organizations Tackling the Open Defecation Sanitation Crisis
Matt Damon, the founder of Water.org (photo credit Water.org)
Much of the world is in a war against the perils caused by inadequate or non-existent sanitation. People as diverse as Matt Damon, a Hollywood celebrity, award-winning actor and producer/screenwriter; and Narendra Modi, the current prime minister of India, are battling uphill against open defecation (in the sewers, in running streams, by the roadsides, in the fields and the forests, in garbage dumps).
Damon, driven by a desire to make a difference in solving extreme poverty, discovered that water and sanitation were the two basic foundations beneath much of what ails the world. Through his charity, Water.org, he and his business partner, Gary White, are using the microfinance template to provide loans for underserved people to connect to a service utility or to build a latrine for their homes. Some 5.5 million people have been impacted by his approach, and the group estimates they will reach another 2.5 million by the end of 2017.
Prime Minister Modi campaigned to end open defecation and build latrines for India. Photo by narendramodiofficial on Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0
Modi actually campaigned for office with the slogan “Toilets Before Temples.” Using Gandhi’s 150th birthday—October 2, 2019—as a goal, the Indian prime minister declared his intention to end open defecation in the country by that date. A campaign was framed, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission), and $40 billion was allotted for building latrines and changing mindsets, while the World Bank contributed loans totaling another $1.5 billion.
Another big player in the sanitation action is the United Nations, which in 2000 established Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015. While many of these goals were reached (some statisticians conclude that world poverty was halved; others, of course, disagree), progress nevertheless was erratic—great success here and there with some signee countries having few or no results.
Whereas, as Matt Damon discovered, improving sanitation along with clean water, undergirds many of the problems included in what is now being reframed by the UN as Sustainable Development Goals, the target to halve the proportion of the population living without access to improved sanitation facilities by 2015 was missed by almost 700 million people.
Saving Lives at Risk from Open Defecation: Part 2 | Part 3
Last updated on: October 23, 2018 at 7:46 am By GFA Staff Writer
Wills Point, Texas – GFA (Gospel for Asia) – Discussing how the Unsponsored Children’s Fund helps provide a chance for hope and life to children without sponsors.
My name is Nirash. I am only a child. I am always sad.
We have very little to eat. Sometimes I have to walk to the river with my mother to carry water home for cooking. It is a long walk and the water pots are heavy.
There is always someone in my family who is sick.
I can’t read or write because I have no one to teach me. My mother and father can’t read or write either.
My father works very hard every day. When he comes home, he is so tired that he gets angry easily. He complains about his work in the fields and the way he is treated by his overseers. He is sad because he does not earn enough money to take care of us and to pay something called his debts.
My mother has told me that I may have to go to work soon, perhaps in a brick kiln, to earn enough money to feed us better.
I know some other kids who work in brick kilns. They are very unhappy. They are always too tired to play with me. I hope I don’t have to work in a brick kiln.
There is a pastor man in our village who visits our home from time to time. He knows that I would like to learn to read and write. He has told us about a place called Bridge of Hope on the other side of the village.
The Bridge of Hope has teachers who are kind and loving. All the kids get a hot meal every day. Doctors come to the center to make sure the kids are healthy. Kids who go to Bridge of Hope learn many things, so they do not have to work in brick kilns or in the fields like my father.
When we heard about Bridge of Hope, we were excited. The pastor said my parents don’t even have to pay for me to go. There are people far away who pay for each of the children to go to Bridge of Hope.
I told the pastor that I want to go to Bridge of Hope. He wants me to go too, as soon as someone is willing to sponsor me.
We never want to turn any child away. That’s why we have established an Unsponsored Children’s Fund, so our field partners can provide the support for a needy child who otherwise would be in a hopeless situation.
Oh, and by the way, Nirash is not the name of a real child. This is, after all, a parable. Nirash is the Hindi word for “hopeless.” It is our prayer that through Bridge of Hope, the Unsponsored Children’s Fund, this will be the story of more and more children – a story of finding new life.
Numerous studies have shown that the simple step of properly handwashing markedly reduces the risk of disease and infection. Unfortunately, many in developing nations around the globe do not know of this life-saving fact.
For this reason, the Global Handwashing Partnership (GHP) established October 15 as Global Handwashing Day. The theme for 2018 is “Clean hands – a recipe for health.” It particularly applies to this year’s emphasis on making handwashing a part of preparing to make or partake of every meal.
When the first Global Handwashing Day was introduced in 2008, the campaign focused on reducing child mortality rates by introducing behavioral changes, including handwashing. It was estimated that the simple act of washing one’s hands adequately with soap could reduce childhood mortality from respiratory disease by 25 percent and from diarrheal diseases by 50 percent.In fact, “Research shows that children living in households exposed to handwashing promotion and soap had half the diarrheal rates of children living in control neighborhoods.”
The World Health Organization recognizes World Hand Hygiene Day each May 5.
The need for each of these days is far greater than we might imagine. It is difficult for us to imagine not washing our hands. It’s just what we do. It was only about 150 years ago that washing one’s hands was not so common anywhere in the world.
It was not until 1846 that anyone recognized the value or virtue of washing one’s hands with soap. Dr. Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, who held a medical degree with a specialty in midwifery, became concerned about the prevalence of puerperal fever in maternity clinics.
Despite the abundance of incorrect theories of the day, Semmelweis theorized a common link between fetal and maternal childbirth deaths and similar fatal infections in people who had undergone surgery by doctors carrying infectious substances on their hands and surgical instruments.
Semmelweis’ hypothesis-proving experiments, in which his system of hand and instrument washing were used, reduced the puerperal fever mortality rate in his facilities from 12.24 percent to 2.38 percent. Twenty years later, his findings had still not become readily accepted.
Educating people with regard to the dangers of infection caused by dirty hands has dramatically reduced birthing and surgical mortality rates. And washing hands with soap and water has become as much a part of life in developed nations as waking up in the morning. So much so that the occurrence of bacterial disease is minimal in developed countries compared to those that are still emerging.
The task before us now is to educate the people who are living in remote villages and slums who have yet to understand the need for washing one’s hands. Gospel for Asia (GFA), its partners, NGOs, businesses and governments are working together to teach the necessity for handwashing as a matter of good health and hygiene. Together, we can:
Teach people to wash their hands with soap at critical times, especially before eating, cooking or feeding others.
Model good handwashing behavior and remind them to always wash their hands before eating.
Help them to make handwashing part of their family-meal practice.
Help them to establish places to wash your hands in the household, in your community, in schools, workplaces and in health facilities.
Promote effective handwashing behavior change.
Watch this short video (3:47) featuring Dr. Daniel Johnson to learn more about how some of our field partners teach proper handwashing.
This video is shown in thousands of rural villages and urban slums every year to prevent unnecessary disease and infection and improve the health and well-being of the poor and downtrodden.
“Deprivation faced by widows therefore extends its destructive influence deep into the rest of society, and can be seen at work across large parts of the world,” the organization stated in its 2015 Global Widows Report. “Widows’ deprivation is therefore not simply about identifying one more category of people to be added to the poverty policy list. This latter point will obviously be of interest to governments, given that they rarely act because there is a moral need to do so—action happens because it helps achieve some other already prioritized objective.” [
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