 If you are poor, widowed, have no children to care for you and if you live in Ethiopia... your prospects are dismal. Employment options for poor, uneducated widows are begging or prostitution. If you have no money, you cannot eat and you cannot get medical help. The street is your home.
The widows in Ethiopia today are in the same high-risk category as they were in Bible days and Jesus’ command to care for them is no less compelling. Our Widows and Orphans Home is meeting the needs of some of these desperate women by lovingly bathing the elderly women, giving them clean clothes, housing and feeding them. It is the gospel acted out in word and deed.
 For others living in the community, some with young children, we want to help with a monthly feeding program as well as scholarships for their children so they can go to school. Adoption Ministry of YWAM buys bags of flour and disperses them to the widows who are registered with our Widows and Orphans Home Feeding Project. About thirty community widows receive a monthly staple this way. We are also supporting women and children in the villages of Tede (teh’ day) and Gimbie with food. We are expanding this outreach to the areas of Dembidollo and Nekemte as well and will soon be supporting many more widows in these areas.
The need is great! Would you help a widow by giving only $30.00 a month so we can reach out in a practical way to these women who are dear to our Lord’s heart? As we hand a woman flour in Jesus’ name, we not only provide nourishment for their bodies, but provide living water for their souls as well.
We are also beginning a project to help women by providing seed money to start a small business, thus giving them a means to support themselves and their children.
If you would like to support the Widows and Orphans Feeding Project or help provide funds for a small business start-up, please email us at support@ywamethiopia.com
One Hundred Dollars
by Joy Casey
There are lots of things I could do with $100. I could buy myself a nice pair of jeans (maybe) or drive to Montana to visit my family and have lunch along the way. I could buy my grandson a pretty nice birthday present, and my husband and I would enjoy taking our good friends out for a nice dinner.
Or, I could spent $100 another way.
In the very poor community where YWAM serves in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, there are single mothers who many times are illiterate, are widowed, or do not know the fathers of their children. They are so poor they cannot send their children to school and either find work as a daily laborer or, if that is not available, they bring in money through prostitution. Just so you know, a daily laborer earns about 80 cents a day. I’m not familiar with what an evening of prostitution brings in, but I don’t see these women living high off the hog so assume it is not a highly paid profession.
Abdissa, the YWAM Children’s Director in Addis, has reached out to these desperate mothers and has tried to find ways to help. Genet is a mother with three children and no father. She was one of these women who was caught in a web of poverty with no way out. Last year, Abdissa set her up in a small business selling coffee and bread in front of her room. For $100 he bought her coffee, the things to roast coffee with, some cups, a table, and the ingredients to make bread. She began offering coffee and fresh bread and earned enough money to enroll her children in school, buy their books and uniforms and pack a lunch for them every day. Within a year she paid back the $100 and is now self-sufficient and very happy as a small business owner. Another woman was helped in the same way. She now has a fruit and vegetable stand that is doing quite well and her children have enough to eat and they, too, can attend school. Abdissa bought an injera baker and a storage container for another woman, and she bakes fresh injera (the Ethiopian traditional bread) daily and sells it.
If I take $100 and invest it in setting up one woman in a small business in Ethiopia, designer jeans could be put on hold for a little bit. I think inviting our friends to our home might be nicer than a fancy restaurant dinner. By hook or by crook I’ll get to Montana to see my family, and I know my grandson will not suffer deprivation on his birthday.
If you would like to help a woman start a small business in Ethiopia, please click on the 'DONATE' button in the left hand column! Thanks for your answer to God's call to rescue widows in their distress!
WHAT THE UNITED NATION SAYS ABOUT HUNGER
In December 2008, a United Nations report declared that another 40 million people have been pushed into hunger this year primarily due to higher food prices. This brings the overall number of undernourished people in the world to 963 million, compared to 923 million in 2007 and the ongoing financial and economic crisis could tip even more people into hunger and poverty.
"For millions of people in developing countries, eating the minimum amount of food every day to live an active and healthy life is a distant dream. The structural problems of hunger, like the lack of access to land, credit and employment, combined with high food prices remain a dire reality," the Food and Agriculture Director, Mr. Ghanem, stated.
The vast majority of the world's undernourished people - 907 million - live in developing countries, according to the 2007 data reported by the State of Food Insecurity in the World. Of these, 65 percent live in only seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia. In sub-Saharan Africa, one in three people - or 236 million (2007) - are chronically hungry, the highest proportion of undernourished people in the total population, according to the report.
The crisis has mainly affected the poorest, landless and households run by women," Ghanem said. "It will require an enormous and resolute global effort and concrete actions to reduce the number of hungry by 500 million by 2015."
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