Changes
As I prepared to go to India on behalf of RSWR for the first time, friends often told me that the trip would be a life changing experience. At the time, I was resistant to the idea that one trip could be powerful enough to change my life. Today as I prepare to end my work as Program Director for RSWR, I realize that trip, along with other trips to India, Kenya, Sierra Leone and all that has touched me in my 9 years at RSWR, have changed my life.
I began working for RSWR 9 years ago when the organization was having difficulty finding someone to fill a four hour per week position to assist in processing grant proposals. It was difficult to find and keep someone who was available to work such a small amount, and who would have care and commitment for the organization. For the previous 10 years, I had lived daily seeing my husband’s ( Roland Kreager, RSWR’s General Secretary) deep love for and commitment to RSWR. It seemed that at least half of our daily conversations centered on RSWR. I was a psychotherapist with a private practice and was, at the time, clerk of my Yearly Meeting. Why not take on another project!
Little did I know that this small project would grow in my heart and change my life.
My first trip on behalf of RSWR was actually to Kenya in 2003. I had worked for the organization for about a year, and decided to use my own resources to travel with Roland to visit with Yearly Meetings in Kenya. RSWR was in the process of introducing ourselves to Kenyan Friends after the board had approved developing programs among USFW women in Kenya. Although I had lived in Germany for a while, traveled a good bit and currently was a city dweller in Cincinnati, there still was a large portion of the small town Kentucky girl in me. For some years I’d felt that my world view was small and that I would like to live for a time in the developing world to ease my parochialism and to explore how I might be called to live more fully in a manner of equality and solidarity with the poor.
My only experience of walking with the poor had been a time some years before when I had some engagement with the poorest neighborhood (Over the Rhine) in the inner city of Cincinnati. That small stretch of time brought me some very limited glimpses into the struggles and joys of that community. But traveling to Kenya gave me a glimpse into a world of poverty and struggle I had never witnessed.
On our first full day of rest and recuperation from our flight, Roland and I decided to take a Sunday afternoon stroll along the streets of Nairobi. We set out from the guest house to walk to Kenyatta Park in the heart of the city. The street was teeming with people walking, vendors hawking their wares and young men trailing us to urge us to purchase tickets for their “safari”. I felt like a tiny fish swimming against the tide in unknown waters.
The most unexpected part of this walk, however, was the scores of small children in dirty, tattered clothing who followed us begging for money, grabbing our hands and pulling at our clothes. In my involvement in Cincinnati’s inner city, I had seen many poor children, but all lived with some family members and were in some ways cared for. Never had I seen 4 and 5 year old babies wandering about the streets begging for food and money. Never have I experienced the emotional drain and helplessness I felt on that walk.
I came home with a new sense of poverty’s oppression in the faces of these small children.
In India two years later, I met a boy in a hotel restaurant in Pudukkotai. He appeared to be 10 or 11 years old. Every morning when I went down for my breakfast and evening when we ate our late night meal, the boy was there in his dirty white shirt and blue shorts. He always smiled as he set the banana leaf plate in front of me and as he cleaned the neighboring tables with his brush and bucket of water. The only language we shared were our smiles, so I do not know this boy’s story but I expect it is like the stories of many children in India who work in cities and live apart from their families who do not have enough money to feed and send them to school
For each of the seven trips to the developing world that I have made in the past nine years, I have a memory of a child living in poverty and doing work not meant for a child so that he or she might eat. I also have memories of children in school uniforms; children enacting stories about the tsunami that hit their shores and killed friends and relatives; children holding out their hands to a strange white woman and running by the car happily calling out to the strangers riding along their rutted roads.
These children, their mothers and fathers have changed me. The strong, compassionate and committed men and women who work on behalf of the poor in their countries have changed me. The wise men who serve RSWR as in-country field staff have changed me. I cannot ignore the face of poverty. I have come to deeply believe that it is necessary for those of us who have plenty to work toward economic justice for those who do not have enough. I have learned about micro credit and have seen the power of one small grant in changing the life of a woman and her family. I have more fully understood that personal empowerment for women can positively change the face of an entire community.
I have also seen over and over the power of women (and sometimes men) working together as a group. One of RSWR’s criteria for funding a project is that the women must be organized in a group of support. The guiding principle behind this criteria is that the group offers support and accountability. Over and over I have seen and heard the stories of women in their groups: stories of how women supported one another after the Tsunami or other crises; stories of how they supported one another in repaying their loans; stories of how the members appealed to and received help from their group in dealing with domestic violence. I have seen women leaders rise up in leading NGOs in India; women being elected to local public office; and women appealing to government authorities for their rights.
I carry these changes in my heart and look forward to how God will call me to manifest these changes for which I am incredibly grateful. I think of the song we sometimes sang at my Quaker Meeting in Cincinnati: “Step by step the longest march can be done; Many stones can build an arch, singly none. And in union what we will, can be accomplished still.” (“Rise Up Singing”)
Cindi Goslee
RSWR Program Director
Right Sharing Partners in India
Floriculture training
More floriculture training
Here are some more photos from Right Sharing of World Resources beneficiaries in South India who received training and support for beginning micro-enterprises in floriculture amongst other projects. (Read more on this group here.) The first two photos show the women—a group of 25 (and growing)—at a four day training. The second two pictures show two of the women, amongst their crops.
When dismal health conditions closed the tannery and weavery where the 22 women of “Semin
When dismal health conditions closed the tannery and weavery where the 22 women of “Seminary of Women Empowerment” formerly worked, a broad new opportunity began. They would be their own bosses, while being supported by and accountable to one another. They applied for a group micro-loan through Right Sharing of World Resources and upon receiving the $4875, began 4 new strands of income generating work: weaving, baskets, garment-making, and produce-vending.
The report above shares their thanks as well as photos from their ventures.
Aiming for Sweet Success
The Salem District of Tamil Nadu, south India is rich with hills. The area is known by surrounding communities for it’s mangoes, steel and a large dam called the Mettur Dam. (Pictured left.)
The area is familiar to us, Right Sharing of World Resources (RSWR), because we have partnered with a women’s self-help group there called Rural People’s Development Society, to encourage micro-enterprise development.
If you follow the sound of bees buzzing, you may happen upon the honey-saturated boxes of twenty-five women who have benefitted from RSWR microcredit to begin their new ventures. Bee-keeping was one of the entrepreneurial activities these women chose to create better economic resources for themselves and their families.
The women were trained by area Beekeeper, Mr. Vijayan, who instructed them about proper care of the bees while maintaining safety for themselves. (See below.)
The group has already identified 15 more women to whom they would like to revolve their loan, to keep empowerment aflight.
To learn about this and other RSWR projects, visit our website.
One of the most inspiring facets of this self-help group, in a time like this, is that these wome
One of the most inspiring facets of this self-help group, in a time like this, is that these women are religious minorities who have joined together in microfinance ventures. In south India, where they are located, religious minorities means the joining of Christians and Muslims. Mixing relationship, money, accountability and responsibility is a risky prospect in any group, but there is something especially heartening here.
