Empowering Women Through Education

Women are often viewed as second class citizen in Mozambique, especially if they are uneducated. We believe knowledge is empowering and love providing an opportunity for the women in our village to learn about a variety of topics. Our women’s ministry runs five days a week and each group of women are with us for one calendar year, we provided the following classes.

Portuguese

By not speaking Portuguese, the national language, it’s assumed that you aren’t educated and therefore, a second-class citizen. We work with the women to teach or improve their speaking, writing and reading of the Portuguese language. For them, this knowledge is empowering.

Bible

Everything we do is motivated by our faith in Jesus and the Bible. Our Bible class is a great opportunity for us to share with the women about who Jesus is and use the Bible as a tool for language. We use the same weekly verses as we do in the tutoring program to discuss what the Bible says about honesty, love, encouraging one another and more. The women love this class because they get to talk about things Jesus said and how it applies to their own lives.

The women we work with are predominantly Muslim but their knowledge of Islam ranges from never having seen a Quran to daily family readings of the text. We don’t force our beliefs on the women, and so we’ve had devout Muslims in our Women’s Ministry classes. We respect others beliefs and listen to their thoughts on faith, this helps us to better understand the community we are serving in to know how to love them better.

Personal Finance

Our math class isn’t one of complex equations, rather we stick to the skills needed to budget, run a household and introduce them to small business finance. We focus a lot on what it means to save for an emergency, save for a goal and make a budget.

The women also get to decide as a whole if they would like to participate in a class savings. If the class all likes this idea, they agree on the amount each woman deposits each week/month. Then if a woman has an emergency or need during the year, they can request to make a withdrawal. The women elect an accountant and completely oversee the money. We are there just to help and advise, can you imagine how empowering this is?!

Health & Family

Our female staff run this class because we cover a wide range of topics, from hand washing to AIDS/HIV. We also talk about family planning and breaking the cycle of girls having babies and how it can change their daughters’ lives. The ladies love being able to share their stories and opinions during this class and we know it’s having a great impact.

One day, Maria* came to us and said her husband would like to talk to us. It was a little nerve wreaking, we thought that he might have a problem with her learning about the Bible or just learning in general! The time came for the meeting the husband began sharing about an issue that he and Maria were having.

They were selling small goods in front of the house. It was a new business, so while he used to help her gather wood or go to the farm, he was now sitting at home waiting for customers. With her in class and him watching the business there was no one to collect wood, which meant they had nothing to cook with.

Maria didn’t want to give up coming to learn at our classes and so they were at an impass. She had been sharing with her husband about all that she was learning and mentioned that our staff gave good advise, so the husbands visit was all about getting advise from our staff!! They advised him to get a neighbor or older child to oversee the business while he is collecting wood and he agreed to give this a try. It was so amazing to see the impact of our ministry!!

Gardening

Our village is filled with farmers, their year revolves around their harvest. So much that we cancel class for a week when they tell us it’s time to pick their crop. While this is amazing, the problem is most of their farms are an hour away and the most destitute of the women we work with don’t even have that.

 In gardening, we teach them about keyhole gardens not to replace what they have but to get them something more accessible in their yard. As our program grows, we also hope to introduce techniques that would increase the yields of their farms.

Sewing & More

On Fridays, we take a break from class to do something fun. For the first month or so, we teach all of the women how to sew. Beyond that we have days that the ladies can bring in clothing to make repairs. The ladies also look forward to painting their nails and making friendship bracelets during this time. All of our female staff are invited to join in on the days activity.