Women and Girls Mission Fund Grants

2017

• ABWM sent $7,848 (contributions received as of 12/31/17) to Ministerios de Mujeres Bautistas de Puerto Rico (Baptist Women's Ministries of Puerto Rico) to provide ministry funding for this ABWM Region’s ministries with women and girls in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. We’ll send more designated funds in 2018 as it is received from individuals and churches who want to help Puerto Rico Baptist women’s ministries thrive!
• Partnering with The Greater New Life Christian Center of Springfield, Massachsusetts, to provide housing subsidies for women seeking sober living with limited funds. Our grant also is funding a psycho-educational group for women in Covenant House and the surrounding community.
• Assisted two Baptist woman from Middle Eastern countries with scholarship help to study at Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Lebanon to prepare them to minister in the Arab world.
• Provided travel funding for two ministry practitioners who work with trafficked women in Nagaland and Netherlands to attend the International Christian Alliance on Prostitution global conference at Green Lake, Wisconsin, in May 2017, directed by ABC International Ministries missionary Lauran Bethell.
• Empowered a young leader in the North American Baptist Women's Union's young adult women's cohort to get to the NABWU Assembly conference in Toronto, Ontario, in October 2017, to lead at the conference with her cohort colleagues.
• Through Rural Care Ministries in Andhra Pradesh, India, provided training to 25 women to learn tailoring skills and empowered them to begin their own tailoring businesses to earn income for the needs of their families.
• Gave opportunity to a young Baptist woman in the Republic of Georgia to begin a Women's Religious Leadership Academy for Peace in her country that brought together 35 women of different faiths and resourced them with skills for peacemaking and conflict management.
• Gifts to the Women and Girls Mission Fund and marked for AB GIRLS ministry, Refit, and/or Leadership Development fund were being used for those purposes.

For more information about the Women and Girls Mission Fund and to donate, visit www.abwministries.org/wgmf.

2016

• Provided health and wellness services to homeless women living at Mt. Hope Sanctuary (Kansas). Specifically, the grant  funded a resident’s participation in group support meetings for addiction recovery at a community mental health center; supplies for random alcohol use screenings (Mt. Hope has zero tolerance for drug and alcohol use by residents); out-of-pocket costs for a resident’s eye doctor appointment and new prescription eye glasses; and probiotic vitamins for a resident’s three preschool-age children.
• Enabled a Syrian Christian woman to prepare for a ministry of evangelism; the grant provided for her tuition/books/room/board at an Arab-speaking Baptist seminary in the Middle East. (2-year grant)
• Funded a new “R & R for Girls” ministry that teaches Respect and Responsibility and self-sufficiency for future success, through the Cameron Community Ministries Christian Center (New York).
• Supported a women’s sustainable vegetable and fruit farming project in Kenya that  economically empowered 72 very poor women to generate an income for their families.  The grant  funded the purchase of tools and equipment and agricultural training for these women. The project was managed by a dedicated team of 11 volunteer women.
• Brought three young women to Washington D.C. in July 2016 for experiential training in Christian leadership, women’s ministry development, and networking opportunities.
• Provided for a unique leadership exchange between Kachin Baptist women from Myanmar and American Baptist women from the U.S., at two events in 2016:  a leadership training event in Myanmar that drew 6,000 women!, and a national women's conference in Washington D.C.
• Gifts to the Women and Girls Mission Fund and marked for AB GIRLS ministry, Refit, and/or Leadership Development fund were used for those purposes.
• As always, unspent funds in the Women and Girls Mission Fund were set aside at the end of the year, for use in the following year for grants and donor-designated ministries.

For more information about the Women and Girls Mission Fund and to donate, visit www.abwministries.org/wgmf.

2015

• Assisted women and their families displaced from their homes and villages in Kachin State in northern Myanmar. Civil war between the Kachin people and the Burma military exceeds 60 years of strife and violence. In December 2013, American Baptist women traveling on AB Women’s Ministries Mission Encounter to Myanmar and Thailand met with Kachin Baptist leaders of women’s ministries and learned of the horrors of burned homes and churches, of rapes and murders, of separations of families. The next month AB Women’s Ministries wired a $5,000 grant to the Kachin Baptist women, but the funds were halted by the U.S. Treasury Department, which required several rounds of paperwork. The grant transmission became hopelessly tied up in red tape. A year later, AB Women’s Ministries successfully recovered the funds, and by God’s grace the $5,000 was hand delivered in May 2015 to the office of the Kachin Baptist Convention in Myanmar, and thereupon was presented to the Kachin women in need. Kachin Women Ministry Director Ja Ing sent a heartfelt letter of thanks, noting that some of the funding provided supplies for 31 young ladies to learn an income-producing skill—how to sew—at their Baptist Association’s Women Empowerment Training Center. She wrote, “We believe that your love and praying for us will be as a pleasant and precious offering before God.” Plans have been made for Ja Ing to attend AB Women’s Ministries national 3D event at Washington D.C. in July 2016.
• Provided assistance to women in Haiti two-fold: 1) a portion of the grant is supplying micro loans to women motivated to begin their own business. Whether selling soaps and cleansers from a wheelbarrow shaded by an umbrella at the open market, or operating a wholesale grains shop, these women are forging a better life for themselves and their families. What’s a mother likely to do with an income? She assures that her children get an education, and she’s able to feed her family. Children benefit when a woman earns a living wage. 2) The other portion of the grant was tagged for transportation needs for Baptist women across the country of Haiti to gather together for a leadership training event. International Ministries missionary Kihomi Mgwemi is coordinating the use of the grant.
• Provided a stipend in 2015 for Chanta Barrett, AB Women’s Ministries intern, to gain experience in women’s ministries. Chanta is a student at Palmer Theological Seminary and her internship with us fulfilled the seminary curriculum requirement for a field education experience. A resident of Philadelphia and a member at Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, Chanta’s internship helped her pursue two interest areas: women’s ministries and urban ministries.
• Paid for lodging at the Methodist Presbyterian Hostal in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, for AB Women’s Ministries President Patti Stratton to participate as an invited guest at the 50th Anniversary celebration of the Women’s Department of the Congo Baptist Churches of the West (CBCO) in August 2015. There Patti witnessed the helpfulness of White Cross supplies and she visited the Mitendi Center school/training center for girls and young women. The privacy wall bordering the Mitendi Center property had been funded by several Region ABWMs and is now completed.
• Gifts to the Women and Girls Mission Fund and marked for AB GIRLS ministry, Refit, and/or Leadership Development fund were used for those purposes.
• As always, unspent funds in the Women and Girls Mission Fund were set aside at the end of the year, for use in the following year for grants and donor-designated ministries.

2014

• provided funds to the women’s department of the Baptist Convention of Haiti for micro-loans to women to begin small businesses, and also funds to provide transportation for loccal church women in Haiti to attend a leadership training event in Haiti;
• enabled two staff members from the New Life Center in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and a staff member at Miqlat Ministry in Nagaland to travel to Wisconsin in May, 2014, and participate in the International Coalition Against Prostitution global conference hosted at Green Lake Conference Center by International Ministries missionary Lauran Bethell;
• offered to each of the 31 AB Women’s Ministries’ region/state organizations a $1,000 grant to use to develop leaders for their ministries with women and girls (24 region organizations each requested a $1,000 grant in 2014);
• provided a stipend to our 2014-15 seminary intern for her work during the first semester of her  Theological Field Education requirement for her M.Div.from Palmer Theological Seminary;
• partnered with Bread for the World Institute to provide funding to help produce and distribute its 2015 Hunger Report, "When Women Flourish...We Can End Hunger";
• funded the AB GIRLS ministry: providing resources, events, leadership development, and programmatic support to AB GIRLS groups and their leaders. Our AB GIRLS National Leadership Team also received needed funding for NLT meetings, a mission work week in New Orleans, and as co-planners/leaders at our 2014 Intergenerational Retreat.  
• Gifted International Ministries and the American Baptist Home Mission Societies with Refit funds to be used for needs of missionaries in transition and for new church planters and congregations with specific outreach ministries to women in need;
• and more.

For more information about the Women and Girls Mission Fund and to donate, visit www.abwministries.org/wgmf.

2013

• provided relief provisions to Kachin women and their families living in IDP camps in northern Myanmar (Burma), recently displaced from their homes and churches after military raids on their villages;
• distributed personal hygiene and clothing kits to 20 girls and women that received repair surgery for obstetric fistulas in Malawi, Africa, restoring dignity and self-worth as they return, healed and whole, to their villages and families;
• partnered with American Baptist women in an Oregon church to supply books and tuition to strip dancers that want “out” to go back to school;
• provided protection and care in Haiti to children rescued from “testavek” child slavery;
• funded a scholarship for an Arab woman to go to seminary at Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Beirut, Lebanon, to prepare her for Christian ministry in a Muslim country
• provided finance training and micro-loans to women in Myanmar to begin small businesses to support their families;
• funded pastoral leadership training for two women originally from Burma now living in the U.S. (Click here to read about the scholarship recipients.) ;
• helped an American Baptist missionary pursue a graduate degree in Organizational Development so that she could be even more effective in her ministry overseas to empower women and girls;
• partnered with an American Baptist church in Maine that began an “I Am Awesome!” camping program for middle school girls to instill self-esteem and help them embrace God’s purpose for their lives;
• empowered an AB GIRLS National Leadership Team of high school girls and adult mentors to plan and resource ministries for girls in our churches and regions;
• resourced leadership development opportunities to empower American Baptist women and girls to grow in leadership skills and serve God in their churches and communities;
• gifted “refit” funds to new church planters in the U.S. and overseas missionary personnel in transition;
• broke chains of violence against women and girls through projects in Montana, New Jersey, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, and IMA World Health;
• and sustained the expanding outreach of AB Women’s Ministries.

For more information about the Women and Girls Mission Fund and to donate, visit www.abwministries.org/wgmf.