Your donations are helping provide refuge, nourishment, and livelihoods for women and children in India.
Thirteen-year-old Aadi* didn’t know what to do. He had run from home with his 12-year-old brother and mom after his dad had attacked his mother—again.
Now, she lay in the hospital, and the boys had nowhere to go. Then Aadi remembered a lady who had helped his mom in the past. People knew she was someone you could go to when you had nowhere else to go. So, Aadi called.
The woman who answered was Ella.* She leads a Samaritan’s Purse-supported project that exists through the prayers and generosity of donors like you. More than 20 years ago, God called Ella to a region of her native India with some of the worst literacy and health statistics in the state—even before the pandemic.
“The love of Jesus and His compassion compels us to do this work.”
“Our priority is to care for the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of the people who come through our doors,” Ella said. She and her team picked up Dayita*—Aadi’s mom—and her two boys and took them in. They treated Dayita at the onsite clinic and provided the family with shelter, meals, education support, job skills training, and hope that, with God, life can change.
A Place of Refuge
The project is a refuge for 80 women and children recovering from abuse, exploitation, and abandonment. But through your support, it’s also reaching families across the region with desperately needed food, agriculture, and livelihoods.
This work has grown in importance as the number of people losing jobs and going hungry spikes from COVID-19. For day laborers, migrant workers, and widows, “One day without work is a day without food,” another partner told us.
On the project’s grounds, several gardens and livestock grow not only to feed the women and children staying there but to help nourish the surrounding community. The staff uses the land to teach local families to garden and raise animals so they, too, can have a safe, sufficient source of food, even in crisis.
Through your prayers and support, 46 courageous women in India kept their families from starving and protecting thousands more from COVID-19.
Nearby, a jewelry and tailor shop run by the project is helping sustain families by teaching essential job skills and providing a vital source of employment. For most of the 46 women currently working at the shop, it has kept their families alive. “If we didn’t get this work, we could be starving,” one of the women said.
Your support stands behind these courageous women. In turn, they are blessing their country. In the last year, they have produced 30,000 masks and 32,000 female sanitary pads for highly vulnerable families struggling through lockdowns.
Ella and her team, alongside local churches, have distributed these masks and pads with emergency food packages to provide for thousands of families.
“People suffer a lot, particularly as COVID-19 has brought a lot of financial crisis into the families,” Ella said. “The love of Jesus and His compassion compels us to do this work. Through the challenges, we pray for good opportunities to keep reaching many more people. All the glory to God.”
*Name changed for security
