Indian culture is old and quite difficult to understand. There is a caste system that dictates everyones lives. If you are in the lowest caste system, you live in poverty, you work in poverty and you marry in poverty, there is no way out of the lowest caste. Now the same goes for the highest caste, except that if you marry into a lower caste, you become that caste and are no longer allowed to be a part of the higher caste. It is a vicious cycle that they say has ended, but the people of India still live by this.
Women in India have very little value, in order to marry in India the parents of the girl must pay a dowery to the man to marry the woman. This makes birthing females less than desirable to the lower castes. Many female infants and murdered, left for dead, or sold into the sex trade. Ultra sounds are illegal in India due to the fact that many would abort their babies if they knew they would be female, the government hopes that if these women go to full term and birth their babies that they will have made a strong connection and that they would keep their girls.
This is the hard truth of India, and that is where out ministry comes in. Rescue Pink is an organization that helps young girls and women who have girls make a better life. Our ministry this month was to go into these girls and women’s homes and get more information about them to make a profile of them and their family. This is the first month that we were paired up with an organization rather than church or ministry, although this is a ministry in itself.
Rescue Pink has a couple of awesome programs including; tutoring young girls, giving nutrition to pregnant and lactating women and an entrepreneurship program.
The tutoring program involves young girls coming to the Rescue Pink house (office) and have some extra education help, learning how to eat healthy foods and take care of their bodies. Rescue Pink also feeds them a nutritious snack and some milk.
We got to spend every evening with these young girls, many times we played games in the yard with them and sang songs, we even helped prepare them for their Christmas program.
The nutrition program is a new addition, it provides nutritious food to pregnant and lactating women so that their babies grow up to be strong and healthy.
We got to meet a lot of these women and their families, see where they live and how strong and healthy their babies are and how this program has made a difference in their lives. Some stories were heartbreaking.
We were in a village about 45 minutes outside of Medak, where we were staying, and we were talking to a woman who has three girls and this last baby is the one who had the nutrition. The difference in size just my seeing was incredible, we were looking at a very healthy baby girl. The other girls were smaller than they should have been for their age. When we asked her what her family thought of her having girls, she said that they had disowned her, this was extremely hard to hear, she said that her in-laws were disgusted with her and that they would no longer talk to her. Her husband left her after she had her third girl, and lived with his parents. He then married another woman and left her to take care of the three girls all by herself. Luckily her parents have stepped and let her live with them. This is not an uncommon thing to happen in families with young girls and it’s heartbreaking.
The entrepreneurship program helps women start a business to help with family income. It’s a really cool program, the women are interviewed and selected and then are required to take a six week class which is twice a week and the women cannot miss a single class or they are out of the program. Then once their training is complete they pick a leader for their group that lives in their village with them and they are in charge of making sure the loan payments get in on time, and if one of them can’t pay back their loan that week, the other women have to help her and compensate for her. It’s an awesome program that brings women together in a community to cheer each other on.
Another amazing part of this program is that the women are required to but a certain amount in savings each week that goes towards their daughters schooling, and most women put more than the required amount away in savings each week.
We as a team had the awesome job of going in and checking up on the women who have been a part of this program and we got to hear stories of success and how these women have taken on a business and how it has changed their lives. Many of the women are seamstresses and they do beautiful work, some own bangle shops, some bought a cow so they could use it to sell its milk, and others bought land so they could grow and sell vegetables. It is incredible what this organization does for the women of India and how much it is growing and expanding!
During one of our weeks in Medak at Rescue Pink, we had the pleasure of meeting the founder of Rescue Pink and a team that came to visit the center.
We got to hang out with them for a couple of days and they are the nicest people you will every meet. Sherry is the founder of Rescue Pink and her heart is so big you would not even believe it, she is the nicest woman and cares so much for the women that are a part of the organization. She is continuing to expand Rescue Pink, and is going to be opening up another location very soon! Her mother also came with, June, and you can just see how proud she is of her daughter. One of the nicest ladies I have ever met, she is easy to talk to and just has a heart for these women as well.
Then come the men that were their posse; there was Matt, the videographer, he was quiet and calm but knew how and when to crack a joke, and he shows people the Lord through his calm presence; Randy, the photographer, was this crazy, awesome, semi-inappropriate guy who just loved to constantly joke around, but man does this guy have a soft heart; and then there was Jeff, just along for the ride, he was this awesome father like figure that we had for a week, he was obsessed with his poodle and always showed us funny pictures of them together, and just had a heart to serve.
This team had a huge impact on us, after being away from home for four months going on five, they really loved us well while we were together. Not only did they give us gifts, they gave us Christmas stockings and festive thanksgiving decor from target for our feast. Our hearts were so big and there were tears shed when they left.
This month was great, it was awesome to see what we had accomplished at the end of the month. We loved our host and their family, our cooks that fed us three meals a day cried when we said goodbye (we thought we were such a fuss), but we made them know they were loved. I am so thankful for my India family and the Rescue Pink family that we were brought into this month. And it turns out the color “pink” is so much more than a color to these women, so I guess it’s not such an ugly color after all.
If you want to know more about Rescue Pink, go to their website! www.rescuepink.org
