A strategic, well-supervised project is helping needy women to support themselves and their families

Every day, in the rural town of Thondamuthur, India, forty-two women learn sewing and tailoring skills at the Lydia Tailoring School for Poor Women. Their new abilities enable them to help support themselves and their families. The six-months course, provided free of charge to them, is overseen by a Christian fashion designer and a tailoring instructor, who also counsel and pray for the Hindu and Muslim women. Because response to the training has been so enthusiastic and the results so positive, enrollment will increase significantly next year. 

From Shacks to Houses in South Africa

With the help of friends, Charis International recently sent $40,000 to Mamelodi, South Africa to build houses that will provide shelter for the poorest of the poor who are now living in dilapidated shacks.

I met Martin Vorster in Washington, D.C. at the Prescription for Hope Conference on HIV/AIDS. I identified with him when he described the call of God he and his wife Terry received to serve among the poorest of the poor in Mamelodi, a black township located near Pretoria, South Africa. In response to God's call, the Vorsters began traveling daily from their white suburban neighborhood to work in the black township. But they realized that to be accepted by the people, they must live among them. Here is part of their story.

Throughout Afghanistan, thousands of women and female-headed households have been left with no obvious means of support following decades of political instability, six years under a regime which denied women permission to work outside the home, and four years of drought

It has been twenty years since we first learned about a strange new disease—HIV/AIDS. No plague in the history of mankind has been as devastating. With infection rates running higher than expected, the next 20 years of the AIDS epidemic will be far worse unless there is a marked increase in prevention and treatment, according to the United Nations.

War, Drought, Famine

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. The ongoing 21-year civil war has destroyed the infrastructure of the country and caused the death of two million people. The effect on the population is incalculable.