Rising from the ashes
Yvonne, from Bunia in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is a true overcomer. Bunia has been affected by some of the DRC’s worst conflicts where rape has been used as an appalling weapon of war. Although Yvonne’s community and her own family have endured these horrors, she has not let grief have the last word. Instead of losing hope she is working hard to bring about change for her region.
Yvonne has become a volunteer in Tearfund’s project to combat sexual violence, delivered in partnership with the Anglican Church. The project is run as part of the UK government’s Preventing Sexual Violence initiative (PSVI).
Yvonne is now vice president of a PSVI Community Action Group, providing support to survivors of sexual and gender based violence and encouraging the community to speak out against these crimes. Through the project she has trained in advocacy and negotiation skills to support survivors to take up their places in their families and communities again. She also knows the laws and local legal processes to help survivors access justice.
Yvonne says, ‘There used to be a lack of understanding about gender based violence, it was accepted as a fact of life. This is changing. Victims used to think they should not speak out, now they do. We should not be quiet if we are victims or witness sexual violence.’
She is also working to promote true masculinity as part of the PSVI, challenging social norms which often legitimise violence and say that to be a man you have to be ‘tough’. Thanks to all her work in the community, Yvonne was also recently named a local leader and is now able to lobby for change at a high level amongst her male peers.
Praise God for the strength and perseverance he has given Yvonne, placing and using people like her to bring about change.
Tearfund has recently also launched an emergency appeal to help those urgently needing aid across the DRC.
PLEASE PRAY
●Give thanks for Yvonne and her family and ask for God’s continued blessing and healing.
●Pray for a broad and deep change in the culture and thinking around gender in Bunia and the wider region.
●Ask for healing for survivors of sexual violence in the DRC and pray that the work of the PSVI will be able to reach more people and communities.
Choosing hope over uncertainty
‘My parents were born in Haiti, but me, I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. I am over 30 years old and came to Haiti for the first time last month when I was arrested and deported from the Dominican Republic for having Haitian ancestry.’
These are the words of Yella Feliz Luiz who, along with her husband and four children, became a refugee in Haiti... simply for having a Haitian heritage.
In 2013, the Dominican Republic passed a court ruling which retroactively stripped Dominican citizenship from anyone living in the country who did not have at least one fully Dominican parent. The law applied to every individual who had settled in the Dominican Republic from as far back as 1929 and by July last year buses full of families of Haitian descent were soon deported back to neighbouring Haiti.
According to the OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), more than 120,000 people have been sent back to Haiti from the Dominican Republic with many families leaving behind their belongings, businesses and livelihoods.
Yella, her family, and many others suddenly faced a new stateless status: stripped of their Dominican citizenship yet never formally identified as Haitian. On being forced to leave the Dominican Republic, Yella and her family found themselves living in a refugee camp in south-east Haiti.
But, thanks to your faithful support, we have been able to work with local partner World Concern to provide food kits, hygiene kits, basic necessities and training sessions to refugee families. We have also worked to identify the most vulnerable families, and helped relocate them into long-term housing.
Yella’s family were among those able to move into a permanent new home, offering stability, greater comfort and hope for a new life in Haiti.
Despite the loss and uncertainty, Yella says, ‘Even though everything seemed so bad, I choose to have hope, I knew that God was watching.’
PLEASE PRAY
●Praise God that Yella and her family are now safe and settled. We rejoice together that their lives are beginning to return to normality, and that their future is full of fresh hope.
●Pray for Yella as she focuses on building up a new business so that she can provide her family with everything they need to thrive in Haiti.
●Give thanks for Tearfund and the work of local partners who are providing lasting solutions and bringing change to those most in need.
Beyond church walls
An important part of Tearfund’s work is challenging and supporting churches to be Jesus to their communities.
In the Central Asian States* the outlook of one church changed dramatically after its pastor, Taalay**, attended a presentation on Tearfund’s Discovery programme at a pastors’ conference last October. The programme draws on Tearfund’s experience working with churches and communities across the world and builds the strength and aspirations of churches to be salt and light to communities. ‘For me it was important to realise that each local church has considerable potential and enough resources to fill the needs of people around us,’ Taalay says.
Taalay was so inspired he ran a mini Discovery course at his church. This helped members analyse the specific area God has placed them in and how they can address the need on their doorstep.
The church is located near a major bazaar where many large young families live in makeshift housing and very difficult conditions. Parents are often forced to leave young children on their own so they can gather rubbish for recycling to make a living.
To address these issues, a group of women in the church has now set up a preschool group for very young children. This means they receive some teaching, they are not left on their own and are given food through the day. The church has also organised a self-help group for mothers in which they make souvenirs from felt, giving them a small but valuable extra income stream. Thanks to your support for Tearfund’s work more churches like Taalay’s are mobilising and becoming an answer to prayer for the most marginalised people in society.
Taalay says, ‘To be salt and light in this world it isn't always necessary to make great feats. Sometimes it just means looking around to see a need on the street.’
*We cannot name the specific country due to political and religious sensitivities in the area.
*Name has been changed to protect identity.
PLEASE PRAY
●Pray that God will continue to guide and bless the work of Taalay’s church as it continues to serve the community.
●Lift up the families that the church is working with and ask that they will be able to break the cycle of poverty.
●Ask that more churches across the Central Asian States will be inspired and mobilised through initiatives like the Discovery programme.
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8 July 2016 One Voice weekly prayer email
tearfund.org/praying