What Can $10 Do?
This fall we have launched an exciting and easy way for every day folks to get involved with what is happening in Pakistan through the Ray of Hope Club.
Many people want to be involved in real change, but often feel that they can only give a small amount and doubt that their ten bucks can actually make a difference.
But we beg to differ. Ten dollars makes a HUGE impact in Pakistan. In fact, it can be the difference of one woman being able to go through a vocational training or not. $10/month, which ends up being $120 over the course of one year, can change the entire future of a woman, because $120 covers the cost of sewing machine that a woman receive
s when she completes her vocational training. That sewing machine, that came from s
omeone’s small monthly gift, is what enables a woman to start her own business, provide an income for her family, send her children to school, and ultimately, rise out of poverty.
Hear this young girl, Mahwish’s story, and decide if $10/month is worth it.
Three years ago, Mahwish was a young girl from a small village in one of the most difficult regions in Northern Pakistan.
She was a young Christian girl in a region with 99.9% of the population being conservative Muslims. She had never had the opportunity to receive an education because of the danger for minorities to attend school. Mahwish was raised in an environment in which women are lower than men and her destiny was set out to remain behind closed doors and high walls, raising children, and hiding her face from the rest of society.
However, Mahwish heard about the Women’s Vocational Training Center in Gilgit (about a 3 hour drive) and decided if there was any hope for her future, she needed to attend this school. Making the journey to Gilgit, was the first time in her life that she came out from her house and she would soon realize that this step of faith would change her life completely.
Shining Light provided accommodations and scholarships for her to attend the 2 year training course and receive basic urdu and english studies.Upon completing her training, Mahwish was able to work for Life Stitch Manufacturing for another year to strengthen her skills and help with income for her poor parents back in her home village. During her time at Life Stitch, she was able to receive business and entrepreneurial training from Yobel International and learned how to start her own business. Never in her life, did Mahwish imagine that women could be business owners and work equally, side by side, with men.
As she gained these new skills through the vocational training school, she also gained a specific burden to go back to her village to help other women by teaching them the value that resides within each one of them and empowering them by teaching them to sew, knit, and embroider. Now, Mahwish’s dream is coming true and she is running her very own small training center for five Muslim women in a rented home back in her home village. The community is seeing this as truly miraculous as no one could have imagined that a young, uneducated, poor, and persecuted Christian girl, could now be training and empowering her Muslim sisters. This is the first women’s vocational training center in her area run by a young Christian girl.
Mahwish is now contributing to the income of her family by helping to sew products and mend for neighbors in her community, and when you ask her how she feels about this change that has come to her life, she will tell you, she is beyond grateful to all those who have helped her to get training and provide a sewing machine, so that she can be used to multiply this empowerment in other parts of Pakistan.
That’s what a small $10/month can do. It can change the entire future of a young girl, and eventually impact entire communities in some of the most difficult regions of Northern Pakistan.