Yesterday was a long day. After a long day at work I attended a Women At Risk dessert and awareness banquet nearby. One of my best friends invited me because she knew it was something I cared deeply about.
Women at Risk was started by a lady who witnessed horrible atrocities as a child, and at age 14 she determined she would do something about it. Reaching out to the world’s most vulnerable women (trafficked women, women in societies where women are not valued and are oppressed or abused, women in cultures where rape and abuse are covered up as a norm, women who are abandoned and are raising families on their own) to help them with emotional healing, physical healing, medical attention, job training and micro-loans, help in starting a business, and an all around protection and restoration program that teaches them the value of their soul, their beauty, their heart, who they are as a person. I am quite convinced that all women at their core 1. want to be beautiful 2. want to be valued and cherished, protected and respected. I also believe these are God-given desires AND rights. When there are places where this is not happening, even in just one solitary woman’s life, it’s up to us to change that.
The women who are employed by Women At Risk’s various businesses make the equivalent of a woman with a college education.
If you want to check out their website, it’s WARinternational.org. You can shop for beautiful items made by beautiful women who are discovering their own self worth.
http://www.warchestboutique.com/
Maybe you can host a War Chest Boutique party.
http://www.warinternational.org/get-involved/host-a-party/
While you’re at it, InternationalJusticeMission.org takes the issue to a whole other level, with active rescues performed regularly (rescues of women and minors who have been forcibly trafficked by the global sex trafficking trade).
Oh that I had a bigger budget right now. Of course most of my Christmas cash and shopping is used up, but I was able to purchase this precious ring, which I like quite a lot.
It was made by a woman who is recovering form a painful past, possibly one rescued from an abusive situation or from forced trafficking.
Everything about it says precious and beautiful.
Marisa Porter 