The Smallest Donation Guarantees Success

At Big Ocean Women we are incredibly grateful and amazed to watch how your donations are impacting women and families all around the globe. To give an example, just the cost of a hamburger donated monthly sends a young man or girl to school and away from an abusive household. The same small monthly donation sends a teacher to train groups of women to make jewelry, which they then sell to feed their families. These donations also provide training for self-employment and supplies for sewing and hairdressing. Your small monthly donation is providing literacy training and animal husbandry to villages in Guatemala, providing clean water to communities like those who received an operating borehole in Uganda, and is helping promote educational programs and providing needed kits supporting women’s menstrual hygiene and health in schools and communities such as in Buea, Tiko, and Cameroon. Thanks to your donations there is hope, safety, and self-reliance. We thank you for your donations for this cause!

Many of you may be wearing jewelry made by these women. Our jewelry makers have stories that are both touching and empowering. One such story is of Ruth from Buwongo. She was married and lived several hours away from her home village. Her abusive husband took all her belongings, burned them, and threatened she would likewise be burned if she ever went against him. Ruth fled with her two youngest children to the bus stop, having to leave the older two behind. She put her children on the bus and gave a phone number to the bus driver for her mother in Buwongo. She said to call the number when they reached their destination and her mother would come and get the children. After, she went into hiding. She was starved and destitute, but eventually arrived near Buwongo. Helen Turner was told about Ruth’s situation. She remembered that Ruth was a skilled jewelry maker, and asked her to teach the women of Buwongo how to make beads and jewelry.

Ruth now teaches the Buwongo WAVE members to make handmade beads into beautiful jewelry pieces, and she and her sons are now safe. Big Ocean Women has funded supplies and pays a small teaching salary to Ruth. Many women now come together to make jewelry in groups that also provide emotional and spiritual support for each other. Your donation is supporting these women, their precious children and families, and helping empower self-reliance.

Big Ocean Women would like to express our immense gratitude for your donations and want to share with you some of the other amazing successes and impact that these donations have had in the year 2024.

• A woman from South Sudan explained, “Big Ocean helped me tackle horrific child abuse in my village.”
• In Nigeria, after her husband’s murder, a woman was learning skills to be self-reliant from the programs of Big Ocean Women.
• Guatemala started a preschool to help teach and preserve their native indigenous language of Quechi, a language like many others that is becoming lost.
• In Jos Nigeria women are focusing on the psycho-social being of vulnerable widows, educating them on having an abundance mindset. Fatima is leading this Wave, our largest Wave of over 130 women.
• Spiritually-based youth summits have been created to help support pregnant youth who have been disowned by their families, some as young as twelve years old. Scholarships have been created for these women to learn marketable skills such as sewing, hairdressing, and baking.
• Jinja and Buongo, Uganda both have built community jewelry making businesses, five new feminine hygiene enterprises have been trained, and a well was built in Buongo providing water to the community with training on how to maintain it.
• In our independent sewing schools, six Waves have been provided for with local sewing machines, fabric, and supplies. They are also making Big Ocean Women makeup bags that they are sewing and selling. 
• Uganda started a bead necklace business to help support the self-reliance efforts of women in their community.
• Dammeron Valley community homestead produces hundreds of pounds of organic fruits and vegetables every year.
• Houston, Texas supplied kids of incarcerated parents with special Christmas stockings to let them know they aren’t forgotten.
• USA Waves have supported hundreds of refugees with kits around the world.
• Finally, we have new two new Wave leaders this year – one in South Sudan and one in Pakistan.

Every donation is used towards the amazing cause and support of these women and the success of their families. Every small monthly donation is really making a difference. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!