Powerful Impact in our WAVEs

Lead Photo Credit: Wilhan José Gomes wjgomes from Pixabay

On the first Wednesday of the month, women from around the globe gather on Zoom to discuss the Big Ocean Women tenet for the month. November’s meeting was particularly impactful for me as a discussion facilitator. The theme was, “We believe in the model of powerful impact.” This tenet emphasizes the power our consistent small efforts can have to create positive change. I wanted to demonstrate how the desires of our heart, when paired with action, can lead to powerful ripple effects. I asked the women what the unique desire was in their heart to make a difference. I was amazed at the abundance of compassion and inspiration shared by the women. They taught me by their personal examples instead of me teaching them! 

For example, Angeline discussed her desires for her community in Zimbabwe.

“My desire is to promote gender equality. I come from a background which is patriarchal and has been affected by it. I’ve realized that it’s really important to empower, especially the children, and even the boy children, to support and promote gender equality at a younger age….I’ve started learning a lot about feminism, learning about gender equality, so that I can support my family to begin with to support gender equality.…. I’ve been telling myself that it’s really important to challenge these norms that we’ve grown up learning, but they’re harmful to all societies…. So, I’ve seen this transforming my communities, my household to begin with, even the extended family and also the church that I’m coming from, which is really a change that is traditional in Zimbabwe…. It’s a difficult move, but I’ve been winning most of the issues through advocacy work around gender equality.”

This transformation she is describing is exactly what the Model of Powerful Impact is, and examples like these show how this principle is making waves of goodness and positive change all over the world.

Evelyn was a great example to me of how our impact for good can reach bodies, hearts, and minds. She described how her work has helped change mindsets and offered hope and healing to women in need in her community.

“I am into psychosocial support for women through counseling therapy. I believe the mind is a very powerful tool. I often work with survivors of gender-based violence right in my community. It’s very difficult to talk about gender-based violence and what it does. It makes someone feel unwanted, rejected… very low self-esteem, self-stigma…. In gender-based violence, the physical injuries are easily managed, but the psychosocial trauma, which at times is hidden, it’s not easy to talk about and can make women suffer for the rest of their lives. So what I’m normally doing through counseling therapy is to restore that mindset, that self-esteem, that smile again. I’ve been working with groups of women. You find that after the counseling intervention, they are ready to take challenges. I feel very content when I make a difference in someone’s life. In particular, when I change their mindset.”

Tomasina shared her desire and efforts at improving maternity conditions and livelihood programs in her area of Pakistan.

“I’m very happy as a part of Big Ocean. My desire is for everybody to know about the Pakistani situation for Christian ladies. So, we have organized two groups there, two WAVEs in Pakistan…. My desire is to improve the conditions in Pakistan, especially during the maternity time and after the maternity because maternal child health clinics are very, very low there. And the health condition is very, very bad in Pakistan, especially the women are not very aware about it. The condition after the pregnancy, during the pregnancy, lack of food, lack of nutrition, and everything. My second desire is because everybody knows the Pakistani Christians are living under the poverty line. So, we want a livelihood program with them so the women are working shoulder to shoulder with the men. This is my desire to Pakistani women, they become independent with their men and with their families. I love to improve their health education. These days we are working in a disability sector and there is a school for the Down Syndrome children. Nobody noticed that the disabled are there. So we are working for the disabled as well. Disability, poverty, and education, the livelihood program. It’s my desire.”

Many women are uniting as groups to make a difference. Teddy talked about how her team is supporting young girls in Uganda.

“Our desire–I’m saying our desire, because right now we are four here. It’s me, Rusty, Kevin, and Liz–and our desire is to help young women gain their confidence through self-reliance. You know, in the area where we live, young women are facing a lot of challenges…. They choose to get married at an early age just because they are looking for a way forward for support to get food and the life essentials. We all know and we think marriage is not an option for the young girls in our community. Another thing we are also focusing on is HIV/AIDS. According to the current census, one of the areas that is most affected by HIV/AIDS is in Masaka in Uganda, and one of the reasons it is highly affected is because of our early marriages. The girls are looking for an option or somewhere to get a living. Our desire is to help them improve their own lives as we improve ours too. And also, once we become something, once we get something, we want these young girls to have the outcomes too. We want to be an example.”

Provia described empowering women and supporting children’s education to stop the cycle of poverty in Uganda. She explained,

“I’m from Jinja, Uganda, and my desire is to empower women or mothers and mentor them to find sustainable designs and solutions to life’s challenges. For instance, I love women who support their children to go to school, but some are not able to raise funds to take the children to school. I met a lady with four children. She was stuck…So, I talked with this lady and I said, since you did not complete school, these children are not going to school. You are going to be in a cycle of poverty. If you can come home and live with me, these children will be put back to school….

She accepted. And when I reached the village, I found another lady who was also struggling with the children, but she has experience in teaching lower classes. So I hired her to come and teach these children from home. And she said, do not pay me. I want to go back to school also to get a certificate. So I told her that is very easy. If you can study online, I can put you on the BYU Pathways and you can study. Wow. So she’s helping children learn and prepare themselves to go to school, while she’s also preparing herself to advance and earn something that can qualify her to be a full-time teacher. And to me, that is going to sustain her because she’ll be able to find solutions or design solutions to her problem.

So that’s my desire, to empower women to find solutions for the life challenges they are having in their family. And, in turn, they can also empower their families, empower communities, and empower the nation.”

The personal stories continued from many of the remarkable women in attendance at the virtual meeting. Jackie shared her desire about helping people become self-employed to overcome poverty and supporting educating children in her community. Immaculate shared her desires about counseling young women and teaching self-reliance in Kenya. Mary talked about assisting young women in Zimbabwe with basic sanitation needs during menstruation so they can continue attending school. Miriam talked about her efforts in educating children in the Sun community (Bushmen) and teaching them to speak the language that enables them to attend school.

Each of these women, whom we will spotlight more in the coming months, illustrated so well the goal of Big Ocean Women to make a powerful impact in our families, communities, nations, and the world.

Join us in our next Virtual WAVE meeting on Wednesday December 4th and be a part of this powerful community of women!