From Sewing Sanitary Napkins to Three-layer Face Masks

(Theit Theit Shwee sewing face masks made by cloth [photo from CEDAR’s partner])

 

“Kacha…Kacha…” Theit Theit Shwee, a woman from the slum area of Myanmar, sat in front of a sewing machine and sewed the fabric. She carefully wrapped the two white bands and sewed them with the fabric and finished making a three-layer cloth mask. This has been her daily job, making cloth masks with other women in the community center of CEDAR’s partner.

Continue reading From Sewing Sanitary Napkins to Three-layer Face Masks

Fear Not the Slander and Shadow, But to Break the Silence – Interview with Indian Anti-child Trafficking Activist

(Aashima Samuel, the National Director of EFIC@R, interviewed by CEDAR)

 

“In Indian villages, when we and church pastors advocated anti-child trafficking, some Hindi nationalists accused us of, or even attacked us for ‘brainwashing’ villagers to convert them into Christians. In fact, among them, there were traffickers slandering us to extinguish our anti-trafficking voice,” said Aashima Samuel, the National Director of Evangelical Fellowship of India Children At Risk (EFIC@R), CEDAR’s partner.

Continue reading Fear Not the Slander and Shadow, But to Break the Silence – Interview with Indian Anti-child Trafficking Activist

Saving One is One

Our partner worker carried a 12-week-old embryo baby model to deliver the message of “priceless life” to women who were preparing for abortion in the hospital.


 

Abortion, a bloody noun.

 

According to the interpretation of Wikipedia, abortion, also known as miscarriage or induced abortion, is the ending of pregnancy by removing an embryo or fetus before it can survive outside the uterus.

 

Under the influence of one child policy, millions of women and mothers undergo abortion or sterilisation every year. The Chinese official report pointed out 13 million cases of abortion annually. When this announcement was still hovering around the ears, some US human rights organisations already felt unacceptable and claimed that the actual number is 10 million more. According to this data, there are 63,013 cases of abortion every day, 2,625 cases every hour, and 43 cases every minute. Various reasons have gradually made abortion a “reasonable” choice and it is silently accepted in the society, which can be implied from an advertisement of a mainland Chinese hospital. In the advertisement, a woman was frustrated because of an unplanned pregnancy. After the hospital’s painless induced abortion, the family and even the grandmother were very happy to welcome her home. Various social influences resulted in sexual experience at young age and the prevalence of abortion.

Continue reading Saving One is One

Divine Intervention in Broken Lives

[“SHARE” APR – JUN 2018 ] TAKING ACTION

Written by: Maylin Hartwick (Leader of Harmony Baptist Church)

 

When one wants to reconcile with oneself, God’s intervention is indispensable as God transforms the life of a person. In the past few years, CEDAR has witnessed many encouraging testimonies of its partners. We saw how God healed the brokenness in the lives of the poor and exploited.

 

Harmony Baptist Church (HBC) is a friend of CEDAR. Like CEDAR, HBC is active in mobilising local believers to care for refugees, asylum seekers, domestic workers, and victims of human trafficking here in Hong Kong. Maylin, a leader of HBC, is going to share with us stories of women they have served and how God has intervened in their lives.

Continue reading Divine Intervention in Broken Lives

The Long-awaited Change of Gender Inequalities in Nepal

Living in a Hindu country with the caste system, the women of Nepal were traditionally being oppressed. They had a far lower chance to receive education and employment than men. In the worst case, some women in the countryside had to gain permission from their husbands and in-laws for things as trivial as leaving the house, hence they were mostly bound to the kitchens and farms.

Continue reading The Long-awaited Change of Gender Inequalities in Nepal

Free Again—The Lydia Project in the Slums of India

If you put sheets of raw materials into grinders, weigh them and put them into molds, so on with a total of 22 steps, you would have produced the pads necessary for every woman during her menstrual period. Pushpa was able to learn these steps and sustain her family by selling self-made pads with the help of the Lydia Center in New Delhi, India.

Continue reading Free Again—The Lydia Project in the Slums of India