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Eighty percent of the world’s unreached people—and 80 percent of all refugees—are women and children. As many as 4 million of them are trafficked each year. Women and girls suffer disproportionately as the least valued, least fed and least educated, the most often abandoned, abused, abducted and aborted.

Still, as the nurturers and spiritual hearts of the home, they are in positions of power to influence the next generation. In some countries, there’s only a 12-year span between the birth of a boy and his conscription into a military training camp.

Yet there are no global outreach ministries that focus exclusively on women listed in the EMIS 2004-2006 Mission Handbook ( www.emisdirect.com ).

Pooling Resources Michele Rickett wants not only to relieve the suffering of women and children but also to bring them the gospel. In 1996 the former missionary to Africa founded Sisters In Service ( www.sistersinservice.org ), a trans-American grassroots network of women’s advocacy groups now based in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. These groups learn of needs for projects to benefit women and children across the globe. They pray for the needs, select overseas projects and raise funds to help make them reality. Rickett is SIS president and CEO.

Rickett, author of “Daughters of Hope: Stories of Witness and Courage” (InterVarsity Press 2003), holds that often the best person to help an indigenous woman is another indigenous woman. “Yet they are operating under poverty, oppression and persecution,” she said. “We [women in the West] have freedom, mobility, access to wealth and opportunity. Let’s join forces together and extend the gospel.”

Here’s How It Works Rickett and her husband, Daniel, have created a global network of ministry connections over 25 years, and missionaries in this network recommend worthy indigenous women’s projects that need funding. That’s how she learned about Christians in southern India with a vision to build a center for Dalits—“untouchables” in India’s caste system—but lacked the money to make it happen. A SIS chapter from San Francisco, Calif., learned of the need, and a chapter representative traveled with Rickett to assess whether its members would support the project.

They did. So the San Francisco chapter held a walk-a-thon that raised $14,000 in one morning. It funded the center, which has raised Dalits’ status in that southern Indian community as the women learn to read, write and learn skills with which to build small businesses. The center launched a savings and loan program to help women pay for their dreams—for instance, a daughter’s dowry or an outhouse for the home. The center, as all SIS-funded projects, offers woman-to-woman evangelism and discipleship, all by national women to their peers.

Following Their Footsteps Rickett’s vision was influenced by powerful role models who came alive to her in the pages of books she read while serving in Africa in the 1980s. One book was about missionary Eliza George, who suffered much in her service in Liberia. “Daughters of the Great Commission,” by Ruth Tucker, noted that two-thirds of all missionaries throughout history have been women. Another book told the stories of women’s missionary societies and early women missionaries who begged for the chance to live out their global outreach callings.

But Africa’s Christian women themselves served among Rickett’s greatest role models. “My experience in women’s ministries in the US was that there was a strong emphasis on Bible study, but almost no outreach in the community,” she said. In contrast, “My African sisters’ ideas of women’s ministry was to emphasize ministry—making Christ known, particularly among the poor in the garbage dump [and in] squatter communities.”

These African women, however, were themselves operating under poverty and oppression, which hindered them from making even greater impact. Bringing resources to support their projects, Rickett realized, would dramatically further the gospel.

Global Multiplication Women’s centers like the one the San Francisco chapter sponsored in India are in the works in Muslim villages in Senegal, Rickett says. Also in India, SIS is helping fund a center for women with AIDS. In response to six praying women in Iraq, SIS is partnering with an indigenous ministry to build women’s centers there. One has been funded and more are planned.

In China, SIS funds the training of leaders in underground house churches where 75 percent of new believers are women. In Sudan, SIS programs include job training and work-for-food programs for displaced women. Other SIS projects are in North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Indonesia. SIS chapters have funded women’s ministry training courses in 17 Arab countries.

Western women typically are willing to pray for needs they become aware of. A formidable obstacle, however, is tapping their huge, untapped power to impact the world with their resources. While prayer advocacy is a big part of SIS, “The Book of James is very clear,” Rickett said. “You cannot say to your brother who’s suffering, ‘You just be warm and filled. We’re praying for you.’”

Rickett carries a heavy speaking schedule to civic clubs, churches and church women’s groups. Her audiences often respond by setting up a SIS advocacy chapter to pray for and fund these indigenous projects. “An important part of what we do is keep the information flowing,” Rickett said. To that end, SIS publishes monthly updates and leads advocacy trips. Through them SIS advocates become aware of short-term ministry needs and some of these advocates step up to fill them.

Pray, Give and Even Go That’s how Peggy Wharton, a 62-year-old grandma, ended up teaching English for three months in Iraq. Rickett spoke at Wharton’s church, Midland Evangelical Free in Midland, Mich., for a women’s conference in 1998. Women at the church formed a SIS advocacy group with other Christians in the community. The group embraced the outreach of Wati*, a middle-aged Indonesian who, despite death threats, has planted churches, founded a seminary and preaches on the radio. She leads a network of Christian workers who meet the physical needs of the poor and Christian refugees on northern Sumatra, among the world’s most dangerous places. The Midland women fund Wati’s ongoing work.

When Rickett spoke at the Midland church about a need for English teachers in Kurdish northern Iraq, Wharton’s husband said the job sounded like something his wife could do. SIS linked Wharton with a Kurdish Christian school where she spent late 2003 teaching English.

Wharton said that SIS awakened a vision among women in her church and community. While women in her group aren’t wealthy by Western standards, their few dollars pooled together have ministered to thousands in Indonesia. “It’s the small, consistent things that people do that make the difference,” Wharton said.

Following a 16-hour trip to the heart of the nation’s separatist movement, a trip punctuated by 30 military stops in which Wati’s group had to get out of their car for searches, she e-mailed Rickett: “All of that bad and exhausting journey vanished. I realize this ministry can do many things because of Sisters In Service women prayers and help. Please keep on praying for us.”

Equipped with prayer and tools such as women’s centers and training programs, indigenous women like Wati have tremendous success reaching their communities for Christ. They can spread the gospel even in the hardest parts of the world closed to foreign missionaries.

Western Esthers Rickett describes women of the West as Esthers of the faith. “It appeared to me that generally women were under-utilized, uninspired in our churches for global service,” she said. “I longed to create solutions to that…as an example to my own daughters, an inspiration and avenue for other young mothers.

“For no good reason of our own, we’ve been placed in positions of privilege,” she said. Those blessings are for furthering the kingdom at such a time as this.