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The house is small and humble. Heat radiates from the slabs of tin that serve as walls and roof. The bathroom floor slopes ominously—it was constructed as an afterthought, precariously balancing on an eroding hill. We (the Special Education Site Leader, Rebeca, her intern, my semester student, and I) sit around the kitchen table and listen to Maria share her story, her heart, her testimony. Like so many people that we work with every day, she has had a hard life. She has experienced abuse, addiction, illness, extreme poverty and hopelessness. Unlike so many people, however, she is grateful. Maria has found a way to not only survive, but to thrive, and she openly, unabashedly gives all of the credit and glory to God.
We met Maria and her family through her son being a part of our Special Education Site, which provides life skill training as well as extra academic help for students who suffer from mild learning and behavioral disabilities. Rebeca has been working with Maria’s son for over a year.
Despite her amazing resilience and positive attitude, Maria’s life continues to be a struggle. She, her husband and their two children do not live paycheck to paycheck, but rather day to day. Her husband works full time as a janitor, and both he and Maria repair shoes from home whenever they can find clients. But after paying rent, water and electricity, the family of four is often left with hardly any money to meet their basic survival needs. The questions that we, as a Community Development Mission’s Organization, face in this situation are some that we have been challenged with on a daily basis for years. How do we empower this family to use their strengths and gifts to achieve economic stability? How do we walk with them in the process? How do we go deeper? That is where the newly created Social Work Site comes in.
The goal of our Social Work Site is to empower the families that we work with to identify their strengths, access and utilize available resources, and break generational cycles of spiritual and material poverty. In the case of Maria this will most likely include: bi-monthly home visits in which we will create and maintain a goal and action plan, both her and me investigating government programs that provide subsidies for people in the process of starting their own businesses (shoe repair), and also connecting her and her family to our other ministry sites. For example, she could potentially benefit from joining one of our Micro Finance Groups where she would have the opportunity to learn about money management and basic business skills.
The Social Work Site is still, in many ways, a work in progress, but I am excited beyond measure to have this incredible opportunity to be a part of its formation. I would appreciate greatly prayers for wisdom, discernment and direction in the upcoming months.