Stella planted a one-acre banana plantation to bring in funds to help her congregation build a church. She also coordinated a Uganda Women's Development Project program for two years in her community and saw a very high graduation rate.
Stella planted a one-acre banana plantation to bring in funds to help her congregation build a church. She also coordinated a Uganda Women’s Development Project program for two years in her community and saw a very high graduation rate. She participated in evangelistic efforts and led out in the Youth and Women’s Ministries departments at her church. In her community, Stella was named Secretary for Gender, Production, and Community Development.
Stella is one recipient of the Adventist Church’s Women’s Ministries Scholarship Fund, which, each year, empowers dozens of women around the world to seek higher education. Stella is pursuing a degree in social work. “I want to work with the community to enhance their development to help them know Christians are good people to live with,” she says.
This year is a special one for Women’s Ministries—they have established a scholarship fund advisory and task force, launched last month, to look at ways of raising awareness of the project and to double the income by the end of this year.
Called “Scholarshipping Our Sisters” (SOS), the project’s primary source of income is received from proceeds of the Women’s Ministries yearly devotional book. But the advisory is currently planning additional methods of raising funds, including calling on individual donors and contacting Adventist churches. The team was encouraged by Milton Murray, philanthropist veteran, who supported the idea of SOS.
“Our dollar goal is to get this fund doubled in the next 12 months,” says Heidi Boggs, a volunteer on the advisory board. “Women that receive these funds are going to be able to do really incredible things in their lives and in their churches.”
Ardis Stenbakken, director of Women’s Ministries for the Adventist world church, is able to meet some of the scholarship recipients on her travels. “The stories that touch me the most are those that come from really poverty-stricken families, where there is just no hope for them. The father may be disabled, the mother has no marketable skills, and the daughter is struggling to get an education.”
She continues, “Each person is important wherever they are. Each one of them has a story. It’s exciting to meet women who have received scholarships.”
Applications for scholarships go to the Women’s Ministries Scholarship Committee. “Members comment that as they read the requests for financial assistance, they were inspired, but also saddened by the obstacles these women face, such as parents of another religion who provide no support, or a widowed mother in poor health who needs support, or a family of four trying to live on $80 a month and pay the mother’s tuition for college, or the parents who eke out a tiny income with a farm but have no transportation to get their crops to market, or the woman for whom just $330 a semester will cover tuition, room and board,” says Carolyn Kujawa, volunteer coordinator of the project.
Every January some US$30,000 in scholarships are awarded to women around the world. Though this may not sound like much, it doesn’t take much in some areas of the world, says Kujawa. She says that US$265, which may seem like a small amount, can pay for an entire semester of tuition in some countries. And it goes for more than just schooling: “When you provide a woman’s tuition, you’re not just supporting her, you’re changing many lives,” she says.
Kujawa adds that, “When we strengthen our sisters around the world, we’re strengthening the church. That’s what it’s all about.”
