In September Dan Feeny highlighted the issues of human trafficking and modern day slavery – you can read more about this in Heart magazine. One country where trafficking happens is India; our partners at the Mumbai Free Methodist Church run projects to educate, protect and rescue children from exploitation. ‘Hope for Girls’ in Mulchera, Maharashtra, is a new venture for the church’s outreach arm  called ‘The Dyanand Foundation’.

The Foundation works with a group of 150 girls living in a village about 300 miles from Mumbai. These girls will receive education and learn new skills without which they will be married as teenagers to older men, or trafficked into Mumbai to work in dreadful circumstances. The Foundation has secured funds from the Clear Blue Global Water project so clean water from new bore holes is now available in the village. The Foundation is also working with Free Methodist Child Care Ministries to gain long-term support for these girls.

Our gifts this Christmas day will provide clothes, school materials, health check-ups, education on trafficking, buffalos for milk and a fishery project. A project coordinator/evangelist will be employed to work in the village for the year. It will also fund weekends away when the girls will attend camps where the good news of Jesus is shared with them and they will learn more about the Christian faith.

The Foundation’s prayer is that the village will soon see a significant number of people becoming Christians as a result of this project. Our aim is to raise £6,300 on Christmas Day to support this project (£37 for each girl) to enable the Foundation to make real progress. Thank you for all your gifts over the past years on our Christmas Gift Day which have made a significant difference in advancing the Kingdom of God in India.

Dave Brown

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