Welcome, Caroline!

When CGI President Chris Alexander handed me a note with Caroline Mosey’s name and phone number, I could hardly wait to contact her. That was two years ago. Caroline had volunteered her writing skills and publishing connections to further CGI’s mission. Since then, Caroline and I have not only become friends, but partners in communicating CGI’s innovative ministry that enables Cambodian families to rise above poverty level through seamstress and culinary training programs.

When my husband Al and I decided to retire this year, Caroline became my logical replacement. While looking forward to my new role of volunteer advocate, I have loved working as CGI’s first Communications Coordinator. One of my many CGI blessings has been working with people who fervently desire to serve Jesus through helping the poor. Those, both here and in Cambodia, have made me a better person. For that, I’m grateful. I’m also thankful for Caroline.

“I first became passionate about the issue of trafficking when I heard Jessica Thorne from Purchased speak at Common Ground Christian Church. I’d just had my first daughter and something clicked when I thought of that issue in terms of her, and the world she would be a part of, and the innocence of young girls.” Caroline realizes God’s desire for her is to help CGI prevent human trafficking.

A busy mother of three (Jude 5; Ada 3; Gwyn 3 months), Caroline works for CGI writing, editing, gathering information/prayer requests, and overseeing publicity. Married eight years this October, Ted and Caroline both vocationally help the impoverished, Ted as Development Coordinator for Habitat for Humanity of Indianapolis and Caroline as CGI’s Communications Coordinator.

Welcome, Caroline!

By Joyce Long

Miraculous Healing: Meet Riyon

Meet Riyon, a participant in CGI’s byTavi program. Her story of healing is nothing short of miraculous, especially to those who saw the conditions she overcame. Whitney Vance and Angie Harris are two witnesses of Riyon’s transformation that tell the story of answered prayers.

Whitney: My heart sank when I walked into the one-room shack that byTavi employee, Riyon, called home. Just a year earlier she was sitting upright in the place that she was now lying, unmoving. I could tell that it was hard for her to take a breath, and her thin shirt followed her concave stomach every time she exhaled. Her eyes stared straight at the ceiling, unblinking. Her mother-in-law sat on the dirt floor next to her head and adjusted Riyon’s head on the pillow that was the only form of comfort in the bare room.

A little more than a year earlier, Riyon had a stroke. Due to her culture, her family encouraged her to seek healing from the equivalent of the community “witch doctor.” Now, a year later, CGI President Chris Alexander and I sat next to Riyon on the dirt floor praying for her and trying to discern if a medical doctor could do anything to help at this point.

Angie: Over the next two weeks not much change had come to Riyon’s condition.  That is when my team arrived to meet her. I am a nurse by training and very accustomed to working in the high tech world of American medicine. But here, in Cambodia without a variety of tests or medications, I felt powerless. I showed her family how to help her perform exercises and deep breathing and suggested some changes to her medications. The best thing we did was lay our hands on her and pray.

In the way that He works miracles, two days later we went back to see Riyon and found her awake, alert and able to get up and walk with some assistance.  I received a video about a month after I got home that showed her walking independently several yards outside her home in the alley. God truly is still in the miracle business.

By Whitney Vance and Angie Harris

Changing the Future

The Culinary Training Center (CTC) in Cambodia creates an opportunity for a very specific and strategic way to push back against poverty and trafficking. When vulnerable girls become equipped with marketable, lifelong skills like the ones taught at the Green Mango Cafe in Cambodia, life changes. The future changes.

CGI is fortunate to have Chef Ryana DeArmond in Cambodia to train students in the skill and art of cooking. And it doesn’t stop at cooking. Students learn about finances, customer service, shopping efficiently, and managing time and resources. These are skills they can take with them into the workforce for years to come, earning a living for themselves and their families without resorting to desperate measures.

And, as Chef Ryana notes in a recent update, the curriculum is working! The girls are learning quickly and the Green Mango Cafe is growing as a result.

“The second class of girls have advanced faster then we expected. On June 3, they began their internship in the restaurant, which enabled us to open for dinner! Over the next 9 months, the students will rotate through 6 stations (Server, Cashier, Drinks, Head Cook, Sous Chef, and Baker). They rotate through the stations to gain a well-rounded education and become more desirable employees for other restaurants in the future.”

We’re thankful for the way God is using the Culinary Training Program to change the futures of these women!

By Caroline Mosey/Ryana DeArmond

Be a Voice

Stephanie and Jessica Maass

After having the privilege to travel to Cambodia with my 14-year-old daughter, Jessie, and meet the wonderful girls that CGI serves, I was honored to take action on their behalf by hosting trunk shows.

By having a trunk show, I am able to love my neighbors in Cambodia and be a voice for them here in the U.S.  These young women are working hard to heal, to be restored, to learn new skills, to understand their value and who they are in Christ.  CGI is loving them, and empowering them through the ByTavi and Imprint Collections.  These ladies are precious, and the items they make are not only products to be sold, but symbols of healing and of change in their lives and culture.

It was incredibly easy to go online and order the ByTavi trunk show products to be shipped for the show.  The instructions and DVD were included with all the items and the free return shipping labels.  I actually chose to do several small sessions with friends, rather than try to coordinate a single night (which is difficult with busy schedules).  I was able to share about my trip, share about the girls and their stories, and provide an opportunity for my friends to be a part of it all.

These women’s stories matter.

People want to make a difference in others’ lives.  CGI has created a unique and easy way for women in the U.S. to directly impact the lives of women in Cambodia.  We have a great privilege and responsibility to be a voice for the women whose freedoms have been taken away.  I am thankful to have a way to raise awareness of the reality of human trafficking and to share their voices with my family and friends to be a part of the healing.

 By Stephanie Maass

Imprint Project

New site of Imprint Project

In 2010, CGIDaughters was launched as a two-year residential program focused on professional seamstress and life skills training for women in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. As CGIDaughters now becomes The Imprint Project, we rejoice over the transition between what was and what will be in the future.

As you can see, we are changing because there is now space for it.

For thirteen members of Common Ground Christian Church, there was room for a trip to

Cambodia in May. This trip was especially significant to Nicole Krajewski as her entire family journeyed with her for the first time since her initial visit to Phnom Penh in 2010. As the team engaged with the women of The Imprint Project through Bible lessons and offsite outings, Nicole focused on expanding the product line of The Imprint Project as well as byTavi’s Imprint Collection. Before leaving for this trip, Nicole asked, “What are the parallels between American culture and Cambodian culture?” With her husband and children by her side, perhaps one of the greatest similarities discovered is the desire to see your family thrive in this world.

With that in mind, The Imprint Project has and will continue to equip women with life-skills capable of meeting their physical needs as well as their spiritual ones through the love of Christ. To transform the life of one woman offers the opportunity to transform the life of her family in which they can all thrive. And to transform the life of her family offers the opportunity to transform the life of her community and beyond.

It all starts with one; one woman, one unique identity and fingerprint. And from that,

change begins to take root in Cambodia as there becomes space for it.

By Bethany Rivera

Ly Phalla & byTavi

Earlier this month, Center for Global Impact’s President, Chris Alexander, was visiting the Green Mango Café & Bakery when the manager of the restaurant, Ly Phalla, received a phone call that her home had burned to the ground and had destroyed two other homes.

Ly Phalla, who was the house mom at the CGI Daughters home and now works at the Green Mango, is a very special woman to CGI. She is deeply entwined and important to many women and girls in our programs. Many hearts went out to her as we mourned for her loss and feared for how she would ever repay her neighbors. (Cambodian law states the cause of the fire must pay for the other victims.)

A generous donor began a matching fund to raise support for Ly Phalla. Several churches gave above their normal donations. But what happened next was something that nobody expected but brought tears to our eyes. The byTavi women, the same women who are working their way out of extreme poverty, gave a collection of $46 dollars. Just as the New Testament widow gave her last two coins to the church (Mark 12:41-44), these women gave out of their hearts, all they could, to help another in need. God is truly working in the hearts of our Cambodian friends.

by Kristen Baynai

Gardening for a Great Cause!

Alicia Cecil at University Park

Kids and dirt! They seem to go together, don’t they? Alicia Cecil’s idea to give children a reason to play in the dirt will benefit CGI’s Culinary Training Center in Cambodia.

During the CGIKids’ event at University Park, Saturday, May 11, Alicia invited Green Mango Café & Bakery cookbook authors Sonja and Alex Overhiser to speak to families gathered in Greenwood. The Overhisers explained how CGI’s Resident Chef Ryana DeArmond teaches food preparation skills that help students find work. Many former students are currently employed at CGI’s Green Mango Café & Bakery.

Alicia challenged the children to grow produce that could be sold to help fund CGI’s culinary program. Families were given buckets with tomato plants. Ten and a half weeks later, Wednesday, July 24, the kids were able to sell tomatoes, cucumbers, banana peppers, and rhubarb at the Greenwood Farmers’ Market.

While playing in the dirt is fun, growing food is even better. Gardening for a Great Cause!

by Joyce Long

Overwhelmed by God’s Work

Whitney Vance with byTavi seamstresses

I will never forget the first time I stepped foot into the byTavi workshop. I followed Chris (CGI’s President) and Nathan (CGI’s Chief Operating Officer) up the narrow stairs to the second floor where the women work. When I rounded the corner and stepped through the threshold, I was immediately speechless and choked up.

For the first time I understood – and it clicked for me. I had been working with CGI for eight months, telling the story of these precious women and marketing their high-quality items, but I didn’t quite get it until I saw them with, what looked like to me, scraps of fabric, being created into works of art. That was in January 2012.

I just returned from my third visit to Cambodia, and this visit to the workshop was no less impactful. The program continues to grow, and the women’s lives are continuing to change. I met our three newest members of the byTavi family during their first day of work. It was a pleasure to see the “veteran” seamstresses training the new ones.

I talked with Tavi and was pleased to hear that her prayer request was for her teenage son, who had an exam later that week. The mere fact that he is in school is a testament to her and her family’s growth over the years. Another woman, who had just joined the team a month ago, asked for prayer about a breathing condition, so we laid hands on her and prayed for her healing. One of the management staff shared that her parents have recently come to know Christ.

byTavi is so much more than a great product. byTavi means lives changed – not only the lives of the women making purses, but their family members. It’s amazing the impact God can make with a simple sewing machine.

by Whitney Vance (CGI’s Marketing & Relationship Coordinator)

 

The Luxury of Making Choices

Photo by Aimee Davis

I caught malaria once. It came during a season when I was a missionary serving overseas among the poor. To this day, I’m not sure how or when I contracted the disease. I simply remember the pain and fatigue which overwhelmed me for weeks until I did one crucial thing.

I bought medicine—a tiny pack of four pills costing the equivalent of eight dollars.

This action seems logical, and indeed, it was. What complicated it was my awareness that the majority of those I was ministering to would have died long before being able to afford the life-saving treatment.

Yet my understanding of this, as well as hundreds of conversations with the poor, made poverty no less easy to define. Initially it was a lack of money, space, and resources, and certainly the poor experience the deprivation of such. However, poverty encompasses much more than physical shortages. Rather, to be poor is to dwell in an existence without options and in circumstances without escape.

Quite frankly, the poor do not have the luxury of making choices.

Photo by Aimee Davis

As a believer, I can’t help but consider the greater significance in having the ability to choose. The Bible’s first book gives witness to Adam and Eve roaming the confines of Eden with opportunities at their fingertips. To name this, to go there, to eat that; this remarkable human propensity to make decisions existing before the fall of humankind signifies divine approval. Perhaps free will is a significant and foundational component of not only what it means to be human, but also what it means to be in perfect communion with God.

So what does this mean for us, and more importantly, for Cambodia? It means ushering individuals and families into communion with God again through restoring choices to the poor. And this restoration is what CGI is passionately pursuing.

Photo by Sonja Overhiser

For the most vulnerable women and girls of Cambodia,it means. . .

– she can choose to send her brother to school tomorrow because of the meal she cooked at the Green Mango Café tonight.
– she can choose to accept a higher paying position because of the fluent English she learned as a cgiDaughter.
– she can choose to buy the medicine that will save her mother’s life because of the purse she sewed for byTavi.

She can choose.

Think about those words. Then join CGI in the fight for the poor and for their freedom to choose.

by Bethany Rivera

byTavi at Village Experience

Well, if you are as old as I am you’ll know the Village People’s one hit song was YMCA, but you might not know Village Experience (6055 N. College Ave. 46220) has a more contemporary message.

Nicole Krajewski & Martha Brammer

Founded in 2008 by sisters, Anne and Kelly Campbell, Village Experience sells fair trade products handmade by impoverished women in Thailand, India, and Kenya. Their heart to help the poor make a living by providing an American market correlates well with CGI’s mission

Thursday, June 27, from 5-7pm, byTavi’s new Imprint Collection, along with Green Mango treats from CGI’s cookbook, were featured in the fair trade boutique’s Give Back Evening. Several CGI supporters attended and enjoyed browsing through the byTavi products.

Yet what made the evening more significant is the partnership of two like-minded organizations collaborating to help at-risk women throughout the world. I’m thinking Jesus likes that cooperative spirit in His followers.

Let’s pray for more opportunities to work together with those nearby and those throughout the nation and world.

by Joyce Long