By Brian Blackwell, Message Staff Writer
MONROE – Christian Women’s Job Corps participants from the Louisiana Baptist Children’s
Home and Family Ministries will have their handmade products on display during the upcoming national Woman’s Missionary Union meeting and also offered for purchase inside the exhibit hall at the 2019 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in Birmingham, Alabama.
Since December, the women artisans have created the products that will be sold at the WMU’s WorldCrafts store. CWJC Director Tonya Hancock said the Children’s Home is honored they have been given the opportunity to share how Christ is changing the lives of many women facing high unemployment and widespread poverty in Monroe.
The state program for the Christian Women’s Job Corps ministry was started in 2010 by the Louisiana Baptist Children’s Home and Family Ministries to provide encouragement, love, spiritual training, life skills, high school equivalency test training and other tools to have a better life, Hancock said.
Tonya Hancock encouraged Christian Women’s Job Corps participants
and guests at the Louisiana Baptist Children’s Home. Hancock is the executive
director of the program at the Children’s Home. LBCH photo
Recently, WorldCrafts, the fair trade division of WMU, invited the Louisiana Baptist women’s ministry to be a partner, leading to the opportunity in Birmingham this summer.
“As a WorldCrafts artisan group, the women are learning to create beautiful crafts along with the promise of providing economically for their families in a safe and loving environment,” Hancock said. “Through its partnership with WorldCrafts, the women see the promises of their Father come to life – they now have a future and a hope as they are able to provide for the basic needs of their families.
One artisan says that this work has given her a sense of self-worth and the knowledge that ‘with God’s help I can do things I never dreamed I could do.’”
Hancock said the women also are making items that will also be available in the WorldCrafts catalog which will be released soon.
To learn more, visit www.worldcrafts.org/artisans/cwjc-of-monroe-la, or worldcrafts.org/cwjcmonroecustomorders; or, email cwjcofmonroe@gmail.com.
