is empowering women across many scenes across the other side of the world but before we get started you know what we do on a dr joyce show we take it down with three deep breaths are you ready inhale exhale in hand exhale last one inhale exhale how do you feel i know i feel great i want to welcome professor dr l seem like she to the dr joy show and you are from princeton seminary yes thank you and i'm so glad you're here and i'll just talk to the camera again this magnificent lady ok she is the founder of women cradle of abundance and that organization empowers women from the that are from the democratic republic of congo yeah way over there the you are guided light and what is your middle right and she would need was my grandmother's name my grandmother and grandfather were in congo and my parents were in congo and germany means a torch or it means the sap of a particular tree that is a burning sap so i stand as a tree when you torch fire something hot and fast forward you create women cradle of abundance that is the light for the women in the congo well yes but in fact i am copying them well well a group of women in congo ok and when i heard about it i wanted to get involved so how long ago was that that you heard about it about eight or nine years ago ok and i began working with them in tw just lost her job because she was too strong and too outspoken and the men were not happy about this so she was recreating the work of fi but in her own home is  monique yes ok so tell me until tell me more about her she said absolutely amazing woman mama minnick me saying also from the province although she was born on the different side than i was and how it ends and i didn't get to know  as a child i got to know as a grown up she is remarkably well educated because she had a father who didn't care if girls were not approved in his society people called them fr and really people said you don't have any children because he had eleven daughters and three sons and only sons count right well yeah i guess so but he said no my daughters will grow up to be men what he meant really was not as sexist as it sounds those strong and capable and he sent her to school she was very good student she graduated from one of the finest universities she became a teacher and then a businesswoman because school system you don't earn a whole lot of money and her family was growing so she went into business ok to help support her family and all along she was trying to work with some of the least of the people around her the people who were on the street people orphans who were destitute young girls who had been forced into prostitution because they were starving women who had been abused or battered and effectively she turned that end to a whole job i mean she gave up her commerce her work to support her family to spend her life working with this social project and doing a little bit of business alongside to be able to fit better family  because she was not ever paid this was a job that she did so it was passion it was a passion actually for her philanthropic effort and in congo that doesn't happen very often because most people are too poor even to feed themselves and send their own children to school every mind trying to help other people at the cost of their own livelihood wow she is and she does not hesitate to stand up when she sees injustice and people don't always like that right but she does it she's really a very remarkable woman so how long was the organization functioning before you joined because you've been there for eight or nine years right so how long at what point did monique start this the organization where she started it in one nine hundred ninety nine zero and wow she and five other women organized it the men thought they were starting a women's revolution and were not very happy about it so they persuaded them that they really were doing perfectly respectable things and they were not going to object to what the men were doing but the idea was they had all been working in their church communities which are dominated by men right and doing good work in their church communities but they wanted a sphere in which they could work without answering to the ma so all along monique was working in the church volunteering doing the social work and then alongside she was organizing this nonprofit that did a lot of the same things but did it  under the control of women and then when the some of the church authorities decided that she was being a little bit disrespectful because she stood up to them they decided to remove her remove her from her her duties there so then she became full fledged with the nonprofit right ok where is she married is monique married she is widowed recently she has nine children she and her husband thanks primarily to nominate have put those children through school and through college the last one graduated from college last spring so al nine children like plotting her really amazing amazing work so tell me more about now the work of women in the cradle of abundance like what's what's the premise right we realized that moment and her  boss woman cradle of abundance in congo were really struggling because they didn't have a place to do their teaching do their rescue work there's no such thing as battered women shelters no places for women to go  no places really to rescue orphans so they were doing all of this sort of on a shoestring and i wanted us to be able to support them they get use give away half the shoestring so i decided that we were going to try to find them some more shoestrings so some friends and i got together and organized a nonprofit that we named woman cradle of abundance for the one in congo here and you know here they sit and it's registered with the i r s five zero one c three although we registered it as a fee but i think because we were using their name and we discovered americans were not able to enjoy the french the way we did so well so now we call it woman cradle of abundant ok and we use feed for the one in congo and woman cradle of abundance for the one here same but it's supports the same initiative right ok addressing issues of violence against women female poverty which includes their children widows widows who have lost everything and still have their children to feed and support orphans or others aids is not understood it's very widespread and it is when someone dies of aids people think that maybe they have been cursed and so if it's a man who dies his wife might be accused of sorcery if it's parents who die the children might be accused of sorcery so if there was an inheritance they wouldn't get it the other relatives would take it so when a man dies of aids quite often his wife is thrown out none has nothing left or the same with children so addressing violence is not just physical violence although there's a lot of that into what is also what we might call legal injustice violence as well as the kinds of problems that are faced by anyone who is extremely poor now i know that you just mentioned that the organization started in one thousand nine hundred nine you joined seven eight years later eight or nine years ago has been about twelve hundred twelve hundred yes thousand two hundred give or take a bit because these are destitute women at sometimes sometimes there they have a little bit but most of them part of the problem is that what they need is the ability to see things differently from the way that their very patriarchal society ray has reared them so part of what fee does is consciousness race they don't tell people that they have to change how they look at the world but they offer them alternatives so that then they can make their own choices and there are some people who think well if people doesn't give me money then why should i belong and there are others who realize no what i need from viva is perspectives ways of working with other women so i can tell my story be empowered by it and there will be education for income generating projects like the sewing school ok but part of it is a question of learning to stand up for yourself because in so many confidence in congo there that's a very good question actually they are scattered and various places because they're all throughout the city of can chaucer which is about ten million people but they many of them are widows some of them are u nmarried mothers some of them are girls who have become been come destitute in one way or another some of them have places to live some of them don't some of them are on the street they try to find a place for those but the the goal is that they first have a community which listens and cares and offers counsel and advice and inspiration and encouragement so as many as want to are able to come together once a month for so preaching and a lecture and singing a lot of dancing and praying and all they can do bring their small savings because there's no possibility to own a bank account that's way too expensive but sometimes women can say fifty cents or maybe a dollar a month these are really poor women and they don't have any way to put it away so they've also runs a micro savings project so neat to see them after the monthly gathering each one brings her fifty cents or her dollar or maybe she's managed to save two or three dollars this month and it gets written down in her little blue book and registered  e way so that if she could decides that she's now saved enough she might be able to start a little business or if she has a murder medical emergency happens she will at least have a little nest egg so th the monthly gathering is also where they exchange stories where they where they learn about projects for example if someone says i would really like to start a small business raising chickens but i've never raised chickens before is there anybody else who's raised chickens who can tell me write me the ropes so that i know how to do it so when how did the sewing school come into play is leaving the lovely items you have here and i'm wearing one of them that's a way my yes exciting question one of the things that mama monique was asking the members of fever she said we have a lot of young girls who are just a tude and some of them really end up having to prostitute themselves in order to get food what can we do and the other women said one of the most useful ways that a young girl can or woman can support herself is by sewing congo doesn't have factories for ready made clothes so every village needs a seamstress or tailor so if a young girl can learn to sew and if she has a sewing machine she can actually support her family wow so most of the young girls are the poorest of the poor there are other sewing schools where you can learn sewing but you have to pay for that right and most people at the bottom or they want it so many interviews each potential student to find out what her special needs are what her family condition is what her situation is and if she is really in need and is ready to dedicate yourself to the work of learning to sew she said knitted they only pay a couple of dollars a month and that usually goes into a feeding them lunch right but first they learn to read and write because most of these young girls are illiterate ok they also learn something about their own human rights like for example that they don't have to put up with violence and then they start in on learning how to sew now i know we were waiting you said that you had two stories would you mind sharing one of the stories now i would love to ok or this is a story i'm doing in the first person because we interviewed ok i'm of the students and graduates of the sewing school so you're i am called michael no dina i am the third of six children our father died when we were young we did not go to school except my oldest brother because paid his own way when i was at home one of my sisters told me that there was a nonprofit here where you could study sewing i wanted to do that i came and talked with mama monique and she accepted me when i came i could not read or write but now i have learned to read and write and i am boarding to so there were many things i did not know but now i am in the process of learning and advancing i understand sewing now and i am making clothes for a five year old child i am not married but i have two children a boy of six who is in first grade and a girl of eight who is in third i had lots of problems there were times when i did not have anything to eat for three days and nothing to wear that is how i got acquainted with a policeman policeman are not well paid he gets forty or fifty dollars a month so he does not have enough money to rent a house for his family but he supports his two children every few days he brings me about three thousand or four thousand congo francs which is less than five dollars to buy food for the children sometimes he gives me ten thousand francs which is about eight dollars maybe to buy them clo at the end of the month when he receives his salary he pays the school fees for the children school is not free i like to sew because in the future that will allow me to support myself if i have my work i will not wander here and there or prostitute myself to have a little money i will be able to take charge of my life myself wow so she's empowered she seems see that so i'm speechless at this point after hearing that but i want you to share your thoughts on the relationship between the economic issues spiritual suffering and increased spiritual strength of these ladies right well in part you could probably about twenty twenty two ok she already had two kids right and when i'm a little closer maybe a little older than that i don't remember exactly but many marriage is often arranged by family and the age of twelve or fourteen over the girl ok now she didn't obviously have a father arranging it because she's orphaned or her mother was looking after the kids feeding them as best they could right but it's not unusual for young girls to marry or begin a relationship in their teens because that may be the only way they eat so economic things and spiritual how do you take care of yourself in spirit if you don't have anything to eat and one of the things that is so amazing about phoebe is that they attend to all different dimensions of help forty percent of the protein you need and yet people who never get meat right a marine go addition to their diet can make the difference between malnutrition and actually being helped so you can get it here and you can get either in the patter form yasiel i said yes so part of what they do is help people learn how to feed their families but wow and help them to make the best use of what little money they can earn because many of these women have never had a budget they've never had money before if they get a few dollars a few francs they mediately spend it or what is most urgent it probably is something to feed their children or clothes for their children right or if they manage to feed their children to pay school fees fees that's the order of priority but the thing is suppose that they want to start a business they're not going to have any business sense so that young girls who have learned to sew woman create of abundance in this country trust to be sure that each one when she graduates get gets a manual machine so that she can begin own business but if she doesn't know anything about finances right she may not realize that that machine is going to wear out yet is going to wear out and then you also have to buy the threads and you also have to buy the very fabric and if you don't take care of the machine  one of these day you're going to be out of it best at it that's the feud again so how do you think about the idea of budgeting putting aside some of your very limited funds so that you can repair the machine so that it can go on functioning it's really hard to learn when you are hungry re it so yeah you've touched on physical wellness nutritional financial ok and also the  foundation of it all is the mental emotional wellness because they feel really good about themselves if they can take care of themselves and their families i get it oh my goodness so how can viewers lend their support we would be really really grateful for anyone who would like to go to our website and look at the projects we're doing and maybe someone would like to support one of the young girls at school so that she could complete her year of studying because we're having a hard time paying this to the teachers and buying the materials ok so tell me how much it costs to support one girl for one years of training and all the materials and putting a part aside to pay the teachers it's probably about two hundred fifty but for one year for one year two hundred fifty dollars ok what's the web site the website is woman cradle of abundance dot org wow all right so do you have any events planned in twenty eighteen we are actually we're starting one very soon we are starting a launch of our etsy site if you would like to be able to buy some of their beautiful creation and they're as gorgeous they really are and they're in the manufacture of the stitching is very very well the details are there i mean they're lovely lovely clothes and most of you can drop in the washing machine and take out and hang up and put them back on again right it's also a plus yeah that is so dry cleaning fees right and you also have this we had a housewares yes there is and also the bracelets yes the young women make these things they're trained to make all kinds of material things so they have little clutches and table mats and now ok there are shirts there are dresses  women themselves don't make that but it comes from the area where many can i grew up and so she buys pieces of this and the young women so it into pillows right or they put it on bags so that you can have a decorated bag with real african art on and that's really nice and all of these kinds of things are perfectly easy to use regularly so they go to etsy dot com and they can see these there is ok it will be up by november before we go i know you have one more story a short story and i would like you to in the segment with that story thank you very much this is another story of a graduate of the saudi school and we interviewed both of these interviews were made in twenty fifteen ok my name is boy jeanette i am the wife of a soldier and i live in camp camilla i'm very happy to so when my husband was passing by phoebe he saw the poster which said they were seeking people who wanted to learn to sew their advertising the sewing school he talked with me about it say you like to sew and i like for you to do it you're the mother of three children and we must educate it was my husband who  go and i will interject that that's very unusual yeah this is a really in late blyton family they've also practiced family planning oh three children i enrolled in two thousand and thirteen and now i so very well when someone sees how asks where i learned and i say at mama money also i have bought brought many young girls to the sewing school since the salary of a soldier is not much i thank god that i can now so and contribute to our household i have a sewing machine at my house and i can earn twenty dollars and pay the school fees for my children the oldest is in fifth year secondary the second is in primary six the youngest in primary fo i don't have enough money to open a shop for myself but in spite of that we do not let food for example if someone comes with a broken zipper i can repair it or if the pants are too big i can adjust them that way we can eat i thank the lord for this machine my husband came the day of graduation and saw me and my beautiful dress he was very happy when he saw the machine my graduation present he said having a machine was a dream and now the has come true a machine is something extraordinary in the house i appreciate my woman it very much and i am happy that she invited me here to speak about my life many thanks to monique because she's done so much for me wow well many thanks to mama monique for starting in one thousand nine hundred nine many thanks to you for joining forces with her on the domestic side seven or eight years ago and i appreciate you