One person's idea has made a difference for 15,751 women and 5,500 men in the Dodoma Diocese area. One person came to me with the idea of getting Lutheran World Relief involved in empowering the women of Dodoma. She asked me if this would be possible. I have worked with Lutheran World Relief for some 40 years and did not know if they would help a country by someone's request but I said let's try, and we did.

They were interested, and a LWR representative met with us in Chicago to talk over the possibilities of LWR helping the women of Dodoma by going there and seeing their needs.

They went and saw the many many needs of the women of the Dodoma and came up with a proposal for Empowerment of Marginalized Women in Dodoma. They found that 61% of girls have never attended school and only 0.03% of girls have attended high school. Women are also disadvantaged in so many ways. The rate of teenage pregnancy is high, cases of sexual exploitation of the women is high, economically, women face oppression from society, as they are not allowed to own property, and HIV/aids has also hit women harder than men. The girls are also a source of labor. They are engaged at home as well as in the farms while their male counterparts attend school. The project intends to educate the society on the rights of women and girl children.

Lutheran World Relief plans to:

*Train a total of 660 women in small business management

*Establish a revolving loan fund to be used to start small businesses

*Start skills training in Computer skills, tailoring skills, hotel management, food processing and knitting and embroidery

*Share experience through exchange tours for the best 10 entrepreneurs under the Revolving Loan Fund

*Build the capacity to lobby for the rights of women and girls in five Divisions of Dodoma Diocese

*Build the capacity of the community in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Dodoma Region

*Build the capacity of ELCT -Dodoma to place it at a strategic position in provision of services to the community

This plan is to be implemented over a three-year period.

I received an e-mail from Dodoma that they are happy to tell me the Project will start working this month. They are happy and thankful to God for blessing our vision on this Project to help the women of Dodoma. And it happened because one woman had a vision. Thank you, Kris, from the 15,751 women you will have helped empower. WOW!