Melissa Motley dropped out of high school when she became pregnant
with her first child.
She married and then had two more children, but within a few years her marriage
dissolved.
“I just felt like nobody cared about me,” Motley
says, even though she pulled her life together enough to earn her GED. Then
a friend suggested she visit the Christian Womens Job Corps site in Marshall
County, Ala.
Melissa Motley dropped out of high school when she became pregnant
with her first child.
She married and then had two more children, but within a few years her marriage
dissolved.
“I just felt like nobody cared about me,” Motley
says, even though she pulled her life together enough to earn her GED. Then
a friend suggested she visit the Christian Womens Job Corps site in Marshall
County, Ala.
“I needed some computer skills but didn’t know where to
get them,” Motley explains. “But I got more than just computer skills
at CWJC.
“I realized that I am more than nothing,” she continues.
“God put me here for a reason, and I will be somebody someday by the grace
of God.”
Motley plans to transfer to Jacksonville (Ala.) State University
after her initial studies at Snead State Junior College in Boaz, Ala.. She has
aspirations of becoming a nurse in four years.
Motleys story is all too real for hundreds of other women
throughout the country who have been aided by Christian Women’s Job Corps, a
ministry of Woman’s Missionary Union, SBC, now celebrating its fifth year.
“This is ministry evangelism at its best,” says Debbie
Snyder, church and community ministries director of Shelby Baptist Association
in Birmingham, Ala., where the first CWJC site was launched in 1997.
Exemplifying CWJCs growth in scope, the Shelby County
outreach has expanded to a partnership with the county Department of Human Resources
and Central Alabama Skills Center for GED classes and job training and placement.
“We didn’t reinvent the wheel with our program,”
Snyder adds. “We use the resources around us, and we all work together.”
In the last 10 months, a local auto mechanic school has repaired
19 automobiles that have been donated to the site.
Shelby County Baptist Association in Alabama has committed
to pay insurance for the first six months the women have cars. After then, the
new owner takes over the insurance payments.
CWJC was founded by WMU in 1997 with the purpose of providing
a Christian missions context in which women help women in need become equipped
for life and employment. Participants in a typical CWJC program, in addition
to training in life skills and job readiness, are involved in Bible study and
are matched with a trained Christian woman who will be the womans mentor
as she moves from dependency to self-sufficiency.
About 135 CWJC sites have been established in 36 states, and
coordinators are now in place in more than 40 states, including Alaska and Hawaii.
Each site is responsible for its own funding. The funding can be very minimal
if the site is staffed by volunteers or it can entail a budget for salaries
and facilities.
At LifeWay Christian Resources in Nashville, Tenn., Betty Jaudon
is among several employees serving as CWJC volunteers.
“I was worried that there would be a huge generation gap,”
Jaudon, a copy editor in LifeWays childhood ministry publishing department,
says of the 25-year-old single mother she is mentoring. “But there really
hasnt been. I can actually relate to some of the parenting issues since
I am raising my granddaughter.
“I just pray I can help give her a leg up in the world,”
Jaudon says of the single mother. “I just try to use the resources I have
to assist her. I’m not solving her problems. I am simply encouraging her. She
is so brilliant and tenacious, and she just needs a little guidance sometimes.”
Jeanie Reynolds, senior training specialist in LifeWays
human resources department, says the CWJC participant she has mentored has been
“a joy to work with. She was totally devoted to her family, and she loved
her three children as much as I love my own. She just had a lot of struggles
with little things that seemed routine for me, such as medical issues and transportation.”
Reynolds adds it was enlightening “to see life through
someone elses eyes. The things we take for granted were the very things
that caused daily struggles for the women in the program.”
The mother she mentored had strong values, Reynolds says. “She
had such a strong sense of family” and wouldn’t think of acting irresponsibly
by “pushing her loved ones off on others.”
“I got back so much more than I gave,” Jaudon says.
“Every woman who has a heart for women has something to give. You can find
time, no matter how busy you are. God works out all of the details. This program
made my life so much fuller.”
Lia Scholl, a CWJC coordinator in Birmingham, Ala., told of
one participant, Jennifer Hilburn, whose goal was “to be the kind of person
that her mother would be proud of.”
Scholl remarks: “I have watched this young woman as she
has become the kind of person a mother could be proud of – singing in the
choir at church, being sober and becoming a mother.” (BP)
(For more information about the CWJC program, visit www.wmu.com/ministry/cwjc.)