CHIME for CHANGE! Women's Rights Campaigns

CHIME FOR CHANGE IS A COMMUNITY OF PEOPLE WORKING TO PROMOTE EDUCATION, HEALTH AND JUSTICE FOR EVERY GIRL, EVERY WOMAN, EVERYWHERE. CHIME FOR CHANGE, FOUNDED BY GUCCI, IS A NEW GLOBAL CAMPAIGN TO RAISE FUNDS AND AWARENESS FOR GIRLS' AND WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT.

CHIME FOR CHANGE serves to convene, unite and strengthen the voices speaking out for girls and women around the world. We focus on three key areas: Education, Health and Justice. CHIME FOR CHANGE is powered by Catapult, the first crowd-funding site where people can make real change happen for girls and women. Through Catapult, nonprofit organizations post their projects and people can find and fund the issues that speak to them the most. 

CHIME FOR CHANGE, backed by a whole host of celebrities, is seeking to change the world by starting with basic rights for girls and women around the world. Please visit the site to watch videos about the many causes supported by CHIME FOR CHANGE to learn more about the amazing projects that they are involved with and the causes that they are fighting for.

To keep in the loop, sign up for updates. 

You can also buy tickets for the SOUND OF CHANGE LIVE concert on 1st June 2013 to raise awareness of and money for health, justice and education for women and girls.

Please help this cause to promote and continue with the fight for equality and freedom for women and girls!

Blessings!

Ronell x

Love: Truth, Mercy and Justice

I read this post from HTB / Nicky Gumble’s Bible In One Year program and thought I would share:

Love: Truth, Mercy and Justice

When Nelson Mandela left prison after twenty-seven years and became South Africa’s first democratically elected president, he called upon his old friend, Desmond Tutu, to chair The Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  This commission was a series of hearings – some of them public – in which both victims and perpetrators gave testimony about their experiences and actions during apartheid.

At one of the hearings, a policeman, called van de Broek, told of how he and his fellow officers shot an eighteen-year-old youth, then burnt the body.  Eight years later they went back, took the father and forced his wife to watch as he was incinerated.  She was in court to hear this confession and was asked by the judge what she wanted.  She said she wanted van de Broek to go to the place where they had buried her husband’s body and gather up the dust so that she could give him a decent burial.  Van de Broek agreed. 

She then added a further request.  ‘Mr van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give.  Twice a month I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so that I can be a mother to him.  And I would like Mr van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him too.  I would like to embrace him so he can know that my forgiveness is real.’

Spontaneously, some in the courtroom began singing ‘Amazing Grace’ as the elderly woman made her way to the witness stand.  But van de Broek did not hear the hymn, he had fainted, overwhelmed.

In this story truth, love and mercy flow together.  Facing up to the truth of what had happened was the foundation for love and mercy.  The same is true with God’s love – he does not ignore our sin, he chooses to forgive us.  In the story the woman was able to forgive Van de Broek because she chose to forgo her right to justice.  God’s love and mercy is even more extraordinary, because at the cross there is justice as well as mercy.  ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:16) and ‘God is merciful’ (Daniel 9:9), but he is also the God of truth and the God of justice.

1.  Love and truth

Psalm 40:9-17…

2.  Love and mercy

Luke 9:28-56…

3.  Love and justice

Numbers 35:1-36:13…

To read the rest of this incredibly challenging post, go to http://acs.alpha.org/bioy/commentary/465

Blessings!

Ronell x

Please Sign this Petition

I read the following story online yesterday about a British woman who married a Japanese man while she was working in Japan. Now the British government has deported him. She is now heavily pregnant and facing the prospect of having to give birth to their first child alone due to a new loophole in British legislation.

Please help Marianne and Kei to be reunited by signing this petition: http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/theresa-may-don-t-force-me-to-give-birth-without-my-husband?source=facebook-share-button&time=1365167536

Blessings!

Ronell x

International Justice Mission: Seek Justice

Tonight we had a guest speaker for Life Skills (re:think) at re:generation church. Maggie is originally from Atlanta, Georgia and is currently working with an organisation called International Justice Mission at their UK partner office.

International Justice Mission is a human rights agency that brings rescue to victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals work with local officials to secure immediate victim rescue and aftercare, to prosecute perpetrators and to ensure that public justice systems - police, courts and laws - effectively protect the poor. 

IJM's justice professionals work in their communities in 16 field offices in Asia, Africa and Latin America to secure tangible and sustainable protection of national laws through local court systems.

IJM investigators, lawyers and social workers intervene in individual cases of abuse in partnership with state and local authorities to ensure proper support for the victim and appropriate action against the perpetrator. Such collaboration is essential to obtain convictions against individual perpetrators and to bring meaning to local laws that are meaningless if not enforced. Find out more about the work of IJM.

In the tradition of heroic Christian leaders like abolitionist William Wilberforce and transformational leaders like Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, Jr., IJM's staff stand against violent oppression in response to the Bible's call to justice (Isaiah 1:17): Seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.

IJM seeks to restore to victims of oppression the things that God intends for them: their lives, their liberty, their dignity, the fruits of their labor. By defending and protecting individual human rights, IJM seeks to engender hope and transformation for those it serves and restore a witness of courage in places of oppressive violence. IJM helps victims of oppression regardless of their religion, ethnicity, or gender.

There are currently more than 27 million slaves in the world (including the UK) and 40-50% of that number is represented by children under the age of 18!! Worldwide trafficking is worth and estimated $32billion (roughly £20 billion)! IJM is an organisation which is not only working on the ground, but is also fighting to change legislation to prevent injustice.

You can donate financially  (UK / US) to the work of IJM, or you can get involved (UK / US) in other ways (e.g. volunteering).

Blessings!

Ronell x

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” {Micah 6v8}