Claudine was 20 years old when I met her.  She was a young mother as she was alone in the world and accepted the “help” of a man who promised to help her. He paid her money for sex and then disappeared when she got pregnant.   She used to go without food as it was so risky to work alone in the fields as that is how she met the baby’s dad – she was embarrassed she had accepted his “help”.

She learned about Zoe Empowers through the local village leader and a church. She had no birth certificate for her son, but Zoe Empowers helped her get one so that she could get government services for him.  Her son had malaria when I met her and he had just started treatment due to Zoe’s intervention.  She was in her first year of the empowerment program, but was already buying and selling eggplant, tomatoes, carrots, and ground nuts through the first business trainings she received.  She told us how lonely she had been – and how people shunned her due to her poverty and her pregnancy.  She now has friends and “family’ through her empowerment group.    She can now make enough profit to buy food and clothes and shoes. Her dream is to have a house – and she plans to use her next business grant to open a boutique – she says she has a dream and she will achieve that before I meet her again!

~ Ann Eppinger

St. Luke’s Zoe Empowers Leader