WMU Ministries

• Baptist Nursing Fellowship
• WorldCrafts
• Christian Women’s Job Corps®/Christian Men’s Job Corps®

Project HELP: Poverty

Project HELP is a ministry of WMU. Through Project HELP, WMU selects a social ministry to emphasize for two years. In 2004-2006, WMU will focus on poverty. Poverty is a condition of a person lacking financial resources to provide adequate diet, housing, clothing, health care, or transportation for themselves and their family.

• Purpose:

  To lead the church to local and global actions that will help break the cycle of poverty by meeting needs and sharing Christ.

• Theme:

  Breaking the Cycle

• Poverty is...

  an issue that Christians must deal with. Why? Simple. If we believe every person is a creation of God and a child of His, then every person has worth in His eyes and deserves more from life than the constant pain and suffering of poverty.

  How serious is poverty? According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population survey completed in 2002, the number of Americans living in poverty grew to over 32.9 million people. That means one out of every eight people living in the U.S. lives in poverty. Most of the nation’s poor live in the South and the inner city. Children represent the largest population group living in poverty. Nearly 12 million children were living in poverty in 2002– that’s one out of every six children in America.

  Poverty is an international issue! Poverty is not just a problem in Mississippi and the United States, but it is also an international problem. One out of every four people in the world live in poverty: 1.3 billion. More than one-third of the children in the world live in poverty.

• Scriptural Base:

  “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (James 2:14-17 NIV)

• Mississippi Ranked #2:

  Being ranked #2 may be something to get excited about if we were talking about a sports team, but when Mississippi is second in the nation for poverty we should be greatly concerned. During 2000-2001, the ten states with the highest poverty rates were:

  #1	New Mexico	17.7%
  #2	Mississippi	17.1%
  #3	Arkansas	17.1%
  #4	District of Columbia	16.7%
  #5	Louisiana	16.7%
  #6	West Virginia	15.6%
  #7	Texas	15.2%
  #8	Oklahoma	15.0%
  #9	Alabama	14.6%
  #10	New York	14.0%

  These 2000-2001 national statistics should challenge us to discover the needs in our state and to do something to help those in poverty.

• Resources:

  National WMU’s Project HELP page

Volunteer Connection

Volunteer Connection is a network which identifies needs and resources, both nationally and internationally, and matches them with qualified volunteers who are willing to serve.

Visit the Volunteer Connection home page for more information.

International Initiatives

International Initiatives exists to provide men and women with the opportunity to be a part of international missions. The goal is to move beyond our personal lives and circumstances to impact a new and different area for Christ.

Visit the International Initiatives home page for more information.

Pure Water, Pure Love

Since 1997, WMU has been meeting one of the most basic human needs of missionaries through PWPL. The goal of this ministry is to provide missionaries and the people they serve with clean drinking water, free from disease-causing microorganisms, at no cost to them.