Putting Love in Action in India

At Pasumai Ulagam in India, mission outreach supports rural women.

by Audrey Stanton-Smith, with Nile Sprague

In January of 2023, photojournalist Nile Sprague visited Pasumai Ulagam (Green World), in Erode, Tamil Nadu, India, to see how United Women in Faith continues putting love in action through mission outreach. He documents his journey in the video below.

Pasumai Ulagam provides instruction in the art of tailoring and awards microloans to women living in the Erode district. This money helps women start their own businesses, including cooking, food market sales, rope-making, sewing, and home-based clothing shops. Pasumai Ulagam also supports women’s self-help groups.

“Pasumai Ulagam introduced me to members of their women’s self-help groups who had received seed money from the revolving loan program to start businesses or restart them after they had been devastated by pandemic closures,” Sprague noted. “The program is very successful, with very high repayment rates…. I believe the loans were typically around $100, and this was enough to buy a sewing machine or a batch of product for a shop so the business could get going.”

The self-help group is comprised of some 300 members, most of them women in their 40s who are supporting families on their own and facing financial difficulty as the area continues recovering from the economic devastation of COVID-19. Some of them, Sprague reported, are additionally challenged by husbands who discourage their financial independence.

Through an interpreter, the women told Sprague that they find empowerment not only through the loans that help them build their businesses but through Christian teaching, financial awareness campaigns, and one another.

See more photos by Nile Sprague of Pasumai Ulagam in the Jan./Feb. issue of response.

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Audrey
Stanton-Smith is editor of response.
Nile
Sprague is a California-based photojournalist.