The child sat nestled against her young mother's side when the delegation from The Presbyterian Church in Canada walked into her hospital room. No more than four years old, her warm brown eyes followed her visitors closely, not knowing why she was such an attraction. Her mother, whose age was difficult to tell but seemed no more than 21, was dressed in a fuchsia sari; her head covered.
“She is a member of the Banchara tribe; a prostitute,” said Dr. Patience Williams, director of the Ratlam Christian Hospital in India, which is supported by the PCC. “She's HIV-positive, and so is her daughter.”
The visitors, which included Moderator Wilma Welsh, Rev. Ron Wallace of International Ministries and Rev. Sarah Kim of the Women's Missionary Society, murmured among themselves, troubled by this news. Among the Banchara tribe, located in Northern India, prostitution is socially sanctioned and is part of the village's livelihood. It is the site of a PWS&D-supported program called Project Nirmal, where health workers teach tribe members about HIV/AIDS and encourage the use of condoms, distributing them freely.
Dr. Williams then introduced another woman, whose five-year-old son stood beside her, clinging to her thigh. “She became infected through her husband,” the doctor said, after he had visited a prostitute at the Banchara village. “Her son is also positive; luckily, her other child is not.”
The Presbyterian Church in Canada has had a love affair with India since the 1870s, when its first missionaries began to trickle in. The church's presence is stamped across the country's landscape: schools, hospitals, community health centres, missionary homes. These programs, and the dedication of the people who run them, is nothing new.
“In the beginning, there was education and health care. Then there was the gospel,” said Pauline Brown, a missionary in India since 1951, who spent the majority of her time running the community health program in Jobat. “So these centres, in some form or another, have existed for centuries.”
The list of Presbyterian projects in India goes on and on: community health projects in Amkhut and Mendha; an efficient and well-regarded hospital in Hatpipliya and its just-begun village health programs; the Jobat Christian Hospital along with its school of nursing; a large, government-praised hospital in Indore. And, the Ratlam Christian Hospital run by Williams who is raising money from various donors and creating profit-making endeavours to renovate the aging building, begin new programs, and offer a higher standard of care. Christian schools are also supported by Presbyterians and are seeing class sizes grow, new buildings going up, and students going onto university and employment.
Community health programs, which serve remote villages and train village women in basic health care, nutrition, hygiene and midwifery, are an acute example of how education helps halt the hallmarks of poverty, which include sickness, disease, poor hygiene and inadequate nutrition. The women take their knowledge back to their villages, improving the health and well-being of their communities.
“The government has said that India's biggest resource is its people,” said Anitha Mahendiran, director of the Institute for Development Education (IFDE), whose programs in and around Chennai are supported by the PCC. “The only way to prosper is by elevating its human resources.”
Educating and empowering women in particular, whose backs bear the brunt of daily labour both in and out of the home, is one way of breaking India's cycle of poverty. That's why IFDE along with another secular NGO, Roofs for the Roofless, runs programs specifically for women; enabling them to strengthen social ties with one another, gain the self-confidence to speak out for change in their communities, and giving them the ability to secure bank loans and start their own small businesses.
“The social part is important,” said Mahendiran. “They're recognized as members of society. They're no longer second-class citizens.”
As the church continues to offer education to those who may not otherwise receive it, an end to India's ills creeps ever closer. “Education is what is lacking,” said Dr. K.K. Dutta, who runs the Christian hospital in Hatpipliya. “It is our major aim, and we feel, in due course, things can change.”
