South Asia Small Business and Educational Sponsorships
What We Provide:
World Compassion Fellowship (WCF) sponsors the launch of small businesses and provides education sponsorships for the poor and persecuted.
- Small business launch costs
- Educational costs
How We Help
The minority religious groups here comprise less than 2% of the population and are mired in deep systemic poverty.
WCF has been involved in humanitarian and development outreach here since 2020 and began providing Small Business and Education Sponsorships in 2022. One of our first projects involved a barber who had 5 young girls living in a small room that had no roof. The father had a barber shop that had shut down due to COVID-19 and couldn’t afford to restart until we were able to restore him with the materials, supplies and a year’s rent to restart his shop. WCF has since helped others such as a Food Cart owner and a Women’s Hairdressing business owner who lost their businesses due to mob violence.
Background
This region has minority communities that are small (2%), heavily persecuted and discriminated against. The society reserves the most menial jobs such as sewer cleaners only for minorities. It is estimated that one million men, women and children are in bonded labor in this region, working at brick kilns and other labor intensive work. These extremely poor families are routinely taken advantage of and can become effectively enslaved for life. The combination of discrimination and lack of opportunities leads to a high poverty rate within the minority communities.
Mob violence and attacks against minorities are also fairly common and the justice system often fails to protect minorities due to systemic bias and intimidation by extremist groups.