Oct 4, 2011. Today nearly 100 students from Bethel College participated in the launch of our campaign “Shout Out… So She Can Be Heard!” The objective was not only to inform students about female infanticide, feticide and gender discrimination against the Indian girl child but directly connect each student with an orphan girl from Bethel AFC in Danishpet, India.

The campaign is also being launched on several other college campuses as well as with university students in Nagpur, India.

Dr. Ted Bryant and his wife Angela shared their personal experiences about India and how the students could have impact even from 9,000 miles away. Several Bethel College students also spoke on how their trips to India had a profound impact on their world view and a better understanding of the issues in a developing country.

The event allowed students to;

1. Empower A Child – wrote a personal note, created a friendship Indian bracelet and recorded a video message that will be delivered to the girls living at Bethel AFC.

2. Influence A Friend – students jumped online to learn more about the issues and then connected with other students and friends to share what they had learned.

3. Impact A Nation – each student signed a resolution that will be sent to the US State Department with the goal of 5,000 signatures

During the internet cafe experience, two co-ed students used their skills to send a “Shout Out” with a YouTube message.

It was a good day at Bethel College!

Article first printed in March 2010.

It was two years ago this week that a baby girl was born in a small remote rural village in Tamil Nadu, India. Her mother was a young bride maybe 17 years old. She and her husband was from the Kallar caste. In this small village newborn girls were not given a name until the husband’s family has determined if she would live or die. If the girl baby was not first born there would be little or no chance you would survive.

Just a few days later we arrived in her village in search of answers to why thousands of girl babies were being murdered each year just in Tamil Nadu, India alone each year. Hoping we might be able to find a small clue on how to stop it from happening. The problem seemed just to overwhelming to even begin to try.

Then it happened. There she was. Yet-to-be-named newborn girl baby being closely held by her mother sitting on the front porch of her in-law’s small mud brick house. Our unannounced arrival had quickly become a blend of circus, parade and cricket match. It’s not everyday that a white man from America walks into your village.

This is what we knew. Unnamed baby girl usually dies. At best no one celebrates her birth. If she lives she will be discriminated her entire life.

The only thing we could really do at that moment was leverage our newfound celebrity to name this girl baby and honor her life with a small financial gift. So this is what we did. Suggest 3 names. Allow the “mob” of followers choose the one they liked. Let a white man from America hold her, say a quick prayer in a foreign tongue and celebrate her birth with a small cash gift of about $8 USD.

Not much by western standards. We did not profoundly change her long-term future BUT it gave her a chance to live and it shook the mindset of the people of that village. More importantly, we left that village that night knowing we could do something – so as much as we wanted to have a profound impact on the thoughts of Indians it sparked a change in our mindset.

The last two years we have been forging partnerships with Indian organizations who share our belief that the girl child of India had value. We’ve have tested grass root initiatives and learned the closer we can keep the girl child to her village the more impact we will have on changing the mindset of the culture and the value of the girl child.

Just like Baby Rhema has learned to walk and talk the last two years, The Rhema Project has grown from an infant organization with little understanding on how to have impact to one that is finding its way. Today, as we reflect on Rhema’s 2nd birthday we know we need to have others join us to become the catalyst for a revolution for change.

Most people I talk to don’t really believe they too can do something that has an impact. This is not true. Every small action or financial gift has profound and lasting impact. Taking that first step always seems to be the most difficult so most times we hesitate to even try. My New Year’s wish is that you take it now! Please don’t wait another year.

Over the next few weeks we will be modifying our website so that it becomes a better tool for you to;

1) Share the story with others
2) Give to the work
3) Pray that we will be effective

We know how to rescue one life. We’ve learned how to change the fate of hundreds. We believe with your help we can change the fate of the Indian girl child as well as the mindset of a culture that kills millions of its daughters each year.

Happy New Year!
The Rhema Project

She was a girl who arrived when
everyone else was expecting a boy.
So since she was such a disappointment
to her parents,
to her immediate family,
to her tribe,
nobody thought of recording her birth.
She was so insignificant.
— Buchi Emecheta

Question? Could hydroponic gardening and aquaponic raising of fish be a solution to end female infanticide and feticide in India?

Two of the driving factors that cause families to make the decision to end the lives of their daughters is lack of enough food to feed their family causing a slow but sure starvation and the long-term belief their family will be subjugated to bonded labor when they borrow money for their daughter’s dowry.

In 2010 it has been estimated that it takes approximately $1.25 (USD) per day to purchase food needed to survive. In many villages in southern India a male day laborer will earn about $1.00 (USD) for a day’s work and a women will earn between 50 and 70% of this amount for similar work. So, what does a family of do when they do not earn enough money to feed themselves when a daughter is born?

If they do make the right but difficult decision to not kill their newborn daughter how can they save enough money to pay the bride price of up to 10 times their family’s annual income?

Hydroponics (growing of plants using mineral nutrient in solutions, in water, without the use of soil) has been an option since the early 1970′s and has provided viable solutions for areas where soil quality is limited.

Aquaponics is the simultaneous cultivation of plants and aquatic animals in a symbiotic environment where the animal effluents that accumulate in the water are used and filtered out by the plants as nutrients, after which the water is recirculated back to the animals.

Step in Russell, a successful farmer from Peru, Indiana. His interest is to raise Tilapia fish for a commercial sale.

Raising fish in the basement. Veggies on the main floor and add a greenhouse roof to keep the heat in so you could raise fish year round in Indiana.

Russell is more interested in raising fish for profit. The hydroponic side is primarily to filter, purify and oxidize the water so it will not become toxic and kill his cash crop. He has taken vertical farming to a whole new level.

So, what might happen if we could adapt this blend of hydroponic gardening and aquaponic fish raising to India? A village could not only provide its families with food to meet its own needs but it could become a viable business operation that could employ several village families. And then, hundreds of villages in southern India would be filled with the sounds of girls singing, laughing and living again.

I feel a plan coming together! Thanks Russell!!!

Last month we were given the opportunity to help construct a hostel for pastors attending Life Mission India’s pastor training program. In the last 7 years under the leadership of Rajendran director of Life Mission India nearly 1,000 pastors have been trained on how to start and grow a church throughout southern India. Each quarter pastors return to learn how they can become better equipped on how to not only grow their church but become an agent for change within their village or community.

Over 100 of these pastors come from the Salem and Madurai districts where the highest concentration of female infanticide and gender identification feticide is occurring within the Hindu communities in all of Tamil Nadu, India.

Because of the teachings in the Bible and the Koran both Christians and Muslims do not practice the killing of their girl babies – Hindu teaching is somewhat silent about the life a girl child causing the vast majority of killings to occur within these communities. However, faith is only one of the many factors that leads to the death of between 1.5 and 3.5 million girl babies in India each year.

Consequently, these pastors when educated and equipped can become the agents of change within their neighborhoods, villages and cities – to become missional in their message by teaching their neighbors the value of the girl child, by bringing pre- and post natal care to Hindu women, by equipping their church families to become foster parents to unwanted girl babies, by being the church 24/7 not just on Sunday afternoon for a few hours.

Two years ago we wandered into a small village and celebrated the life of a newborn baby girl with the name Rhema and a small financial gift of less than $8.00 USD. It was the spark the ignited this cause. It is our hope and prayer that through this small financial gift of a borewell, kitchen and hostel will light a fire in hundreds of villages in Tamil Nadu that will directly lead to the rescue of thousands of girl babies and the changing of a cultural attitude toward the girl child.

Early this week we were in the village of Athipatti where The Rhema Project had drilled a bore-well that would provide fresh drinking water to the people of this village. The pastor of Athipatti organized a ribbon cutting celebration that included music, hot chai and biscuits (wafer cookies). After the ceremony ended we began to walk through the village and the mother of these two girls came up to us and begged me to take her daughters with me to America.

She kept telling us that “she had no food, no opportunity, no hope her two daughters would have a life worth living – please, please take them!” My head tells me I can’t even consider her request. Even if it was legal, they have no passport, no birth certificate, no ID. My heart screams “you have two spare bedrooms that you never ever really use – each bigger than their entire house. You have 20 people right now that you could call in America that would also provide them a loving home.” But you can’t.

The discrimination of the India girl child does not end if she is lucky enough not to be aborted in the third trimester (feticide) or killed shortly after birth (infanticide). In many parts of India it will follow her the rest of her life and then she will have daughters and the cycle will continue.

Education, economic opportunity and faith are their only hope of a better tomorrow. For about $30 (USD) per month we can break this cycle in one girl’s life. For about $25,000 the support system can be built to transform an entire village. We have a team already in place in India (Philip, Malar, Prema, Raj and Pastor John). When we launch small micro businesses the cost even goes lower because now they have a source of income.

As we walked to the car to leave my two friends and their mother followed us. They were ready to leave and their mother was ready to say good bye to them forever. Again we had to tell them they could not go but had to stay. What were they thinking? My prayer is that somehow they will know hope is on its way to Athipatti. My hope is that people will hear their story and be moved beyond head knowledge.

Over the last several months time and time again I am asked if the problem with the killing of girl babies is just isolated to rural, poor and illiterate Indian families. I think it might be simply a self-defense mechanism that enables someone to “box the issue” into a belief that “they just don’t know any better.” Unfortunately, poverty and illiteracy are only two of the many factors that leads to the devaluing of the life of an Indian girl.

Last week I was talking to a good friend that is expecting her second child and she shared that you cannot identify the sex of a fetus by ultrasound until at least the 20th week of a pregnancy. Even though it is illegal in India to identify the sex of the fetus via an ultrasound it is a common practice throughout India.

The following article is of one such story.

Fighting to Save Her Daughters’ Lives
August 24, 2010

While researching female foeticide and infanticide in India we discovered an amazing story of one woman’s battle to prevent her twin girls from joining the growing number of statistics of girls killed before birth in India.

Mitu married Dr Kamal Khurana, an orthopedic doctor in Delhi, in November 2004. It was an arranged match and, though engaged for nine months, they had hardly met. When she found she was pregnant in January 2005, her husband was elated. An ultrasound at six weeks indicated she was carrying twins. But soon, her mother-in-law began pressuring her to take a sex-determination test. Her refusal was the beginning of a story one might only expect in movies, but one all too common in India.

In a scheme to get Mitu to a hospital for a sex-determination ultrasound, her in-laws fed her cake with eggs, knowing she was allergic. She became very sick and they had the opportunity they had been looking for. Under the guise of an KUB (kidney, urethra and bladder) ultrasound, the radiologist discovered the twins were girls and a campaign to convince Mitu to terminate the pregnancy began.

What followed was an all out war against Mitu and her unborn twin girls that included isolation, starvation and abuse of all kinds.

Around the fourth month, my husband pushed me down a flight of stairs. I started bleeding and was locked in a room. They hoped I’d abort naturally. I managed to call my father in the morning, who told my husband to bring me to their place or he would get the police to do it. My husband gave in. I was prescribed complete bed rest and had to undergo multiple hospitalisations. My daughters were born on August 11, nearly two months premature.

Her husband and relatives did not visit for nine months, and when they finally did, it was to convince her to give up at least one of the girls for adoption. After a time, Mitu’s husband enticed her back home, only to file for divorce after her mother-in-law pushed one of the girls down a flight of stairs in her stroller.

With the support of her parents and others like Bijayalaxmi Nanda of the Campaign Against Pre-Birth Elimination of Females (CAPF), and organizations like the Centre for Social Research, Dr. Mitu Khurana became the first woman to file formal charges against her husband under the Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act of 1994.

I get threats saying I’ll be killed or my daughters kidnapped. I had to quit my job because of the pressure. But I will not withdraw the case! I fought to save my girls and I’m the first woman in Delhi to have filed a case under PCPNDT. I’m determined to see justice meted out.

Sonali Khan, communications manager, Breakthrough, Delhi, said, “It’s not going to be easy for Mitu. She is taking on a big hospital, apart from her husband and in-laws. Every hospital has a huge sign against sex determination tests, which means we can’t ask for it and they are bound not to tell us. It is a punishable offence.”

The Shadowline team had an opportunity to meet with Mitu and interview her along with other key players in this landmark case. We will continue to follow the case as we hope for justice for Mitu and her daughters, and, through her, all the women and unborn daughters victimized by female foeticide in India.

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Most of us that live in the west have a difficult time comprehending that one in five babies are aborted (usually in the third trimester) in India just because she is a girl. Add the 1.2 to 1.5 million girl babies that are killed (infanticide) in the first seven days of their lives and another 500,000 girls that do not survive the first three years of their live we have a genocide comparable to the Holocaust during WW2.

We will let others much more capable than us to continue to tell this story. We will spend our time, resources and talents driving a solution to this sad story. The solutions are fairly simple but not necessarily easy.

A good friend suggested that The Rhema Project is about helping the India girl child to Live, Grow and Thrive. That’s pretty close!