Tuesday, March 27, 2007

A Legacy

Recently, a friend of mine passed away after a 3-year battle with cancer. She had started an outreach program for women with the vision of "empowering women to empower women" - her goal was to equip and encourage women to help troubled women. She had put up her home for rental and moved into a bigger place so that she could have more space to hold events, life skills courses and counselling sessions. With the help of friends, she organised parties to raise awareness as well as had fun clubs like jewellry making, simple cooking classes and movie nights.

When she first started on this journey, we were reluctantly supportive. Most of us are working professionals and felt apprehensive about getting involved with "troubled women". We have no training in counselling nor did we have time on our hands. In her last 6 months, she had planted some seeds in her gentle and unassuming way in the hope of having some of us build on the foundation she laid.

Since her death, one lady has said "yes" to taking up the role of Program Director and a few of us have formed a committee to continue the initiatives that she started as well as raise funds for this cause. A couple more have signed up for counselling courses so that they can be equipped to help those in need and a few trained counsellors may volunteer their services pro bono. What she founded is taking a life of its own. It's made me see the truth in this statement - "the seed must die in order for it to bear fruit".

1 comment:

pilgrimparent said...

Wow, that's a really moving story. Thanks for sharing it.