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Roma Community Leaders Are Learning Christian Micro-Enterprise
Marika talks over community development with Laci Daroczi
Marika, the Roma Council Leader in Boldog, Hungary, is a Christian with a vision that her poor and fractured community can be more than it is. She meets twice each week with 7 other Boldog Roma citizens and our Hatvan CHE Team to learn and discuss how to be a Christian businessperson and how to begin her own micro-enterprise. She and the other students hope to become models for their Roma village.
Meetings are filled with throaty laughter, serious discussion, animated debate and sharing. The book of Proverbs is being used to learn the Christian character necessary for successful business. Those who complete the course successfully will have opportunity to access loans and grants next spring to begin their own small businesses.
NAB/CHE Team Leads in the Construction of a Passive Solar Greenhouse for Hungarian Alternative Education High School
The new passive solar greenhouse will stand beside this 9-month one
In the winter in Hungary, Roma poor often lack three things: sufficient food, warmth and jobs. One possible sustainable solution is passive solar greenhouses for Roma communities. In the winter, these greenhouses may be able to provide necessary heat, jobs and food.
On November 14, an NAB Gateway Fuse Team will arrive in Hungary to work with the agriculture students of Grosselkovich High School, an alternative educational institution for poor students at risk, to build an experimental passive solar greenhouse. Our CHE Team in Hatvan has been working closely with the administration of Grossalkovich for several years. This summer they developed this project together with the help of Erwin VanVeldhuizen of Hillside Baptist Church of Dickinson, ND, and Harry Schroeder of Rowandale Baptist Church in Winnipeg, Canada.
The agriculture teachers and students at Grosselkovich will monitor the performance of the passive solar greenhouse against their 9-month greenhouse. If results are positive and affordable, CHE will introduce this technology into Roma community development projects.
Please pray for good weather for construction, safety, and spiritual as well as physical impact. Also, pray for the start of a CHE micro-enterprise course among the students of Grosselkovich High School.
Short Reports of Significant Happenings:
(You can learn more about these stories if you visit our website: justaseck.wordpress.com. Click on “Happenings.”)
Ron at the Transform World Conference in Seoul, South Korea.
Ron and Jeannie led three hours of workshops at the Chinese International “Reach the Roma” Missions Conference in Budapest, September 30 and October 1.
Ron was a presenter at the Transform World Million Village Challenge Conference in Seoul, Korea, October 12 to 16. He addressed the leaders of the Million Village Poverty Challenge on how to set up Community Health Evangelism (CHE) regional Vision Seminars like the Gathering Wave Conference his team organized in Durres, Albania, in April 2015. The Gathering Wave Conference has led to numerous regional organizational meetings and training seminars to start CHE programs.
Marijana Cizmanski, NAB National Missionary, joined Ron and Jeannie to facilitate a CHE Vision Seminar in Lom, Bulgaria, for 25-30 Roma pastors and church leaders there. They also traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria, to plan another Vision Seminar with five Roma church leaders for March 3-5, 2016.
MEK Hungary is now…Hungarian! On Saturday, October 31, Ron officially handed over leadership of the CHE Foundation in Hungary, MEK Hungary, to the MEK Hungary Board. This brought to culmination a three-year process of envisioning, recruiting, training, organizing, forming, leading and modeling. Ron will continue on as a consultant to the Board. The new Chairman is Balazs Dicsofi, Hungarian entrepreneur, pastor and recent graduate of the Hungarian Baptist Seminary’s Master’s program in social work.