Set them free!

You might thought that this blog is about how set people free by the power of gospel. Yes it is that but I also will give you a little bit other view to it and I want you to see that there are many kind of boundaries in marginalized peoples life where we have to focus on if we want see their lives been changed and been set free. There is a huge unemployment rate among Roma people at Eastern Europe and it is affecting to their life. After socialism collapsed there is no space for uneducated people in labour market, which most of Roma people unfortunately are. This unemployment is affecting Roma churches directly, because they are facing question about lack of financials in their work. How they can work example diaconal work in their communities, when people can’t raise money enough from offerings to fulfill the basic needs of congregation. Sometimes we as a western missions are making things even worst by creating wrong kind of dependence, if we come with big money and give everything to fulfill these needs what we see and hear from locals. Doing that we are pushing them down and not supporting them to help them selves.  We have to be carefully and think more “business as mission” way to co-operate with our partners. What kind of business opportunities there are and how we can co-operate and help Roma churches to be more self supported instead to be dependent of western money. One example from our mission organization Fida International how we have done it. We have been develop Second hand shop business in different countries with our partners. We have rented European storage house where clothes from Finland are transported. From there our partners can come and take them to their destinations and sell in their second hand shops. We have given advise and technical support, how to start with these second hand shops. Profit of those shops are used in Roma ministry by these local Roma churches who owns these second hand shops. We have seen already great results which comes to financial question but also how Roma peoples self-esteem rises when they are trusted and not pushed down as them have been usually done. I really can recommend to all who are working among the Roma people to develop our own ways to work and co-operate to more towards “business as mission” way.