Young Women on the Move: Living up to the YWCA legacy

Young women share their hope for the movement in the twenty-first century

Despite the talk on the streets, there are many young women proud to be Christian. We asked two inspirational young YWCA women leaders how faith guides them in their everyday life and whether they think Christianity is holding back the YWCA movement .

Valeria Mejia

World YWCA Board member and YWCA of Honduras member

I am from Tegucigalpa, the capital state of Honduras. The CIA world fact-book lists Honduras as the second poorest country in Central America with an extraordinarily unequal distribution of income and high unemployment (50.7percent of the population live under the poverty line).

Growing up in this environment marked me in a significant way, my faith did not allow me to overlook and disregard the suffering of many people in Honduras. My faith in God and Jesus Christ, my belief in the Bible, where the essence of God’s teachings are the basic yet complex concept of loving one another inspire me.

In Honduras, we have learned to be thankful for every meal, opportunity and little luxury; my gratitude is to the Lord. God’s abundant grace is one of the main reasons I joined the YWCA, combined with the desire to help those in difficulty. Maybe this sounds naïve and it certainly has not happened the way I envisaged but it’s not easy trying to save the world.

There has been a lot of debate in our national movement regarding the importance and credibility the Christian heritage of the YWCA. We have heard how donors back away from us for that reason, yet we know many others help us precisely because we are a Christian organisation. I believe the women who founded the YWCA movement left us with a legacy of empowerment and dignity. They fought fiercely for what they believed in and they created a name for our movement that has been respected and valued. I believe that we, the younger generation, should live up to that legacy and continue to bravely face the world with our big ‘C for Christian’ in the middle of our name. Some people will embrace us and others will reject us, but in the end what is important is that we continue working towards a world with justice, peace, love for our neighbours, forgiveness, kindness, freedom, inclusiveness and respect…after all these are the Christian values we embrace.

Gertrude Eugenia Davidson

Member of the YWCA of Ghana and AYNET (African YWCAs Network) board

As a young woman, my faith has been tried and tested and has stood the test of time. About four years ago, my mother became very ill and we tried everything medically possible to no avail. At that moment in my life, I remembered the verse in the Holy Bible that says whatever you ask in faith be sure to receive it. I based a prayer on this and she was healed.

There have been times where circumstances in my life prompted me to ask myself if the faith I profess is worth it. There have also been times I considered quitting but this faith would never allow me. Faith, like love, is deeply rooted wherever it takes a stand. It does the unimaginable. I don’t know about the kind of faith others profess but my faith orders my steps so it always makes me aware that my conscience has a conscience. It is the faith built on an unshakable rock that is Jesus Christ.

I think that being a Christian organisation has made the YWCA a force to reckon with in this era. Christianity has never held anyone back and from the inception of the YWCA one can proclaim the founding mothers couldn’t have settled for a better religion. This is evident that so many years down the line the Christ factor is what has kept the YWCA running. The truth is that because of the common faith we profess as Christians we have been able to stay together through tough times.

As a young woman, I can say that if it were not for the YWCA, many young women would not have really understood what practicing Christianity means. The YWCA has opened my eyes to the testimony of other women whose faith in Christ has brought them far in life. As a young woman, I couldn’t have asked for a better faith or a better organisation.