Bing was in her forties and was finding it a struggle to provide for her ten children on the unstable incomes earned by herself and her husband. They lived in a run-down home and were one of the poorest families in their community. When Bing started sewing bags for Work of Your Hand, she found that the extra income allowed her to start meeting the basic needs of her family. Today, Bing and her family have moved into a nicer home and she is now president of the local housing committee. She is also actively helping others find their way out of poverty by teaching them how to sew. Bing has found hope.
Minako Polischuk (Amb ’09) is working to end extreme poverty and oppression in the developing world. Together with her husband Darren, the couple launched Work of Your Hand in 2009 and are seeing the lives of Bing and dozens of other women in the Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Laos change for the better. “God loves people,” says Minako. “Poor people need to know that their significance is not defined by what they do but by who God is and who they are in Him.”
Working with local churches, pastors and other partners on the ground, Work of Your Hand helps the overseas poor and marginalized gain dignity and self-worth by providing them with work that pays a fair wage and that empowers them to support their own families. The home-based fair trade company the Polischuk’s have established creates sustainable employment by purchasing and importing beautiful products made by impoverished people in the developing world, selling the products to customers in the developed world, telling the stories of the artisans and using the proceeds to purchase more products to sell. The business operates as a 100% volunteer ministry.
Minako stresses that “Although the quality of the product is important and must be good, Work of Your Hand is about giving people hope and providing them an opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty. Giving people work rather than handouts is seen as a sustainable, empowering approach.” Minako shares the following story of how the seed for Work of Your Hand was planted:
I was in Phomn Penh, Cambodia on a short term missions trip in 2008, meeting with a Vietnamese missionary named Kim Bui when she began to share her heart for the Vietnamese children who were trafficked into prostitution. At the time, she was running a school where she discovered the plight of her students as they got older. Her graphic stories of what the children went through as they were rented out to brothels by their own parents filled me with ‘holy indignation’, as Bill Hybels likes to call it. Right then, I felt God tugging on my heart and filling me with resolve to do something to give these stateless, marginalized people a chance. Unfortunately, these people had no skills or opportunities other than picking garbage or selling their children to brothels. My first thought was to open a business or somehow create work in Cambodia, hire the parents of these children, hold business meetings that educated them on the facts of sex trafficking, and encourage them not to send their children to brothels.
The desire to do something with impact would later be confirmed in the final year of Minako’s Master of Arts in Leadership and Ministry program at Ambrose Seminary, where she developed a proposal for Work of Your Hand as part of a class assignment. “I presented our new ministry to the class and had very strong positive feedback. It was a very affirming moment and I felt the call of God’s tug on my heart towards working with ministries in impoverished nations even while in Canada,” says Minako. After graduation, Minako and Darren traveled to the Philippines where they encountered women living in graveyard sites and garbage dumps. After seeing the juice pack bags they were sewing, a decision was made to begin purchasing products to be shipped back to Canada for resale in local markets including schools, festivals, specialty shops, home parties, and women’s church events.
Establishing relationships with the artisans who produce goods for Work of Your Hand is an important part of the ministry, as it becomes the avenue by which the gospel message is shared with the artisan and the artisan’s story of hope is shared with the purchasing consumer. Educating consumers about the story behind the product is central to the mission of Work of Your Hand. “If consumers purchase with awareness, including an understanding of who made the product and their life situation, then poverty can be alleviated one purchase at a time,” explains Minako. “How we purchase makes a difference.”
Minako brings an eternal perspective to what she hopes to see Work of Your Hand achieve. In addition to finding more opportunities to sell the products in first world countries so that more work can be given to the poor and they can hear the name of Jesus, Minako’s desire is “that God will use Work of Your Hand to help people in third world countries enslaved by poverty and corruption recognize that they are made in His image, and that they will find dignity and be restored from their depravity into the persons of worth God created them to be.” Creating jobs for these marginalized people enables them to provide for their children by using the talents and gifts God has given them, and helps to form a vibrant and loving community. In hearing the message of Jesus, they are redeemed.
“Money is not the answer,” says Minako. “Jesus is the answer who gives us hope when we want to give up. I felt (and still feel) honoured and privileged to be part of God’s plan for helping the poor come to know that God values them and loves them.”
