Matney's Return to India:
Support their vision of engaging families in Tentmaking Opportunities!
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Target #1 - $50K to create the Garden tentmaking campus of honey, essential oil, and silk-making!
Target #2 - $5K per month to Engage 100 families in the first year of the program!
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(More on the mission below)
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Background
Since 2010, Greg and Abhineeta have established Vikas Mission to provide vocational training opportunities - as an outreach initiative of local CICM churches. In these 12 years, over 2,400 village students have graduated from the five vocational training centers in both central and northeast India! Village graduates have been trained on vehicle driving, carpentry, electrical repair, and programs exclusively for women have focused on beautician training, sewing and stitching, and jewelry making.
In addition, Greg and Abhineeta launched the missional company, TheSkippingStone, in 2014 - with the goal of helping provide employment opportunities to women in desperate situations. To date, over 60 women have been trained and made jewelry for TheSkippingStone!
Current Opportunity
In addition to carrying on the focus of outreach to non-Christian villages and vulnerable women, Vikas Mission has a tremendous opportunity to support an exciting need! There are thousands of Bible college students, recent graduates, and church planters that need a tentmaking opportunity to support themselves!
During COVID, the Central India Biblical Academy decentralized, where students formed residency hubs around CICM churches, and took classes over Zoom, as well as in person. This lead to an unprecedented increase in exponential growth from 200 students to over 11,000! Now, there are thousands of Bible college graduates/church planters who will need to identify ways to support themselves - since the mission does not have the resources to engage so many new church leaders!
With this, Vikas Mission is excited to partner with CICM to create cooperative opportunities for hundreds and then thousands of pastors and their families to get engaged in a 'tentmaking opportunity.' Based on our past programs and experiences, we believe the best way to create income-generating opportunities for church planters is to focus on simple, scaleable, products.
