Jeff Rutt: Empowering Women with HOPE

From JEFF RUTT

Jeff Rutt recognizes that women have long been marginalized by society. Even in these modern times, Jeff remarks that most women in the countries where they operate are still being deprived of education by parents and prohibited by husbands from working outside of their homes.

Jeff says that it is not a coincidence that around 80% of HOPE’s clients are women. He notes that studies and his own observation have proven women to be a wise investment. Investing and educating women did not only pay off in terms of profit but contributed to the improvement of women’s self-esteem.

As an investment, Jeff Rutt explains that women repay more consistently than their male counterparts and spend their profits on the needs of their families such as nutrition, housing, and education for their children.

HOPE paved the way for women from developed countries to interact with women in developing countries who have been denied the ideas of freedom and respect. Members have been empowered to assert their rights that HOPE has witnessed women banding together to petition for government to improve their employment conditions.

More women are also asserting their rights. During a group meeting in India, a member shared how her husband has been continually beating her despite pleas to stop. Fifteen women in the group confronted her husband about how his violent behavior violated the rights of his wife.

HOPE is committed to continue to empower women worldwide. Learn more about this noble initiative at www.keystonecustomhome.com/hope.

From JEFF RUTT

From JEFF RUTT

Jeff Rutt: HOPE All Ablaze in Asia

Jeff Rutt, a grand slam Builder of the Year from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, felt a calling to alleviate physical and spiritual poverty in developing countries and thus founded HOPE International in 1997.

From JEFF RUTT

Prompted by the depressing situation in post-Soviet Union Ukraine, he came across the concept of microfinance as a poverty alleviation strategy. Together with the Christian vision, HOPE started implementing microenterprise development in Europe, and then spreading to Africa, and then to Asia, the most populous continent in the world.

Despite the prominent economic upturn in Asia, poverty levels have not been subdued in some countries. Obscure families still struggle to access fundamental necessities including jobs, such as in war-stricken Afghanistan. Jeff Rutt and the HOPE team also feel for the 50 million Chinese still living in shortage of wealth and freedom, despite China’s industrial rush in the recent years. The Philippines also has its own statistics of families living below the poverty line, 34 million of them, who direly need solutions that will lead to self-sufficiency.

From JEFF RUTT

It is in the dark of these economic quandaries that HOPE brings its holistic approach to poverty. As a Christian faith-based organization, it develops microfinance services—microloans for Chinese retailers, improving the standard of living of Afghans through microenterprise development, and additional services such as life insurance, health insurance, and housing loans to the Filipinos—while introducing spiritual integration, wherever law abides it, in these Asian countries. The organization believes that physical and spiritual poverty need to be addressed side by side.

From JEFF RUTT

More details about the HOPE impact in Asia can be accessed at www.jeffruttblog.com.