If you haven’t heard already from our tweets, Facebook posts or eye-roll inducing push notifications, the May issue of World Next Door Magazine is live! This month, we’re heading to the streets of New Delhi, India to see what God is doing through Truthseekers International.

If you have a tablet or smartphone, you can download our app using one of the links below.

However, we understand not everyone has the technology to use our app just yet. We beginning the process of posting our magazine content on the website as well, but it’s going to take a little bit of time to work out all the kinks.

In the meantime, I’d love to give you a taste of what the new magazine looks like. Take a look at the screenshots below to see some of our new features!

Writing about the work going on at Shepherd, I think I’ve used the phrase “fresh food” more times in the past week than in my entire life.

I knew that fresh food was more nutritious, and that many families in the near-east side of Indy had very little access to it leading to a host of problems. Heart disease is one of the biggest killers in this neighborhood.

I knew Shepherd was making incredible strides to get fresh food out to the children, parents and struggling individuals throughout the community.

But there was one thing I had forgotten about fresh food: it only stays fresh for so long. Within days, it can be spoiled.

That means Shepherd is on the clock for every fresh donation. Working tirelessly behind the scenes is an incredible network of staff, volunteers, trucks, storerooms, cooks and organizers that move hundreds of pounds of fresh produce each week.

This intricate flow can change week to week and season to season, but I got to follow along for one week and see the entire process play out. So follow along and see just where the food goes…

Walking briskly though polished hallways on my tour of MTU, all I could think was

“Wow, is there anything they don’t do?”

It seemed behind every door was a new class, a new approach, a new way of serving the physically and mentally disabled in Zhytomyr, Ukraine.

The scale of the work I witnessed was simply awesome – mixing skills and passions from many different fields to heal children. And this is going on every day.

I wanted to share a bit of what I was experiencing, so here’s a glimpse at an “average” day at Mission to Ukraine!

It was my first visit to Romaniv Disabled Boys Orphanage in over two years, and I was dumbfounded. Flabbergasted. Astounded. My jaw was on the floor.

Was this the same Romaniv I visited in 2009?  Was this the same Romaniv I visited in 2010?

Here’s why it was so shocking:  It looked pretty much the same. It smelled pretty much the same. Most of the boys looked familiar.  But the way they were acting?  We could have been a million miles away…

You see, the boys at Romaniv have improved in ways I didn’t even know were possible.  I had assumed that they would reach a certain point in their development and then stop.

But man… I was dead wrong!

Take a look at these photos from my visit to see what I mean…

“What if there were a Holocaust museum during the Holocaust?”

This is a question I’ve heard several times in my interactions with our partner, Loving South Africa.  They wonder, “What if people were made aware of the horrors going on in Europe not after they happened, but while they were still going on?”

Obviously, people would have acted.  People would not have stood for such injustice in their world.  And maybe, just maybe, history would have been different.

Well, Loving Accurately Ministries (the parent ministry of which LSA is a part), has decided to answer that question.  Not with the Holocaust, which has come to an end, but with the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which still rages across the world.

That is why LAM has been working hard to create the HIV Positive Experience, an interactive space that takes people to the AIDS epicenter of the world without ever leaving Indianapolis.

Essentially, it’s a South African village.  Built inside a church.  And it is amazing.

They haven’t launched the program publicly yet, but I was given permission to share with you guys a sneak peek at some of what you can expect once the HIV Positive Experience goes live…

Take a look!

[Jocelyn is an intern with the Center for Global Impact—World Next Door’s partner organization in Cambodia.
In addition to writing and taking pictures for CGI’s blogs, newsletters and promotional materials,
Jocelyn is a freelance photojournalist for WND.]

The Center for Global Impact’s (CGI) mission is to “engage and empower the poor”.

Although I’m constantly reminded of this whenever I submit a piece of writing to the organization, in my mind I’m often still guilty of thinking it solely fights the social injustice of human trafficking.

I knew all the facts about byTavi—CGI’s longest and most successful vocational training initiative. How it employs women ranging from young adult singles to widowed grandmothers. How the women receive a salary each week and are paid per product. How they also get all sorts of unheard of benefits in the Southeast Asian textile industry including maternity leave and holiday bonuses.

It all sounded great, and the women are certainly appreciative. But I just hadn’t put it together how this project fit with CGI Daughters or the Culinary Training Center—until a tearful recognition one afternoon as I was completing interviews for the “Meet Your Seamstress” profiles featured on the byTavi website.

My translator noticed the tears, and as I looked up from my notebook where I was scribbling, “I can now help my daughter…” I realized I was talking to one of the CGI Daughter’s mothers.

Suddenly everything CGI does made sense.

I realized this woman lives in a community where her neighbors regularly sell their young female relatives just to make enough money to survive. While her daughter is directly ending the cycles of poverty and trafficking, she is too by choosing a better future for both of them—one in which they can provide for themselves with dignity and confidence.

The woman shared how happy she was to find work at her age and how now she has the money she needs to not only take care of her family, but also her home.

Participating in byTavi has radically transformed the life of this woman and her daughter. Not only have they been engaged, but they also have been empowered—just like CGI promised.

The mothers and daughters of byTavi and CGI Daughters aren’t the only ones being impacted though. Mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts and girlfriends in the U.S., and even in other countries abroad, are also getting involved in CGI’s mission simply by being fashionable.

Join the countless women and girls who have already fallen in love with byTavi’s stylishly practical products and see for yourself how each byTavi handbag is made and how purses really can help assemble proud and sustainable lives in Cambodia!

[Jocelyn is an intern with the Center for Global Impact—World Next Door’s partner organization in Cambodia.
In addition to writing and taking pictures for CGI’s blogs, newsletters and promotional materials,
Jocelyn is a freelance photojournalist for WND.]

*This article contains mature content and photography concerning the Cambodian Genocide.

Her parents survived.

I couldn’t get this thought out of my mind during the several kilometer tuk-tuk ride from the Choeung Ek killing field to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

What was I thinking inviting her to come with me?

Luckily, my friend and coworker, Sreyleak, was gracious enough to accompany me anyway.

“Thank you for inviting me,” she said as I anxiously wondered at the trauma I was potentially inflicting. “My parents never speak of the genocide.”

We spent the next hour slowly touring the various buildings on the grounds of Tuol Sleng—a former security prison. With every blood-stained tile, locked wooden cell and rusted torture device, I glanced regretfully at her unchanging face.

“It’s so sad,” she finally said as we passed through the last corridor of victims’ photographs and approached the Buddhist altar. I nodded as she lit the incense in my hands. I closed my eyes and pursed my lips in an effort to keep from weeping.

______________________________

Before moving to Cambodia, I had no idea where the country was on a map, let alone an awareness of the tragic genocide that took place here only a decade before I was born. While many years have passed, the effects of a grieving generation are still evident in everyday life.

Families torn apart. Women haunted by sexual violence. Landmine survivors begging in the streets. Most notably, the elimination of education, religion and opportunity continues to keep once wealthy communities in poverty and with a lost generation of traditional wisdom, girls are sold as a source of income. Although the war is over, the fight continues.

The Center for Global Impact (CGI) is one of the organizations on the frontlines working to rectify the generational effects of these remnants of injustice. Through the opportunities provided by its various vocational training initiatives—byTavi, CGI Daughters and the Culinary Training Center—CGI is undoing the systemic results of a genocide which caused an entire loss of national identity.

Against all odds, the cycle of poverty is being broken. Education is being accessed. Families are being changed. And the girls and women involved are being introduced to a Savior who promises to heal and redeem everything.

Journey with me through Cambodia’s past and the healing of its present as this unbelievably resilient nation continues in its hopes for a future of peace, equality and justice.

In South Africa, I have realized there is one thing that links all people together regardless of age, gender or social status.  Soccer.

From the littlest child to the oldest grannie, everyone here plays soccer.  It is a lifestyle.

Light Providers has begun to make a major impact on the youth in the community by funding a local team called the History Makers.  This team is good, very good.

History Makers currently is sitting first place in the league standings.  But while that is impressive, what is even more inspiring are all the obstacles this team has to overcome even before stepping on the field.

Check out the History Makers as they truly are making history!

Lily of the Valley is fairly remote. It’s located in a rural area and if you need to leave, you have to take a car or a bus. So it’s a pretty normal occurrence for some of the children staying at Lily to take trips into town, to a nearby church or to community events.

What I wasn’t expecting was to travel to a slum.

The mission of Lily Children’s Village is not only to house and educate the orphans and at-risk children they care for, but provide a spiritual foundation for the rest of their lives.

One way they do this is by giving their children a chance to serve the surrounding community.

So I traveled with the teenagers from Lily and a half-dozen adult staff and volunteers to Howick slum to run games, provide lunch and witness to the people who lived there.

I was amazed to see how these kids, still suffering from their own forms of brokenness, chose to reach out to those less fortunate.

Be inspired to see how generosity is not limited to the wealthy, and how the simplest of gestures can have incredible impact.

To raise up young emerging leaders who can greatly impact the nation of South Africa and the nations of the world.

That’s a lofty vision. But after living here for more than a month, I can tell you that’s exactly what is happening at World Changers Academy!

Like any great vision, this one is being realized through the faithful work of humble people relying on a mighty God. The staff is made up almost entirely of people who have gone through the program themselves.

They work hard because they believe in the message World Changers is bringing to communities all over this province. Because they’ve experienced transformation themselves, their words carry great weight when they speak among their peers.

And this small staff is just a fraction of a percentage of the lives that have been reached and transformed by World Changers Academy. Other graduates of the program have gone on to become local business and government leaders, founders of nonprofit organizations, teachers, social workers and a hundred other things.

World Changers is constantly churning out new leaders. In an area that has lost a heartbreaking number of bright young lives to AIDS, this is incredibly good news.

I have great hope for the future of Kwazulu-Natal because I have lived among some of the men and women who will lead this province forward. Talk about impacting a nation.

It all starts here in a few modest buildings hidden on a hillside. Take a deeper look at how World Changers is raising up young leaders who are impacting the world!