Visitors patiently line up at the Christian Medical College (CMC) Hospital in Vellore, India, preparing to board crowded elevators to care for their loved ones. Thanks to the scholarship support from United Women in Faith and our predecessors, in other areas, dozens of nursing students take notes as they learn to sterilize equipment, practice their injection skills on dummies, educate rural communities on healthy living, and take care of the healing of thousands of patients.
In 2023, through the United Women in Faith partnership with the CMC, over 40 nursing and medical scholarships were given to students who demonstrated the most need, compassion, and merit. Among these scholars,16 medical students, 28 nursing scholars, and four partial scholarships (two senior training and two pediatric fellows) received financial support.
Your support of the World Service Fund apportionment supports program-related general agencies, which are especially important to the common vision, mission, and ministry of The United Methodist Church.
According to the International Council of Nurses, the lack of skilled nurses has reached the level of global health emergency. United Women in Faith, as usual, has stepped in quietly, without fanfare, to care for and empower women and help those who need it most, wherever they may be, partnering with a hospital known for its outstanding research, service, and education.
The CMC in Vellore began as a 40-bed hospital. Founded in 1902 by missionaries, the hospital has historically treated those marginalized by society, including people with leprosy. Ida Scudder, a surgeon, missionary, and the hospital’s founder, began by training 17 young women in nursing, a first-of-its-kind opportunity. In the early 1900s, Scudder began the public health ministry, setting up roadside dispensaries, caring for thousands in rural villages.
Most of the nursing scholarship recipients were exceedingly surprised and grateful for funding from United Women in Faith.
Nursing students practice their medical skills outside of the hospital’s walls. Spilling into the countryside, students visit homes, schools, clinics, and town squares to educate and monitor daily health needs.
Deena Denny, one such United Women in Faith scholar, travels miles from her hospital classroom to treat local folks who have no access to clinics. Denny is a big-hearted nursing student, who dreamed of studying nursing and bringing health and healing to remote regions after her father’s death when she was a teen. At that time, due to her own experience, she realized that there were regions of India without any medical care.
Prospective medical personnel are admitted into this highly competitive program at the Vellore medical college based partially on their passion for service. One such nursing student is Feba Johnson, who, like Denny, lost her father in her teens. She wanted to become a doctor to make her mother, a nurse, proud. However, she felt called to the nursing school as a step toward her beloved medical degree.
A fourth-year scholar, Johnson recalls how receiving the scholarship in her first year has allowed her to grow, discovering a love for work in obstetrics, gynecology, and maternity. She has worked in delivery rooms. “When it is a high-risk pregnancy and we have a successful delivery, it is a good feeling,” Johnson explains.
As for the future, when she completes her studies, Johnson says, “I would like to help those people, those children like me, who were cared for by a single mother, especially those from the low and middle classes.”
Johnson, Benny, and Denny’s studies are emblematic of the kind of scholars supported in 2022 by United Women in Faith, which provided approximately 137 scholarships to students in the U.S. and around the world, totaling close to $400,000.
“Thank you for supporting us,” says Benny.
Your undesignated Mission Giving undergirds scholarship projects such as the one at Vellore CMC, wherein scholars are putting faith, hope, and love into the places where they are needed most.
excerpt from a story by Nile Sprague, California-based photojournalist and Mary Beth Coudal, writer and teacher in New York City.
The World Service Fund provides basic financial support to program-related general agencies, which are especially important to the common vision, mission, and ministry of The United Methodist Church. Through World Service funding, agencies support annual conferences and local congregations in living out God’s mission for the worldwide Church. General agencies also provide essential services and ministries beyond the scope of individual local congregations and annual conferences through services and ministries that are highly focused, flexible, and capable of rapid response.
