COLUMBUS — At the first Christian Women’s Job Corps graduation, associational missionary Jimmy Blanton openly admitted he “cried like a baby.”

“Seeing women finding significance, overcoming so much, and achieving a diploma – for some the first diploma ever – it just blessed my heart,” said Blanton, of Columbus Baptist Association.

It blessed more than just him.

LaCynthia Tyus admits she “was on a road and I didn’t know what direction I was going. I needed to try something different.”

Tyus had been laid off her job at Fort Benning during recent cutbacks. She didn’t know what to do next. Then a friend told her about Christian Women’s Job Corps of Greater Columbus.

“Here I’ve learned to take it one day at a time,” she said. “The teachers really care about how you learn. They want me to do better.”

With encouragement from teachers and mentors at CWJC, Tyus has also started to dream.

“We found out that LaCynthia is a very talented baker,” said CWJC director Gwen Foster. “We can testify that she can bake.”

Tyus has treated her teachers and classmates to some of her specialties, including cream cheese pound cake and red velvet cake piled with cream cheese frosting. Her classmates’ encouragement has spurred her on to dream again.? “I would love to open my own bakery,” she admitted. “I’m working toward that now.”

CWJC of Greater Columbus began four years ago when Gwen Foster decided she wanted to reach outside the church walls to help women. While Foster was women’s ministry director at Pinehurst Baptist Church in Columbus, she asked a group to pray with her to find ways to reach more women. It wasn’t long before she heard about CWJC. A national certification training event was coming up, so Foster and three others decided to attend.

“We learned about different models and what it would take to start one,” Foster said. “Each chapter has to create their own model.”

She returned home and immediately went to work to start a CWJC in her church. Two years ago, she expanded the ministry and moved the classes to Mission Columbus, the association’s ministry center.

Foster isn’t unsympathetic to what many of the women are experiencing when they first come to CWJC. She’s raised four children much of the time by herself. While working – currently she’s a financial analyst for Pratt and Whitney – and raising children, she’s also attended school, receiving a bachelors degree in general studies, then a master’s degree in community counseling, then an MBA. Now she’s finishing up a professional degree in nonprofit management.

“I love to learn,” she admitted.

She also loves to teach. Foster has recruited and help train more than 70 volunteers who work in various jobs throughout CWJC, including childcare, running a professional women’s clothing closet, mentoring women, teaching, clerical work, and providing lunches for Saturday classes.

One volunteer, Jane Claybrook, a member at Morningside Baptist in Columbus, clearly sees the difference that CWJC can make in women. Claybrook retired after working 23 years for the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services.

“Working at DFCS, I saw women who had to go through job search programs, but they didn’t stick with it,” Claybrook said. “CWJC is different. There is Bible study; there is one-on-one mentoring. With this, you can change their hearts.”

That’s exactly what Gwen Foster prayed for four years ago when she set out on the CWJC journey.

“I know how it feels to be on the outside looking in and I know how good it feels when Christ shows you that you, too, are ‘accepted in the Beloved,’” she said. “I want everyone to know that joy of being Him.”

 

{ Christian Women’s Job Corps } . . .
. . . exists to provide a Christian context in which women in need are equipped for life and employment and a missions context in which women help women. CWJC includes Bible study, mentor relationships, job skills training, and health and nutrition tips.	There are five CWJC sites in Georgia: Hopeville CWJC in Decatur; South Metro CWJC in Fayetteville; LifeSong Ministries in Griffin; and CWJC of Greater Columbus. For information about CWJC, contact Beth Ann Williams at bawilliams@gabaptist.org or (770) 936-5327 or (800) RING GBC. Williams is part of Georgia WMU, an organization that is partially funded through your gifts to the Cooperative Program.
You and your church may send your Cooperative Program gifts to: Dr. J. Robert White, Executive Director, GBC 6405 Sugarloaf Parkway, Duluth, GA 30097