How the Belmont Nurses Christian Fellowship
“Got Local”
By Kelsey Maguire
As I stood beside the other members of the Belmont Nurses Christian Fellowship in a room full of thousands of feminine hygiene pads, I couldn’t help but beam with unashamed excitement at the brightly packaged products piled in mounds atop the tables. This was our third year hosting “The Pad Project” on Belmont’s campus, and the anticipation was welling up inside each of us as we gathered to count and send off our donation to Passion Partners.
Passion Partners gives these pads to hundreds of young women each and every month through their support of local ministries on the ground in Africa. These pads are the entry point to impoverished young women who are learning about their health, their worth, and the Gospel.
The story caught my heart from the first moment I heard it. I couldn’t believe that a pad was all it took to open the door for counseling and care to many impoverished girls. These simple packages of pads keeps hundreds of girls in school, gives them a community to belong to, and empowers them to take control of their wellness.
To get involved was simple. All that my group had to do was set up boxes across campus and begin spreading the word. Year after year, these boxes have effortlessly been filled in increasing numbers.
There’s something so sweet about God’s intimate attention to detail. The way He uses the seemingly mundane, like these pads, or the seemingly small, like our little student organization, to do big things for His kingdom never ceases to amaze me.
After weeks of collecting pads all over campus, we stood in the classroom full of donated pads with our hands over our mouths, anxiously awaiting this year’s final count. In our first year we were able to raise over 3,000 pads, and in the second year we were able raise over 5,000 pads. Yet this was only a fraction of what we were able to accomplish this year. As one of our classmates scribbled the final total on the board we shouted with excitement, we had raised 7,800 pads!
This project allows my group to “Get Local” each year and reminds us that we serve a God who makes big things happen through even the smallest and least likely of means. We are grateful for this opportunity and we look forward to what God will do through “The Pad Project” next year!
*Kelsey Maguire is a recent graduate of Belmont University and the former President of the Belmont Nurses Christian Fellowship. She traveled to Africa with Passion Partners in 2013.