Empowering vulnerable women through bet model

The Beulah Mission Center of Oklahoma – hereafter referred to as BMCOK – proposes the adoption of the Belong, Embrace, and Transform (BET) model geared towards impactful fulfilment of the key rudimentary needs, as theorized in the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, in order ensure that women feel accepted and valued in the society for them to effectively play their roles as primary caregivers, leaders, and career-persons. Based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the organization mobilizes resources to provide targeted help to vulnerable families and women undertaking activities such as counselling, sharing, and caregiving to offset traumatic experiences. In effect, women get a safe space for belonging thus enabling them to fully embrace their identities and get motivated to fully transform their lives. To achieve this, the mission focuses on a number of objectives as listed below.

1. Develop a platform where every woman feels unconditionally accepted in order to inculcate a sense of belonging and self-realization.
2. Create resilient, tolerable, and adaptable communities by offering pastoral counselling and mentorship among vulnerable women.
3. Undertake informal and formal skill-building activities to build capacity for financial sustainability and holistic well-being.
4. Conduct extensive need assessments among women in the community and collaborate with partners to address the identified skill gaps.
5. Raise awareness regarding the challenges facing women to buy in other interested actors into the BET program’s support system.
6. Record and present the experiences of healed women in order to help heal others through testimony.
7. In the long-term, establish a center for skill development, capacity building, and mission activities among vulnerable women and girls

The Founder – Faith Wambugu – gets her inspiration from lived experiences as a hospital chaplain, a seamstress since childhood, and a pastor besides being a certified specialist. She believes in the metaphorical stipulation of the “Faith of a Seamstress” which fundamentally underpins the seamstresses’ efforts to create functional and fashionable garments from scrap. She further bases her work from the biblical insights of Tabitha (Dorcas) who used scrap to make garments for the windows and the less fortunate in the City of Joppa. In the same light, Miriam’s actions as a dancer, a motivator, and a caregiver inspires her journey towards restoration of lives.

In addition to this, BMCOK operative framework is grounded on sound theoretical frameworks including the Abraham’s Maslow’s motivational theory which stipulates the need for humans to belong in the society and occupy their rightful social space. In essence, the architecture and the conceptual formulation of the Maslow’s motivational theory, in part, informs the development of the BET model. In addition to this, BMCOK firmly believes in the potential of transformation leadership theory which is anchored on four dimensions which include idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and individualized consideration all of which have been comprehensively discussed in this concept paper. Our activities, initiatives, programs, and partners have also been discussed