Brandon Twp.- Karleigh Jenko spent a year in the Dominican Republic working to get women off the streets and out of prostitution.
Now back in Lake Orion, the 24-year-old, a member of Seymour Lake United Methodist Church, is raising funds so she can return to the Dominican Republic and resume life as a missionary.
Prostitution is legal in the Dominican Republic and used by women who see no other way of providing for their families said Jenko, who lived in Juan Dolio, a town on the southern part of the Caribbean island nation, from August 2013 until June 2014 as part of a mission led by SCORE International, a Christian organization (www.scoreintl.org). Jenko and other SCORE missionaries were part of Lily House, the women’s ministry, and worked to get prostitutes off the street, offering them shelter, food, and skills training.
‘The two biggest reasons we hear that they are doing what they are doing (prostitution) is they are providing for children or providing for their elderly parents,? said Jenko. ‘It can become a cycle. They might rack up debt providing food, clothing or shelter, then they go work the streets, pay off the debt, go back to living and assume more debt and go back to working the streets for a couple months.?
Jenko relates the story of Anna, a Haitian woman whose sister had left their hometown for work at a restaurant and then wrote to her, telling her she could get her a job there, too. Anna used her money to get a bus ride to where her sister was in the Dominican Republic. Shortly after she arrived, a man at the restaurant asked Anna her price. Confused, she learned from her sister that the restaurant was also a brothel. Anna had no way to get home or back to her family and feeling she had no options, she stayed. When the missionaries found her, Anna was a 20-year-old single mother. Her 4-year-old daughter had asthma and other health issues and Anna had worked as a prostitute for two years to pay for her child’s medical expenses. The missionaries offered to bring her to Lily House. She accepted their offer and brought her child. She is now 22, makes jewelry, works in a pastry shop and is active in the church ministry.
‘Above all else, she is grateful to the Lord for sending people to help her who let her know she has worth and value,? said Jenko. ‘I saw growth in her life, saw her learning the truth about herself? that she has a purpose and God can take her past that was dark and use her life to be a light to others.?
Anna now goes out on the street with missionaries to tell other girls that she was once in the same place they are, and offering to provide them with childcare, medicine, education and work that is honorable.
Many of the women become addicted to drugs or alcohol after living a life of prostitution. Jenko believes they are trying to numb themselves to a life that also results in unplanned pregnancies, diseases and physical abuse.
The path that led Jenko to helping these women began more than a decade ago as she read about the mission trips of others in a Christian magazine. She took her first mission trip to Panama in 2005, during which she and her fellow missionaries spread the gospel by performing a Christian play a few times a day for two weeks. In the years that followed, she went on stateside mission trips with the SLUMC youth group, but too scared to commit to being a full-time missionary after graduating high school, she explored other options in college, first majoring in art at Saginaw Valley State University before transferring to Michigan State University, where she majored in women’s and gender studies. She earned her bachelor’s degree in 2013 and a few months later left for the Dominican Republic, specifically because of SCORE International’s women’s ministry there.
Lily House began almost five years ago to help the women, and the ministry trains women to make jewelry and sew, giving them skills and providing them shelter to keep them out of their former lives as prostitutes. All of the proceeds from sales of the jewelry pay the women’s salaries and the ministry is supported by donations that pay for overhead costs including jewelry materials.
Jenko stayed in Lily House in Juan Dolio, on the southern part of the island, about an hour east of the capital, Santo Domingo. She notes it is important to live side-by-side with the women the mission is helping and she appreciated how welcoming and gracious the people were in a country where poverty is rampant.
‘It’s very different from America, the living standards are lower,? said Jenko. ‘A lot of people don’t even have a cement floor, a lot of places have no running water, a row of five houses might share one latrine. There are a lot of buildings with no electricity or if they do have it, it’s only on for two or three hours per day. There’s a lot of unemployment, some of which is rooted in an older generation that never finished their education.?
Lily House requires women to live in the house for at least their first three months in the program. The goal of the mission is to keep women in the program for three years before they graduate. There are a dozen beds in the house and the number of women in the program varied from six to 13, depending on how many children accompanied the women.
Jenko was trained in jewelry making so she could teach it to the women in the program, and she also assisted with computer skills training, interpretation, and finances for the ministry.
‘I would make sure everyone is eating, that chores get done,? said Jenko. ‘If a woman is upset or needs to talk, I give them encouragement and help with the kids running around. We would sit on the deck outside at night and play Uno, because they love to do that and watch movies in Spanish… If we had a woman who can’t read or write, we work with her to help her learn those skills and we try to do a finance class once a week to teach them how to manage money.?
‘I had to really learn to rely on the Lord and know that I was there for a purpose and reason and that I could be encouragement,? she continued. ‘It goes both ways… You think you’re going to serve others and in the process, you get served as well. There were moments of homesickness and you’re crying and say, ‘I miss my family,? and they know what you mean. They miss their family, too, so these women are different, but also not different.?
Jenko hopes to return soon to the country where she feels she is needed.
‘All people are important to the Lord, there is not one country or nation that is more important,? she said. ‘It’s important for girls and women all over to know they are important and capable of doing great things. In general, I think all countries could do better with placing value on men and women equally… I want men and women to feel they have value and they can accomplish the dreams they have and want to accomplish in life and to be given the opportunity to get the education and training they need to achieve what they want.?
Jenko needs to raise $24,000 before she can return to the Dominican Republic to serve as a full-time missionary for one year. To continue past a year, she would need to get sponsors to recommit or find new sponsors for support.
Anyone wishing to help Karleigh Jenko return to her mission work in the Dominican Republic can send a tax-deductible donation in a check made payable to SCORE, International with Jenko’s name on the memo line to the following address:
SCORE, International Attn: Cheyenne Bane
P.O. Box 9994 Chattanooga, TN 37412
To contact Karleigh directly, email jenkokar@msu.edu. To purchase the jewelry and other products handmade by the women at Lily House, with all proceeds paying the salaries of the women in the program, visit: https://www.etsy.com/shop/LilyHouseBoutique or go to Etsy.com and search for ‘Lily House Boutique? to find the store.