As a witness to suffering around the world, Chattanoogan Millicent Smith was frustrated that she didn't always have the right tools to help.
Smith, 43, a former nonprofit organization worker and Christian volunteer, had seen first-hand the HIV-AIDs scourge in Africa, the subjugation and degradation of women in Delhi, India, and the tears of refugee immigrants right here in Chattanooga.
"I began praying for a practical way to help those people," Smith said. "I was not a nurse or a doctor. I always felt very challenged."
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Smith said she grew up in an independent fundamentalist church here and attended Bryan College, a Christian school in Dayton, Tenn. Some time ago, she began looking to the Bible for guidance on how she could help relieve the suffering she saw in the world during church mission trips and her work with a nonprofit organization called World Vision.
"I was praying for God to give me new eyes," she said. "I started marking all the (Bible) verses that talk about God's heart for widows and orphans. I was blown away by the number of highlighted passages."
While working with Habitat for Humanity here, she met a couple from South Sudan, Baja Dalla and his wife, Nancy. Baja told her a tearful story about seeing children slain in his homeland.
Perhaps by providence, it became clear to Smith that collecting and retelling the stories of embattled people around the world was just as important as dispensing medical care.
At mid-career, Smith decided to go back to college to pursue a master's degree in international journalism at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. It didn't hurt that she was whip smart, divinely inspired and a gifted public speaker.
All those qualities came together in the spring when Smith won a national pitch competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. First prize was a coveted paid internship at an influential Washington, D.C., think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where Smith is working this summer.
Smith's pitch was for a multilateral effort to help stop a plague of violence against women in Delhi, India. The world took notice of the issue in 2012, when a 23-year-old woman, Jyoti Singh, was gang raped on a bus in South Delhi and ultimately died as a result of her injuries.
At the State Department's "Wonk Tank" finals in Washington, D.C., Smith called for a plan to introduce more training for Delhi police, more prompt reporting and prosecution of rape cases (an estimated 90 percent go unreported), and an education outreach plan to re-educate young boys in Delhi, some of whom have grown up thinking of women as property, Smith said.
"I've traveled a lot in India," Smith said. "I have first-hand experience walking the streets and riding the trains. (Young men) there think it's OK to harass or touch (women)." She is quick to point out that her experiences were mild compared to others.
This summer, Smith is working on women's advocacy policy initiatives at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and reporting on sex trafficking in Tennessee and Georgia for an article in the Times Free Press later this year. Meanwhile, she freelances for CNN and hopes to find full-time employment in international journalism after her internship concludes.
Sometimes empowerment begins at home, and Smith no longer feels powerless to heed the Bible's call to help the helpless.
Telling stories can be potent medicine for a sick world, she has decided. Put another way, Smith has learned she doesn't a stethoscope to listen to the hearts of the hurting.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.