Labor Day may have just passed and fall is just beginning, but Barbara Davis is already thinking about Christmas.

That's because she's found a way to help train Sudanese refugee women now living in Egypt to make hand-crafted products that she can sell for them in Maryland.

"It's a way for them to start their own little businesses, to become self-sufficient," said Davis, a member and former mission director of the New Song Bible Fellowship Church on Lanham-Severn Road in Bowie.

Davis founded and runs a nonprofit called the Practical Living Institute, which in June opened an office and a small sewing factory in Alexandria, Egypt, where women who have fled war-torn Sudan can make decorated trash baskets, leather pocketbooks, table cloths and other hand-made products.

"It's a place they can come and work," Davis said. "It's their place, it's a safe place for them."

As part of the PLI's Project Destiny program, Davis recently offered the products for sale at the Washington Bible College in Lanham and is planning another sales event at the college on Nov. 12 and 13.

Available will be decorated pens that say Merry Christmas and Jesus is the Reason for the Season, as well as Christmas place mats and tablecloths, she said.

"There's been so much devastation," said Davis about the Sudan, where many women have been gang raped and forced to leave their homes, some coming to Egypt without their husbands and with children to take care of.

In Egypt, the only work some can get is a job as a domestic servant, and those that are able to work then don't have enough money to pay for medicines, Davis said.

About a year ago, Davis resigned from her contract job as a systems engineer at NASA in Greenbelt to develop Project Destiny to help not only the women from the Sudan but marginalized women in Egypt as well.

"Some people asked me, why leave a good paying job? Why not just give money?" Davis said. "But that's not what God called me to do."

Following her passion, Davis traveled to Alexandria, in September 2009 and for three months worked with more than 20 Sudanese women, offering spiritual counseling and teaching them about the Bible.

Then in January, she brought over teams of American volunteers who helped train the group of women, with the help of translators, in computers, cosmetology and jewelry making, as well as helping them learn English.

"It's the first time they're feeling a sense of purpose and hope," Davis said about the first group to graduate from the program, which has now accepted additional women for the year ahead.

Davis' sister, Gladys Fountain, who lives in Bowie, went on one of the trips, teaching the Sudanese women to add the finishing touches to decorated trash baskets, making the products more marketable in the U.S.

"It teaches them some good business practices, it's quality control really," said Davis, who plans to fly back to Egypt on Sept. 27 and stay for six weeks as she continues to develop the program.

"She's very organized and professional, and at the same time, she's very compassionate," said Bucas Sterling, pastor at Upper Marlboro's Kettering Baptist Church, which contributed money to the project last year and plans to do so again this year.

"We think it's a viable, worthwhile investment in lives where there is such a great need, [a need] to become self-sufficient," Sterling said.

"Sister Davis has a passion for this, and she's good at what she does, investing in people's lives," he said.

Photos of some of the Sudanese women are posted on the Project Destiny webpage at http://practical

livinginstitute.org.

vterhune@gazette.net