It’s a God thing, Project Hannah founder Marli Spieker says of the international partnerships for which the ministry received a high-profile award this week.

Marli Spieker, who felt God’s calling to start the TWR women’s ministry while living in Singapore in 1997, accepted the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) Media Award for International Strategic Partnership on Tuesday, Feb. 25. God’s miraculous handiwork is abundantly evident in the global network of relationships that Project Hannah has developed to broadcast its radio program, Women of Hope, and to bring tens of thousands together in an intercessory prayer movement.

“Humanly speaking, it is an honor,” Marli says of the award. “But actually, this thing does not belong to anybody – not Trans World Radio, not Project Hannah, not Marli Spieker, not anybody here. This honor goes to the Lord who made all this.

“No person could have strategized a ministry that has done so much in 16 years. No one could have planned or been able to put these partnerships together. One contact here leads to another contact here and goes to the other side of the globe, and all of a sudden there is a partnership there,” Marli adds.

According to a news release, the partnership award that went to Project Hannah during the NRB’s annual convention in Nashville, Tenn., “is presented to an NRB member that has forged an effective partnership with an indigenous ministry, marked by strategic planning and cooperation with indigenous co-workers, sensitivity to cultural distinctives, and an impactful Christian outreach in the target culture.”

That description pretty well captures how Project Hannah operates. Marli points out that the ministry insists on using wherever possible only native speakers to translate, contextualize and produce the broadcasts and related materials. As such, she says, the honor represented by the award belongs first to God and second to the local women who make this outreach possible.

“They are the ones, those teams around the world, that sacrificially and so compassionately go inside the skin of the people they serve to learn how they can best serve them,” she says. “It is nothing to do with us here. We are just the conveyor that takes this blessing.”

Women of Hope is broadcast in 65 languages, and the monthly calendar used to raise awareness about women’s issues and to focus the efforts of hundreds of prayer groups around the world is printed in 79 languages.

See more photos on Project Hannah Facebook page.

Adapted from an article written for the TWR website.