A Voice for Women

Joy-Marie Butler says about herself: “I try to encourage women around the world to be fully liberated in Christ and reach their full potential.” Justice, fairness, and compassion are key words that she uses to describe her ethos. “I speak, write, and pray about these matters at every opportunity. I believe in helping [to] free women from the ravages of the DAT poisons: drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.”

Butler is president of Australia’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and second vice president of the world WCTU. Along the way she served the South Pacific Division as Women’s Ministries director for the South Pacific Division and a chaplain at Sydney Adventist Hospital.

Butler is passionate about health and safety issues for women and girls. In Thailand she worked with ADRA Thailand to develop a Keep Girls Safe initiative, which attempted to mitigate that country’s human trafficking.

Butler lives in Papua New Guinea, where she has initiated a fund-raiser she calls TTT (Taps, Toilets, Transformation) for PNG. She says, “Girls’ bathrooms and toilets in many schools in Papua New Guinea are atrocious or nonexistent.” Her Facebook post has this rationale: “To have decent facilities for young women is of paramount importance and will help them to have more respect for themselves and encourage them to be dignified and assertive, and to enjoy a sense of value.”

About her connection to the WCTU she says, “WCTU women campaigned for rights of mothers and children in a time of deep distress for these underprivileged and hurting people. The concerns continue, and I am here in the world today to help make a difference and make it better for a few of the people I encounter.