OARF Projects

This is a Tax Deductible OARF project

We had heard their stories for years. The bombing and the loss of homes and farmland. The broken bodies and trauma.

We also had read the church history of these people – SUM Bible College first reaching these lands 100 years ago, the translation of scriptures, the disciples that were made, and the indigenous church that multiplied after the missionaries were asked to leave.

In 2015, whilst their homes were still being bombed, we visited church leaders in the refugee camp. They shared about the ripe harvest field. We were invited to come and continue ‘what our grandparents had started’. Making His name known amongst these people. Bringing His Kingdom. Sharing His love.

In 2016 we moved to live in that refugee camp with our 4-month-old son. For two years we lived there and shared our lives together with these people. They taught us how to live and thrive in that harsh environment. They became our friends. We worked together with the church and community to build and train and disciple.

Now that the bombing has stopped people are slowly moving home to The Mountains. As a family, we have moved with them to work shoulder to shoulder in rebuilding communities that have been bombed, help livelihoods to restart, and to bring His Kingdom near. With so many practical needs to be addressed, we identified the need to start Pioneers OARF project – The Mountains Development Project (MDP).

Briefly, MDP aims to come alongside the Mountain people with three focuses:

1. Healthcare
2. Education
3. Sustainable building and technology

Healthcare

We define health as physical, emotional, social, and spiritual wellbeing. There is a three-tiered healthcare focus:

i. Community

Through training community health advocates with holistic health messages, the MDP aims to equip previously untrained community members to help care for the health of their communities and promote disease prevention. Healthcare messages are spread through networks of mother’s groups and a structure of home visiting using the Community Health Evangelism model.

ii. Clinics and health outreach workers

The MDP aims to provide support, training, and equipment health workers in the outreach clinics around the Mountains.

iii. Tertiary

MDP partners with the major referral hospital in the region to assist in:

• The development and rehabilitation of facilities and equipment
• Staff training and mentorship including the initiation of a paramedical school for nurses, midwives, and clinical officers.

Education

The MDP will be partnering with local teachers and the ministry of education to help provide quality teacher training.

Sustainable building and technology

MDP aims to provide practical assistance and skills training, as the Mountain people seek to rebuild their homes and villages.

Our prayer is that His Kingdom come and His Will be done through this project.

Anyone interested in hearing more or supporting this project please email [email protected].

This is a Tax Deductible OARF project

Teachers are influential. They can reinforce the status quo or be a catalyst for change that can extend far beyond the school gate.

Among Indonesia’s 267 million people, countless towns and villages have endured generational poverty. But there seem to be positives. Twelve years of schooling is now compulsory; attendance has steadily increased; and Indonesians are leap-frogging into the 21st century with smartphones, basic government health cover and automatic motor scooters now widely available.

On the surface, this developing nation appears to be making great progress. But look beneath the surface in many of the disadvantaged schools and a different scene is observed. School classrooms have not changed, with many teachers still instructing with decades-old rote-learning and preferring ‘answers not processes’; an assumption that the teacher is the fount of all knowledge. These approaches are largely out of step with project-based learning, teamwork and critical thinking now appreciated in the workforce and more generally in society.

Teachers in these needy areas throughout the country are ideally placed to become leaders and developers in the life of their schools and local communities if empowered to facilitate fresh hope through education.

Through Better Learning Brighter Lives, we train and mentor local teachers in disadvantaged schools. We teach strategies such as reducing conflict, scaffolding learning and training up teachers to empower students to become lateral thinkers and problem-solvers. These concepts can sometimes feel threatening for teachers who have invested in an identity of ‘respect me no matter what’ and in a system where students are judged on results rather than process and effort. But teacher transformation with Better Learning Brighter Lives is a game-changer that restores respect to students as creative learners, and teachers as empowered facilitators.

Through seminars, workshops, and ongoing mentoring, both in-person and online, we aim to transform the teachers from instructors and administrators into facilitators, coaches and, over time, inspirational leaders in their communities.

We help students in their learning, through skills workshops, teaching them to become critical and optimistic thinkers and problem solvers. We also provide seminars and small group workshops to help parents support their children emotionally, nutritionally and academically.

The full circle will be complete when these mentored teachers can run workshops for other teachers in nearby schools, the students take their new thinking skills into family and community life, and parents share with other parents about how to support their children in today’s learning climate. Then we prayerfully hope to move on to other communities. Better Learning Brighter Lives will also come full-circle when we have trained others to go and serve among poor people in remote places to train and mentor school communities there.

To support this project by contributing financially, contact Pioneers, and for regular updates, see our blog [email protected]

This is a Tax Deductible OARF project

A dream was realised as all 14 students gathered one Thursday in April to graduate from our vocational program. The ceremony was made all the more significant as many of the students had not finished high school. Tertiary study had never been an option for them and their opportunities were limited. But now, some of our Vocational Training School (VTS) graduates are employed—one in a local bakery, one in a restaurant, and one in a kitchen. One has even started his own doughnut business!

This program is designed for youth who have dropped out of school or who are from poor or underprivileged backgrounds. The vocational training school runs two courses: baking and basic mechanics classes. Our first course in 2012 began with four young women and one young man doing baking, and nine young men enrolled in the basic mechanics class. As well as teaching mechanics and baking skills, students have daily teaching and discussions on life skills. It is exciting to work with these young people, as they are very enthusiastic.

Over the past six years we have seen many students graduate from our school. We now also offer Advanced Mechanics & Driving; Advanced Baking & Catering, and Welding/Metal work classes. The purchase of a large generator and a diesel engine has made a big difference to the teaching we can provide for the mechanics class.

VTS staff have also undertaken training to learn how to support traumatised children and youth within this area of Uganda. We have found that our students often need more than just work skills to help them move forward in their lives. Since the training our staff are better equipped to assist the students who attend the school with emotional healing and empowerment to succeed.

This is a Tax Deductible OARF project

Gamon* came to Kingdom Kids at age 2 and weighed 5kgs. With huge unresolved infant feeding problems because of he was born prematurely, he had been fed rice water by his 9 year old brother and kept in a dark, dilapidated bamboo hut, uncared for by his alcoholic mother. Three years later, he is a lovable, active little boy who, God willing, is headed to USA with an adoring Christian family.

In Thai culture, it is rare for an unknown abandoned baby to be adopted because of the associated bad karma attached to the child, particularly a disabled child. Kingdom Kids helps young orphaned and at- risk Thai children, most with developmental problems, to reach their potential by establishing a network of foster homes. They train and mentor Thai carers and foster parents and also provide an educational programme for those children who would not be accepted in the local Thai schools. This project is based in small rural villages about 32 km north of Chiang Mai and works in close association with the local Government orphanage.

Currently 22 young children have been given a new future through Kingdom Kids.

As the number of children needing care has increased, the project has built an Intake and Accommodation Centre on their Kingdom Kids property, complete with a fish farm and piggery. They have their own Therapy and Special Needs School, which is also open to children with disability in the local area. A second accommodation centre is currently under construction.

Read more on the Kingdom Kids website.

This is a Tax Deductible OARF project

Community Health

Driving on roads that dropped away to wide chasms below, we made our way to the clinic. Hours later we arrived to find that people from several villages had gathered for medical care. This was their only chance in a long time to see a doctor, to ask advice and seek relief. Some of the villagers had walked for hours over overgrown paths and slippery slopes, glad for a healthy meal and some care. We saw more than 70 patients that day, each patient with a story, a history, a need.

Enabled is a community development program that works mainly through community health volunteers (CHVs) seeking to improve the health of people in India. Enabled works in an area that has high infant mortality and child malnutrition, and an inadequate understanding of how to promote health and prevent disease.

The broad aims of Enabled are to:

• Provide a channel for resources to support the work of community health and development staff and Community Health Volunteers (CHVs).
• Maintain and equip the CHVs to undertake health and development activities to promote the physical, emotional, spiritual and social wellbeing of their community.
• Strengthen linkages with local hospitals and the wider health system, so that poor and isolated people can access basic healthcare.

Enabled have also established a program to provide practical assistance to families affected by disability. This program is firmly grounded on the understanding that every person is valuable, and should have the opportunity to live with purpose and hope.

Enabled Disability provides services to:

• children and young people with disabilities
• families caring for disabled family members
• community groups, helping them to love, care and include those with disabilities in their communities

Enabled has exceeded its original training goals, with more than 200 health workers trained, monthly clinics in each village, and numerous patients assisted to attend for treatment at the local hospital. On the development side they also run two nursery school groups, literacy classes and computer training.

This is a Tax Deductible OARF project

“Several weeks ago,” begins one of the prison facilitation team, “I was sitting having a catch-up and coffee with one of my recently released prisoners when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was another ex-prison, a man who we had previously counselled and helped. He had just happened to see me as he walked past the coffee shop. Asking if he could speak with me for a minute, we stepped outside the cafe. Pressing $20 into my palm, he murmured that it was for our ministry and the men who needed help. To me, it felt like a million dollars! What an incalculable victory when such men can come to place where they can see beyond their own needs and begin to give into the lives of others.”

Operation Foundation Fiji is a Christian Restorative Ministry active in bringing renewal and transformation in the community of incarcerated offenders and ex-offenders in Fiji. Intervention, counselling, support and relationship are the key themes of Operation Foundation’s in-prison ministry. The direct work with inmates begins as soon as they enter the prison. With male inmates this interaction encompasses a variety of activities that include, our Step Out-Step Free classes, individual counselling and family visits. For female inmates our interaction involves: numeracy and literacy classes; craft and sewing classes for income generation; and individual counselling and support.

Throughout the inmate’s sentence, the Operation Foundation team build individual relationships with inmates so that they can continue effective counsel and support past the release date. The focus of the ministry is re-entry, preparing prisoners for release and then assisting them for an undefined period after release. The core rehabilitation programming and activity is well received by its primary partners, the Fiji Corrections Service; the inmates and their families, and the communities.

For more information see Operation Foundation website.

This is a Tax Deductible OARF project

Across Radio serves the people of South Sudan, who in recent years have been suffering from the impact of civil war. The project includes work amongst South Sudanese displaced within their country, as well as those living as refugees in Uganda. Across uses different forms of media to catalyse positive changes in society by providing information that influences attitudes.

Two of the main activities that Across are currently engaged in are: –

1. DAP Distribution– peace building and social development using audio teaching on solar-powered Digital Audio Players. These simple devices hold up to 100 hours of teaching, and are gratefully received by the isolated communities where they are Topics include hygiene, family relationships, care of children and the elderly, and other social issues. As well as spoken messages, the DAPs contain songs that promote peace that have been recorded by local Dinka youth.
2. Youth Sports– facilitating organised sports for South Sudanese youth living in refugee camps in Uganda. These refugee camps are some of the largest in the world, and there is little for youth to do other than get into trouble! The sports program provides a positive environment for youth to have structure and purpose, and even fun! The team context has brought reconciliation between opposing tribes, and has assisted with healing from trauma experienced in the war.

One group that has been remarkably impacted by the DAP program is the nomadic cattle keepers in South Sudan. After major tribal clashes related to cattle rustling, child abduction, and associated killings of more than a thousand people, including innocent women and children, the teachings on peace building have led to forgiveness between various tribes and even within families, and has resulted in some cattle keepers making the decision to end the cycle of retribution.

To read more about the impact of the DAP work, read our story Words of Life

For more information about this project see the ACROSS website.