Just imagine your own life with no or limited education. Perhaps you have traveled in a different culture and faced the immense challenges of not knowing the language. You know what the local currency is, but you have little idea of the value of money or exchange rate. What if you were stuck in this land for the rest of your life? What if you had no opportunity to learn? No ability to gain reading or writing skills? Little chance to attain talents for simple commerce? How different would your life be?
Edify envisions a world that is no longer dominated by grinding poverty, but where children grow to be responsible adults with good jobs.
Join us in making a difference. We encourage you to review the resources below to educate yourself about the overwhelming need of educating the poor and what our efforts have been to make an impact.
Grounded in the Bible and drawing on the experience of development experts, this eight-week study provides a holistic framework in which to study poverty. In growing numbers across the developing world, people living in poverty gather each week to save small amounts of money as members of solidarity groups, slowly building a reserve for the future. Not only do they save together, they learn, pray, and encourage one another as a group. In Perspectives on Poverty, a curriculum examining poverty from a biblical perspective, participants are guided to model their own small group on these solidarity groups. The lessons challenge and expand the group’s definition of poverty, explore God’s commands concerning the poor, and show the importance of integrating word and deed. Along the way, the curriculum incorporates challenges to apply these principles in concrete ways.
Churches and individual Christians typically have faulty assumptions about the causes of poverty, resulting in the use of strategies that do considerable harm to poor people and themselves. Don’t let this happen to you or the ministries you help fund! A must read for anyone who works with the poor or in missions, When Helping Hurts provides foundational concepts, clearly articulated general principles and relevant applications. The result is an effective and holistic ministry to the poor, not a truncated gospel.”Initial thoughts” at the beginning of chapters and “reflection questions and excercises” at the end of chapters assist greatly in learning and applying the material. A situation is assessed for whether relief, rehabilitation, or development is the best response to a situation. Efforts are characterized by an “asset based” approach rather than a “needs based” approach. Short term mission efforts are addressed and economic development strategies appropriate for North American and international contexts are presented, including microenterprise development.
We believe that the Lord has given us a sustainable, scalable model to provide a fine Christian education and life skills training to large numbers of impoverished children. We make loans, through our trusted field partners, to sustainable schools that repay the loans with modest tuition payments from dedicated parents. We then recycle the funds to other schools so they can improve education and expand capacity to accommodate more children
By God’s grace, Edify has significantly expanded its outreach to impoverished children in the developing world through sustainable, Christ-centered schools.
Edify seeks to develop Christian character, provide quality academics, and teach life skills such as English, computers, and entrepreneurship to students in Africa and Latin America. Rather than spend a lifetime in abject poverty and corruption, children will become adults who will provide for their families and transform their communities through integrity, diligent work, service to others and the love of Jesus.
Edify provided $2,037,324 to schools in loans and other program services in 2011. This resulted in an increase of over 126% compared to the $900,125 provided last year. We made loans to 326 schools this year as compared to 81 last year, our first year of operation. We conducted teacher-training sessions with more than 1,000 teachers in attendance this year.
