African Aid
After spending a couple years living in Ethiopia teaching farming, I would have to agree with the summary given in this article (at least until they start talking about the musicians). Africa has been taught how to beg, and the once proud and self-sustaining tribes are now little more than drug addicts, waiting for the next injection of money.
While this is a cliched statement, "discipline, honesty and good hard work need to be ingrained before money is given," it is a statement that is bound up in a generational ethic that has been taught and needs to be broken.
This isn't the end all, but we need more realistic projects like this , in Debre Zeit, Ethiopia, that build up the basic knowledge of people and help them crawl, so they can walk and eventually run. Probably the best project that I have ever seen in any 3rd world country is Selam Technical School and orphanage in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia. They take the orphans of the civil war and Aids and teach them either cooking, farming, or shop work, like welding and carpentry. It is extremely disciplined and everything has a certain efficiency about it, probably due to the excellent people who run it.
Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man how to make the fishing nets and fish, and he'll feed the community.
While this is a cliched statement, "discipline, honesty and good hard work need to be ingrained before money is given," it is a statement that is bound up in a generational ethic that has been taught and needs to be broken.
This isn't the end all, but we need more realistic projects like this , in Debre Zeit, Ethiopia, that build up the basic knowledge of people and help them crawl, so they can walk and eventually run. Probably the best project that I have ever seen in any 3rd world country is Selam Technical School and orphanage in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia. They take the orphans of the civil war and Aids and teach them either cooking, farming, or shop work, like welding and carpentry. It is extremely disciplined and everything has a certain efficiency about it, probably due to the excellent people who run it.
Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man how to make the fishing nets and fish, and he'll feed the community.
posted by Keri at 7/06/2005 10:01:00 PM
3 Comments:
Dave,
I'd love to talk to you about this sometime. It's very similar to a dream Marda and I have. We long to help orphans in Africa, and want to do so through the ministry of a local church. I'm looking forward to hearing some of your insights in the future.
Josh Mack
Are you guys still in Southeast PA? Let me know and the next time I have to travel thru where ever you are, let's plan on dinner and we will talk.
We are, though honestly, when the time is right and (in bold print) when it is good for the church here and if the people here at our church are behind it, we are looking to go to Africa. We were in South Africa for a month last year, and it confirmed a burden that's been growing in my heart for a long time, that while I want to continue to teach and preach and pastor, I also have to find a way to be directly involved in helping children affected by A.I.D.'s. The need is so great and so, it seems to me are the opportunities.
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