Helping Change South Africa

Self-Suffiency May Be Within Reach | Plan in Place

When we think of South Africa, many of us think of Apartheid. Although the racially motivated laws may have been repealed almost 15 years ago, the cultural disfigurement continues today. Predictably, it is the children who suffer the most. When asked about the greatest needs of the South African Church, pastors and other ministry leaders from across the country confirmed it was “help with the outreach and ministry tools to reach children.”

In 2003, Gospel Light Worldwide began partnering with resident ministries and a local team of translators, editors and artists to develop children’s Bible resources unique to South Africa. With great enthusiasm, we developed culturally relevant, age appropriate materials that were locally producible and most importantly, in the languages of the children.

Promoted under the iVangeli name, this culturally sensitive version was written first in English and then translated into the Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans languages to serve children from age 4 -15 in both the black and white churches. iVangeli is a Zulu and Xhosa word meaning “Gospel.”

We have recently achieved a major project development milestone well in advance of projections. As of December 2008, we have completed and published twelve comprehensive years of children’s Bible curriculum and teaching resources.  As in all of our international projects, testing is a very important part of our process. In 2008, 292 churches taught from these materials; up from 187 churches in 2007. The response continues to be outstanding.

The Salvation Army of South Africa and other churches have endorsed the curriculum and even promoted it outside of their denominations. Some ministry leaders even speak of iVangeli as the “national curriculum” of South Africa. It is easy to understand why it has been so well received. Every lesson is packed with fun discovery learning and creative activities that children love. Teachers rave about the curriculum, too, because it’s easy to use and all the fun activities reinforce the Bible lessons.

Our approach is to work backwards from the desired result of blessing the entire South Africa Church with the teaching resources necessary for any church to establish a comprehensive, practical and sustainable children’s Bible ministry program.

As part of self-sustainability planning for South Africa, a simple commercial website is used for general information and online selling. At your convenience, please visit www.iVangeli.org to see the iVangeli Curriculum website. In-county revenues from these book sales are used on-field specifically for advancing iVangeli Curriculum in South Africa.

Another important element of self-sustainability is to start transitioning the financial support from the West to the resident Church or other interested parties during these early stages of implementation. We are currently exploring domestic financial partnerships that could dramatically offset the need for ongoing Western financial assistance.

What Needs to Happen Next: The most important thing for us to do now is to start capacity building within the South African Church structure. To do this, our immediate focus should be to build an empowered teacher network while introducing the children’s Bible resources to the entire South Africa Church.  This is an unduplicated effort; no other ministry is providing this comprehensive service to the Christian community in South Africa.

Build and Train an Inspired Teacher Network

• Master Trainer Instruction – 10 teachers/co-workers will be selected by recognized children’s ministry leaders from around South Africa for their maturity and leadership skills for Master Trainer Instruction; to be held at a central location twice a year
• Train-the-Trainer – These Master Trainers will then conduct train-the-trainer courses to an estimated 100 new Regional Trainers
• Teacher Training – These best of these Regional Trainers will then conduct local teacher training courses at key distribution points across South Africa

Funding Required | $70,200

Introduce Children’s Bible Resources to the Entire South Africa Church

• Offer Free Teacher-Training – Provide teacher-training courses,  product knowledge instruction, and special recognition for early adopters
• Build Awareness – Develop ongoing Internet communications with natural partners and champions, create online content, enhance website, optimize search engines, connect purposefully through social networking and promote online selling
• Multi-Media Training – Create content for streaming video and audio of lessons and training for use on Internet and radio driving potential customers to website for online purchasing and/or to participating bookstores

Funding Required | $64,800

The other important piece is to continue to actively build in-country self-sufficiency.

Building Strategic Partnerships | Develop Resident SA Partners

• South African publishing partner to license iVangeli curriculum for greater reach and distribution
• Licensees – Other languages to license the use of the materials
• Financial – Other interested parties and potential financial supporters

Funding Required | $11,700

Evaluation: We have established a detailed evaluation process that our project manager provides on a regular basis. Evaluation criteria is prearranged and measured against how effectively we deliver on our mission and make a distinctive impact, relative to our resources.

Project Manager’s Level of Certainty: High

For additional information, please call (805) 535-2424 ext. 1273.