100% of Donations for South Africa Going On-Field; No Adminstrative Fees

Project Background: 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.”

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 was 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 within 10 years of our start in 2003.

Ahead of Plan: We achieved a major project development milestone well in advance of projections; completing and publishing twelve comprehensive years of children’s Bible curriculum and teaching resources.  As in all of our international projects, transitioning to self-sustainability is a very important part of our process.

To that end, iVangeli Curriculum, a new South African children’s ministry agency, has been put into place specifically for this purpose. In preparation, a simple commercial website was launched for sharing general information and online selling. At your convenience, please visit www.iVangeli.org to see the iVangeli Curriculum website. In-county revenues are an important component of their three-pronged plan specifically for advancing iVangeli Curriculum to self reliance in South Africa.

The next component of self-sustainability was to find a viable funding mechanism for iVangeli Curriculum self-reliance.  Their leadership explored the best possible strategies for their purposes and have decided an innovative outreach called iVangeli Partners to focus on fund development exclusively for iVangeli Curriculum. The third element involves teacher training.

What Needs to Happen Next: The most important thing for Gospel Light Worldwide to do now is to continue encouraging iVangeli Curriculum capacity building. Those objectives include the development of new native languages translations, building an empowered teacher network and aggressively introducing the iVangeli Curriculum 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.

Immediate Funding Support Required | $32,800

• $12,000 for printing of new books
• $ 6,000 for translators
• $ 6,000 for proofing
• $ 3,000 for training
• $ 3,000 for advertising

South African Project Manager’s Level of Certainty: High

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