Burkina Faso (MNN)–Christian World Outreach just launched a new branch of ministry in Burkina Faso.
CWO’s Greg Yoder says one of their volunteers saw food gardens withering in the African sun, and proposed protection. They just built two shade houses, a kind of ‘greenhouse’ to protect the gardens that grow food for their schools. “The Village of Hope is next to it, it’s kind of like a boarding school for village children to get an education.”
Burkina Faso provides free public education, but it is not mandatory, and the illiteracy rate is 85%. In addition, about a third of its children die before they reach the age of 5. Disease, malnutrition and poverty can be blamed for the tragedy of this generation.
However, the country’s economic base is subsistence agriculture, which provides another avenue for their team’s use of the shade houses. Yoder explains they are also used “…for the vocational school itself in that we can help teach young men and women agriculture better methods of farming, and that kind of thing.”
The ministry was given 10 acres of land to build a vocational training center that will minister to hundreds of people from the villages in the region.
People stop by out of curiosity, which allows the team to explain the ‘why’ of the project. “We can also sell some of these vegetables in the marketplace,” Yoder adds, “so that we can raise money to support the ministry itself, there, so that it can be a little bit more self-sufficient. It opens up the door for sharing the Gospel as people come to see something that’s a little unique.”
