International (MNN) – Education is about preparing the next generation for the future. It builds and forms leaders who will guide others. For kids in the mission field, it’s just the same. They need quality education to form them so they can be prepared to lead and build up others.
Education for Missionary Kids
“These are amazing days in the education of missionary children,” TeachBeyond’s George Durance says.
“If you look around, count the numbers and so on, it looks like the missionary children’s school is winding down. It’s not at all. It’s changing. It’s undergoing a metamorphose, and we’re seeing different kinds of missionary children’s schools emerging that are actually better than they’ve ever been, and we’re providing a richer and deeper education than we were 20 years ago.”
Durance says in the past, many missionary kids would attend boarding schools, especially if their parents worked in remote or rural areas. Today, he says, there are about 30 of these boarding schools left, and children attend day schools instead.
Durance says children in the last years of secondary schooling need a place where they can relearn the culture of their home country and learn the language well. Many kids will go on to universities or colleges to further their education once they’ve finished secondary school, and they need cultural and linguistic foundations to do well in their university education.
“Kids have grown up bi-cultural or multi-cultural, multi-lingual. So, they need a different kind of support than they can get in more remote or rural areas.”
If children don’t have quality education for secondary schooling that reintroduces them to their home country’s culture, families will often leave the mission field before kids finish secondary school.
“There are many statistics about this,” Durance says. “One of the common ones is that about 21 percent of the missionary returnee groups look to family issues and especially the education of children as the primary reason that they have to leave the place of service. So, you’d have to make this, as a mission organization, one of your prime goals, providing quality educational service for the missionary children.”
Providing quality education is important for these children because they are integral keys to the future of the mission field and helping the international Church bloom.
(Photo courtesy of TeachBeyond via Facebook)
TeachBeyond’s Work
TeachBeyond has grown out of service to missionary children and the global Church. They offer quality schooling so that missionary kids can continue receiving an education and families can stay in the mission field, helping the Church to grow.
However, amidst their schools, the need for teachers is large.
“The potential is so great and the opportunity to use these kinds of schools as platforms for tremendous ministry, it almost has no limit, and yet, all the sudden you discover you don’t have a math teacher, or you don’t have a science teacher, or you don’t have the right house parent.”
TeachBeyond needs your help to equip the next generation of missionaries with vital education.
Find teaching opportunities here where you can support missionary kids around the world.
Also, pray that God would send teachers to the field.
Header photo courtesy of TeachBeyond
