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Hope For Abba’s Children is a small faith-based organization that started out of Rush Creek Bible Church that partners with faith-based schools in Zambia. HAC is intentional in helping schools in Zambia to become sustainable. T
he biggest hurdle for schools to be sustainable is teacher’s salary. How can a school that charges less than 5 dollars a month pay for teachers? Zambia is in a unique situation where the government will put teachers on the government payroll but assign them to Christian Schools. This is a strange concept for Americans because of the emphasis on separation of church and state. This is not a problem in Zambia because the official religion of Zambia is Christianity. If Hope For Abba’s Children pays the teacher’s
salary for a school, the school is not sustainable because the school would close as soon as the funding stops from HAC. HAC has created a teacher-loan program. We identify godly individuals from Grace Churches who have a certain education level. HAC will then pay for them to attend a teacher college for 3 years. The cost comes to about $2,000 per year for each person. Many of these teachers are already teaching in ours schools as volunteers and receive little to no salaries. Once a person graduates from a teacher college, the government will place that person on the government payroll where they will receive a salary of $500 a month. This is well within the range of the middle class in Zambia. The government will also assign the teachers to Grace Schools since HAC helped pay for their education. The teachers who used the loans from HAC are required to pay back the loans within 3 years so another student can use the funds for training. The first person to graduate who used the teacher loan program is Mevis. Mevis is a faithful teacher who has been a volunteer teacher in Nakoli for around 8 years. She graduated in April 2017 and will start paying her loan back in about a year. HAC recently
accepted 3 new teachers (Frazer, Thelma, and Tandiwe) who all started their first semester in April 2017. All three teachers have been volunteer teachers for several years in our Grace Schools. We ask for your prayers and financial support as we intentionally partner with the Grace Schools to help them become sustainable.
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