International Partners Serve Children in Africa

A partnership between TeachBeyond Brazil and the First Baptist Church of Narragansett, Rhode Island, is serving food to 130 children at the Gogo Children's Feeding Center in Malawi. They developed this partnership through serving one another in an English Camp in Brazil and VBS in the Narragansett church. See the story of the partnership here.

Malawi is the world's poorest nation with 17 million people, including 1.5 million orphans due to HIV / AIDS.

"Orphaned and vulnerable children and their families benefit from these projects. We learned that there is little difference between orphaned children and the rest of the families in these villages. They are all poor. Everyone suffers from malnutrition and lack of basic health care. We also are serving some of the elderly who are too debilitated or sick to grow their own food," explains Peter Whitman, an elder in the Baptist church, who traveled to Malawi in early 2018 with his wife, Diane, to assist in the implementation of the feeding center.

The feeding project began in the middle of 2017 with the construction of a church on site, which also serves as a center for food distribution and learning. Currently, the Gogo Project has two teachers for the nursery school and a team of volunteers who cook and serve the children. The project is expanding its activities to other communities in Malawi.

In addition to the construction of the church, a well was dug to obtain clean water and a nursery was built for children up to six years. The partnership has provided 100 school uniforms for students in the local government primary school, and 48 Bibles in the Chichewa language, Malawi’s traditional language, to continue evangelizing the local population. Also in the plans are the construction of toilets, a new kitchen, and the creation of a bicycle-ambulance, as the nearest health center is eight kilometers (five miles) away.

Learn more about the Gogo Project here - https://www.facebook.com/gogochildrencenter/