Most Significant Change stories

While in Zambia, a few weeks ago, the board members, agents and a few of the staff participated in the "Most Significant Change" activity, a technique learned through my Colorado State University "Village Earth" classes. The purpose is to celebrate success. It simply involves group sharing of changes that have taken place within the community as a result of a project. 

In this case, each participant was asked to write a brief story illustrating a significant change and then share together, one by one, our experiences. It was a time of reflecting on what has gone right and where we can strive to strengthen what works.  

So...over the next few blogs I will share some of these stories. 

Timmy Mbambiko (background guy!) entered the sponsorship program while in primary school. The sponsorship program manager had seen Timmy eating discarded food from the nearby secondary school. He was living with his grandmother and they were hungry! As well, Timmy wanted education so badly that he was sneaking into a classroom hoping not to be noticed, since he couldn't afford to pay his school fees. Someone did notice! 

Mrs. Mbumwae paid his fees and Timmy faithfully attended school and now Timmy has finished his college education and is a teacher at the same school he was scrounging food from! Praise God! 

And the other guy in the photo, ...Brivery, also a motivated sponsored student, completed his Masters degree studies just the other day in Cameroon in Development Studies. These are very significant changes in their lives and in the lives of their families.