Why work in Central African Republic?

VisionTrust is working in Central African Republic because it is the most lowly ranked nation in human development in the world ranking - that means that the level of poverty, education, social development, health and GDP are some of the worst in the world. We were invited to participate in this work through our partner called Integrated Community Development International (http://www.icdinternational.org/) in 2004, just 1 year after the country's most recent revolution. Since that time, we've been able to work with 729 of the neediest orphans in two cities.

Today, our task force (Tom Peters of ICDI, Ed Luminati, Matt Storer and 3 others) visited a primary school in the Northern part of the capital city. We met with two different school administrators, each responsible for about 1,800 girls. The first 1,800 meet in the morning and the second group meets in the afternoon. I doubled checked the statistics from these administrators with the statistics that I found at http://hdptcar.net/blog/education. For more part, this school was a reflection of the nationwide numbers. For example, the average teacher to student ratio is close to 1:120. In classrooms where there are benches, the was enough seats for only 90 children - if you put 5 children on each bench! (See picture of Matt and Ed sharing one bench).

Regarding water and hygiene at the school: Imagine 1,800 children attending school for 4 hours with NO access to drinking water or water for washing AND not having functioning latrines. This is a typical situation for the government run schools.

The situation on the ground here is grave and frankly, disturbing. But these are just a few of the realities of the world that the children in our programs face. These are the reasons that VisionTrust exists. We are coming alongside of Christian workers who want to help their own orphans and make it possible for them to improve their education and health while spiritually mentoring them. One of our staff responsible for the program in the capital city told me today that the key to these orphans growing up to be good citizens is learning the Bible and finding faith in Jesus Christ. He compared poor children he knew growing up that completed University: Ones that weren't taught about God with those who were. He concluded that the ones who did not know God squander their new wealth received through better employment while the others, the ones with God, tend to give back to their community and help people move ahead.

This evening we met with one of the orphan groups called Asana, project CR-002. I met a young man named Oscar. He just completed his national high school exam and passed! He is 21 years old. He is excited about the possibility of going on to University and has already committed to being a volunteer teacher in the VisionTrust program to help other orphans. What an amazing story!

-Matt Storer