Umdoni Project VLOG 16 – Progress
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Family Strengthening in Eswatini
Strengthening families and equipping community leaders through practical training, innovation, and appropriate technologies is the next step for holistic transformation in Eswatini. When you give, you’re giving more than aid, you’re investing in strong families and resilient leaders.
Imagine giving families the ability to safely share their painful experiences instead of burying them. To be able to negotiate a better family life that suits each member of the family. Imagine parents that lovingly support their children through difficult seasons instead of dismissing or punishing them for simply speaking up.
We believe our Umdoni campus has vast potential to pour deeply into families to impact the communities we’re serving. We want to bring families, caregivers, and community members temporarily out of daily strife and into this safe learning environment. Exposing them to some of our best innovations that can richly impact their lives. Teaching them ways to connect on a healthy emotional level as a family unit.
For the past 17 years, Adventures in Missions has laid a solid foundation in Eswatini. We’ve strived to help kids to grow from the need for bare necessities to having hope and expectations of a full life physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We’ve wanted to see kids having hope for their future, to grow out from abject poverty to become active contributors for their community.
Take a short tour of the Umdoni Leadership Camus with Melinda Babb. At Umdoni, we train students to become God-honoring holistic leaders who multiply their training by pouring into and training others. We drive leadership training with a focus on self-sustainability, skillset development, and innovative thinking.
We’re building on our foundations to strengthen families and to help bring more contributors into communities with our Umdoni campus. The unique environment we’re pioneering at Umdoni encourages rapid self-development, critical thinking, resiliency, acceptance of others, family and community enrichment, and a zero-waste mindset for business and daily living. We’re working to create God-honoring, holistic leaders who plant and nurture these concepts back in the community and beyond Eswatini’s borders.
This training environment has never been more needed than now. Eswatini is facing HIV, uncertainty from months of flash violence and political unrest, rampant poverty as well as magnified economic and health concerns from the Coronavirus pandemic. In spite of the challenges, we believe light shines brighter in the midst of darkness and pain. Strengthening families and equipping community leaders through practical training, innovation, and appropriate technologies is the vital next step for holistic transformation.
We believe that the conditions and timing are ripe for financial partners to bring tremendous value and change like never before in our history of working in Eswatini. Africa is yearning for servant leadership, your partnership can help bring hope and transformation on target, on time.
We’re so overwhelmed at the support and response from donors, thank you so much! This campaign was successfully fundraised but we still would love your help for making a positive impact in Eswatini.
Umdoni Project VLOG 15 – Tour of Umdoni
For the past two years, our dedicated Swazi staff and missionaries have pushed through the difficult times of the pandemic to continue teaching and training, often in open fields, under trees, or on porches. We are excited to invite you to join us in our prayers so you can be an active partner as we seek to strengthen families and communities in Eswatini.
Please pray for:
- Establishing suitable places for teaching and training students.
- Student and teacher unity, that we can be a family in Christ, not a program.
- Vision and wisdom as we develop and implement training.
- Advocates, especially from local authorities, businesses, and nonprofits.
- God to continue graciously raising financial partners to join us in developing the campus, projects, programs, and students.
- Umdoni to help many Swazis develop whole-life sustainability and find who they are through the loving embrace of Christ.
- Please pray intentionally as you watch this tour of the farm. Beyond the developments and projects, what really excites us is what God is doing here through our teachers in the lives of our students!
As always, please consider liking our videos and subscribing to our VLOG!
Umdoni Project VLOG 14 – Permaculture vs Agriculture for a Homestead
We love finding ways to bring resiliency to homesteads in Eswatini. We think permaculture can bring immediate and long-lasting benefits for families. As we begin focusing on how to help strengthen families, we believe a shift in how families think about growing food can be a great start. In today’s video, William compares from his experience the differences between agriculture and permaculture for a small to medium sized Swazi homestead. He also calculates the startup cost vs ongoing year over year costs, permaculture can have a huge impact for a family. This is important because up to 80% of Eswatini’s food is imported, rural families are at the mercy of local markets where price fluctuations are making food harder for families to afford. The final benefit of permaculture is that it’s actually less complicated, many families already have enough to start!
Thanks for watching, as always, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel for updates! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxeArBgGc4ixc-Y-XOrgemg/
Umdoni Project VLOG 13 – Old into New
We love that we can train our students at Umdoni the value of reducing, reusing, and recycling. Today we’re focusing on the reusing part of the program as we’ll see some of our team’s innovations. William also introduces us to his multi-stage water recycling center where waste water is turned into plant usable water to get the most benefit of our water.
As always, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel for updates! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxeArBgGc4ixc-Y-XOrgemg/
Incoming Umdoni Student Interviews
We’re so excited to welcome our latest batch of students to the Umdoni Leadership Campus! We have ten incoming students from our CarePoints around the nation. We wanted to interview them so you could get to know them and encourage them as well.
Nonduduzo Ndlela
Nonduduzo joins us from the Ekudzeni region. She is a lively young woman that has such a servant heart. She comes from a family with 9 siblings, her sister Nombulelo is one of our staff members! One of her goals is to see a thriving garden at Ekudzeni CarePoint.
Simangele Mavimbela
Simangele joins us from the Ngonini region. She is joyful and bubbly, loving deep laughter and caring for others. She dreams of growing crops, vegetables, and pigs at Ngonini where her siblings get their daily meals.
Lindelani Lokotfwako
Lindelani joins us from Lesibovu region. She loves welding, wood work, and spending time working in general with tools. She wants to instill the ability to make a living and know Christ at Lesibovu CarePoint.
(Patrick) Nthuthuko Nleko
Patrick joins us from the Lesibovu region. He’s a very polite guy from a very big family. More than 20 people live daily at his family’s homestead. He’s very interested in Solar energy and wants to help young men and women find stability and independence through business and right living.
Umdoni Project Vlog 12: Happy Birthday to our Vlog!
Our Umdoni Project Vlog is turning 1 year old! Let’s look at where we started and how our projects have changed over the last 12 months.
Umdoni Project Vlog 11: What do the Students Do over Four Years?
At our Umdoni Leadership Campus, we teach whole life sustainability to our students, but what does the four-year program look like?
Umdoni Project Vlog 10: April 2021 Update (Watch out for snakes!)
Sometimes nature doesn’t co-operate! We show how we’re learning to deal with heavy rain from a cyclone and pesky predators that want our cute bunnies.
Umdoni Water Tower Project
Bheki Motsa, our country director speaks on how Umdoni fits in with the vision of the broader ministry and beyond.
Matt Gerber, our previous country director, is grateful and looking forward to a future that Umdoni can bring to the communities we serve in Eswatini. Matt is excited about the transformational possibilities sustainable appropriate technologies can bring when Swazis practice them at their homesteads. We’re continuing to see Swazis leading Swazis to bring lasting change.
William Mtsetfwa, our appropriate technologies specialist and trainer is passionate about using his creativity in service to students, friends, community members, and God. He is inspiring because he lives it, shocking integrity. Proof that we can import the thinking into a homestead. “Umdoni is hope for communities” William is such a force for good and positivity, he really lives to bring God’s kingdom to this earth.
Justice Khoza, our agricultural specialist, explains how agriculture brings sustainability and transformation in a way that can impact swazi homesteads. Umdoni is that place where we can welcome outsiders and marginalized to transform their nation for good. Where we lead from a heart of service and connection.
In 2004, when Adventures entered the Kingdom of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) for the first time, it was the epicenter of the worldwide HIV/AIDS pandemic. We found orphans and widows living in rural communities desperate for food and medical care.
This surviving generation of orphans is now the young leadership of a Kingdom in transition. Adventures is growing alongside them to bring whole-life sustainable living to hundreds of rural homesteads.
Adventures’ Umdoni Project is a 70-acre parcel of hardscrabble commercial farmland being converted into a center for sustainable agriculture and tourism. This project will train hundreds of young leaders and their families in holistic leadership skills that will bring spiritual and practical transformation to the neediest communities.
The Umdoni Project is making incremental progress. We’ve raised funds for several building projects and need to move forward with some critical infrastructure in order to lay a foundation for the continued progress of the vision.
The Water Tower is a 15,000-gallon elevated system providing gravity-fed water to the entire 70-acre farm. This is comparable to a municipal water system. The project will include connectivity to the existing well so upon completion it will be fully functional.
Thanks to all who have given toward this project! As of January 1, we have enough to purchase the water tower, but still need funds to complete the entire project – construction, plumbing, etc. Please consider sharing this project, praying for our team, or donating to help us cross the finish line!
Umdoni Project Vlog 9: End of Year Tour
It’s the end of the year! Join us for a tour of the farm to see how far we’ve come in 2020. Thank you to those who helped us successfully fundraise for our water tower!!
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