Zambia Project

YEAR ONE:
A group of 11 senior students responded to a unique ministry opportunity called One Life Revolution, a joint initiative created by World Vision and Youth Specialties, that challenged students to raise one million dollars to meet the incredible needs of orphans in the AIDS ravaged nation of Zambia. The Project LEAD team cast the vision to build a brand new schoolhouse (at cost of $53,000) in a placed called Kakolo Village. This school building would be the first educational building in this community's history and would serve as a tremendous source of hope and provide much needed skills for their future lives. Education is also a vital component in the battle in trying to stop the impact and spread of the HIV/AIDS virus. The Wheaton Academy student body responded to God's leading and over $78,000 was raised in a six-month period. The money raised not only allowed a new school building to be constructed, but a new house for the school's teachers to live in, all needed school equipment and supplies, a new well bringing clean water to the community, and many other programs and objects to help meet the physical and spiritual needs so evident in their community.

JAMES 1:27--"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress."

YEAR TWO:
This year's project chose to deal with the need of hunger present among Zambian families and orphans. Student leaders articulated their belief that we needed to meet this basic physical need in order to allow people to live and eventually create a better life with hope for the future. The average Zambian lives on less than one dollar per day and often deals directly with issues of malnutrition and starvation. One major fundraiser for this project was the 30-Hour Famine, an activity where students were asked to fast from food for 30 hours and gather sponsors who would donate in support of the project. Over 200 WA students took part in this event and had an opportunity to identify for just a few short hours with their Zambian brothers and sisters who are hungry. Wheaton Academy students raised over $59,000, which was used to give 525 families (one family per WA student) in the Twachyanda ADP region immediate needed food provisions, along with long-term food security through gifts of seeds and supplies, animals, and agricultural training.

ISAIAH 58:6-7,10 "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter- when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? And if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness."

YEAR THREE:
This school year's project focused on the health needs of the Zambian people. The Project LEAD team has cast the vision to partner with other friends from World Vision Chicago in building a brand new medical facility in the Zamtan ADP area (very near the Kakolo Village schoolhouse) that will serve a variety of health care functions for the surrounding people and villages. One of its primary emphases will be helping to stop the transmission of the HIV/AIDS virus from pregnant mothers to their unborn children. Pre-natal care and medical help during the delivery of babies will also be provided thru this facility. It will also be a place where ARV's (anti-retro viral) can be provided and given to those who have already tested HIV-positive in the hope of giving them a longer life as members of their society and living parents for their children.

Wheaton Academy students have had the opportunity to reduce the spread and devastating impact of the deadly disease that threatens to destroy the life and future of a generation of Zambian people. Close to 40 fundraisers were held over the course of the 2004-2005 school year, and students sacrificially gave as they sensed that they were indeed part of God's special purpose for Wheaton Academy to help change the lives of the next generation in South Central Africa. The WA student community raised over $117,000 and these resources went directly to construct and equip with medicines the maternity ward section of the new clinic in Zamtan. Medical personnel in Zambia have estimated that this new maternity and childcare facility will reduce the HIV infection rate from 40% to less than 2% for those children whose mothers are HIV-positive in this community.

MATTHEW 14:14 "When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick."

YEAR FOUR:
This year's project focuses on continuing to do the work of holistic transformational development in sub-Saharan Africa. Student leaders have chosen to partner once again with the One Life Revolution Initiative and have committed to raising resources to help build a new church structure right in the midst of the devastation of the AIDS pandemic. This physical building will be a centerpiece of hope for a community, and it will allow up to 3000 people to receive care and ministry in the midst of great pain and suffering. The church will also be a lighthouse offering spiritual life and truth as the Gospel offers people eternal hope and spiritual answers while their physical needs are also being addressed. We believe that being the bearers of God's Kingdom calls us to meet the needs of people in a holistic way, and the last four years of the Wheaton Academy Zambia Project have addressed the major pieces of a transformational development strategy.

The resources raised by students will also be used to provide several other needed items for Zambian communities including: Vegetable Growing Kit For a School; Dairy Goats; Bibles; Feed & Care for a Child; Medicines for a Health Clinic; HIV/AIDS Prevention Campaigns; Build a House; Build a Well. And with the current drought situation, resources raised from the 30 Hour Famine will go to provide immediate food relief needs for hungry children and their families.

ACTS 2:44-45 "All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to everyone as they had need."

God has truly blessed our school with the remarkable privilege of being part of His compassionate response to the AIDS pandemic in Africa. We are forever changed because of our involvement even as we have helped to bring about change for some amazing people at great risk in Zambia. And we now have a vision to have 1000 other schools join us in responding to the unprecedented need in Africa today. We believe that God has called us to bring more folks into the battle against the greatest humanitarian crisis in all of history. The time is now for this generation of Christian students to be what God intends for them to be.His saving agents of grace in this world.