Approaching Poverty Devotional: 3 Important Insights You’ll Learn

Poverty devotional How to help people in poverty why we should help people in poverty

Poverty is a shared aspect of the human experience, touching each of us differently. Whether you’ve witnessed or experienced poverty or not, our aim for our Approaching Poverty devotional is to encourage a compassionate and Biblical perspective on poverty. This 7-day devotional will walk you through an understanding of why poverty exists, why we should […]

Block by block: Walls go up on the new WAVS training center

After pouring more than 10,000 cubic feet of reinforced concrete, the foundation is done! Now it’s time to call in the block masons. For the last several months, our contractor has been excavating, constructing concrete footings and foundation beams, laying down pipes and electrical installations, and pouring slab. Now, the new training center is finally […]

How vocational schools in Africa can become financially self-sustaining

Many nonprofits, NGOs and donors want to see their projects and schools in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world become financially self-sustaining. They don’t want their efforts to be dependent on outside funding forever. But vocational training programs can be expensive, especially with the need for costly equipment and large facilities. And few students […]

Construction progress update: Laying the foundation of the new Training Center

Earlier this year, we broke ground on a brand-new 16,000-square-foot Training Center at our flagship campus in the capital of Guinea-Bissau. It’s scheduled to be completed by early next year. The Training Center will allow us to expand our welding program and launch new programs in carpentry and metalwork machining – skills that are in […]

How One of the Poorest Countries in the World Taught Me the Richness of Love

Water shortages. Maggot-ridden flour. Poverty, power outages, political instability. Life in Guinea-Bissau is hard. But its people don’t show it. Instead, they are warm, hospitable, joyful, industrious, generous, vivacious. They some of the most loving people on the planet. When I visited Guinea-Bissau for the first time in January, I expected to be inspired by […]

The 3 things NOT to do on your next missions’ trips to Africa

How your missions team can be a blessing and not a burden when visiting Africa, or anywhere in the world. With COVID-era travel restrictions all but gone, missions’ trips are back in full swing. This year, hundreds of thousands of church members will hop on planes to visit poor countries all around the world. And […]

Why education looks different for kids in West Africa

Three ways that the broken education system affects families in Guinea-Bissau (West Africa) 1. In Guinea-Bissau, families can’t afford basic school supplies. In the United States, the average family spends more than $800 to get their kids ready to go back to school. For many parents in Guinea-Bissau, that’s more than what they make in a […]

The odds were against Cirilo. He found a way to overcome them.

He grew up in one of the world’s poorest countries. As a child, he nearly died from malaria. But this dad found a way to work for a brighter future. Cirilo was born in Guinea-Bissau, a country where most people earn less than $2 a day. As a child, he suffered from severe malaria and […]