A Difficult Childhood Dalton Da Silva was forced to grow up quickly. As a young boy, his parents separated. His mom and baby sister moved out, and they had no one to care for them. Concerned for their survival, Dalton gathered dried grass and carefully tied it together to make traditional sweeping brooms. He sold […]
What happens when someone living in poverty is given the chance to learn a new job skill? Just ask Ivanildo and Vanov. They met last year while studying welding in the same class at a WAVS vocational school in Guinea-Bissau, a tiny country in West Africa. They discovered that they worked well together. In fact, […]
When we opened the new WAVS flagship campus in Bissau, the capital of Guinea-Bissau, we knew we were taking a risk. We were new to Bissau. People in the neighborhood weren’t familiar with us. And the campus wasn’t exactly easy to get to for anyone not living in the immediate vicinity. It’s located on 28 […]
From Learning to Leading: Augusto’s Journey Augusto is a young man living in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa, who grew up seeing a welder in action – his father. Even though his father had no formal training, he earned a meager income as a self-employed welder. Augusto idolized his father’s profession and dreamed of following in his […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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