How To Adopt A Village In Africa

How to Adopt a Village in Africa: A Story of Joy, Pain, and Purpose is the memoir of how author Sheena Ashdown started a small NGO, the Africa Village Project Association (AVPA). As a young adult, Sheena travelled around West Africa, doing almost a complete circumnavigation of the region. During this journey, she saw a world very different from her own. The poverty of the continent and the strength of the African people stayed with her, and when she eventually settled down and wanted to give back, she turned to the place that remained so close to her heart: Africa. For ten years, the AVPA partnered with a village in Tanzania. Working alongside her husband Dale, Sheena’s approach was based on Jeffrey Sachs’s Millennium Villages Project. Instead of focusing on one aspect to improve, the AVPA addressed the whole village. From infrastructure and education to business grants and health, the organization worked to improve the standard of living and self-sufficiency of the village. The outpouring of support was tremendous and gratifying. But what started as a way to give back became an extraordinarily challenging venture. After difficulties and disappointments, worsening need in the village and demoralizing fundraising, Sheena had to make a choice: endure or shut down. How to Adopt a Village in Africa chronicles the hardships and joys of charitable work and social activism. With honesty and vulnerability, Sheena shares how her determination to live a meaningful life led her on an unforgettable journey.

How to Adopt a Village in Africa: A Story of Joy, Pain, and Purpose is the memoir of how author Sheena Ashdown started a small NGO, the Africa Village Project Association (AVPA). As a young adult, Sheena travelled around West Africa, doing almost a complete circumnavigation of the region. During this journey, she saw a world very different from her own. The poverty of the continent and the strength of the African people stayed with her, and when she eventually settled down and wanted to give back, she turned to the place that remained so close to her heart: Africa. For ten years, the AVPA partnered with a village in Tanzania. Working alongside her husband Dale, Sheena’s approach was based on Jeffrey Sachs’s Millennium Villages Project. Instead of focusing on one aspect to improve, the AVPA addressed the whole village. From infrastructure and education to business grants and health, the organization worked to improve the standard of living and self-sufficiency of the village. The outpouring of support was tremendous and gratifying. But what started as a way to give back became an extraordinarily challenging venture. After difficulties and disappointments, worsening need in the village and demoralizing fundraising, Sheena had to make a choice: endure or shut down. How to Adopt a Village in Africa chronicles the hardships and joys of charitable work and social activism. With honesty and vulnerability, Sheena shares how her determination to live a meaningful life led her on an unforgettable journey.

In the pages of this book, Rev. Leonidas A. Johnson eloquently shares how God’s missionary call, like an aromatic stew, has been simmering within the African American church. According to him, “The African American church will play a critical role in spreading the gospel message to people groups living in areas of the world that represent the last strongholds and citadels of satanic power attempting to stop God’s Mission.”

Venture into the world of overseas missions from an African-American perspective. This collection of articles takes you deep into the history of missions in the African-American community. You will learn of the struggles to stay connected to the world of missions in spite of great obstacles. You will read of unique cultural experiences while traveling abroad. You will feel the heart for fulfilling the Great Commission both in the African-American community and beyond. All text remains the same in this revised edition, with the exception of new study guide questions at the close of each chapter. The questions can be used to help facilitate discussions in Sunday School, Bible study, seminary classes, conference workshops and other group or individual studies.

This book brings together technical expertise, best practices, case studies and ground-level application of the ideas for empowering the rural population of the world to live economically prosperous, environmentally sustainable, and socially progressive lives, on par or comparable with the quality of life enjoyed by the global urban population. The idea of Smart Villages takes on greater urgency in light of the investments made in this millennium on “Smart Cities”, taking advantage of the technological advances, particularly in digital connectivity. These investments have and will continue to expand the urban-rural divide, unless similar investments are made in the villages as well. The book provides a much-needed guide for a holistic development of a Smart Village, by defining the need, developing the framework, and describing the delivery, complete with successful case studies. Contributors to the book, from Canada, USA, Africa and India bring years of academic, industry and governmental experience, including organization of several Smart Village conferences. The knowledge base in the book will be of great value to anyone interested in or active in rural planning, including governmental and non-governmental organizations, industrial solution providers, public healthcare professionals, public policy professionals and students, as well as rural communities around the world. Consolidates all the aspects of creating/developing a Smart Village; Delivers an effective tool-kit for practitioners in the area of Smart Villages; Provides a policy-based framework for the development of an ideal Smart Village; Illustrates, through case studies, the fulfillment of key requirements of a Smart Village; Brings together experts from around the world to share their vision of a Smart Village; Highlights the importance of balancing development with social/gender equity and cultural traditions.

Containing ten essays by anthropologists on the beliefs and practices associated with witches and sorcerers in Eastern Africa, the chapters in this book are all based on field research and new information which is studied within its wider social context. First published in 1963.

This book is a product of a select and innovative “think tank,” NobbleAfriq Institute. It stands as the pillar and the revival of the African system of thought and spiritualism which, in turn, pave the road to Afro-modernity. For those seeking the answers to the root of the malady of our time in Africa, this book serves as a guide and inspiration. This book projects that the problem of Africa is Africa due to loss of intuitive thinking, freedom, and identity, which brought about the natural spiritual and psychological void known as “disintegrated individuality.” Failure of political leadership, lack of good governance, and stunted progress in Africa are not the main problems but symptoms of disintegrated individualism, which is a loss of sense of being. We are evolving beings; therefore, we can no longer search for our identity out of the old world of the past. Our old tribal and ancestral world are not lost but outgrown. As such, our identity and the meaning of who we are cannot be found; rather, they are to be created and achieved.

About the Book We are living in a period where the old age is dying, and the new age is not yet born. We must ask ourselves these questions. What is an authentic lifestyle? What is the proper social order? These are significant questions, and as crucial as they are, they need answers and answers that are true. Rather, the consensus is that these answers are beyond the apprehension of Africans. Other questions covered in this book are: What is the human soul? Why do we suffer from the disintegration of the soul? Are we truly free or dependent on the iron rule of the machine world? What is cosmic thought and its relation to human soul? What is the problem of intuitive flash and the myth of Western modernity? What is national identity and values? These questions have their root in the symptom of disrupted historical period that plagued the world and the entire continent of Africa. The plague obliterated our ways of life, and it was replaced with a machine world which denied us of the mysteries of the living earth and the human soul. Currently, this plague continues to haunt us because post-colonial African states were born out of this plague. In this book, I believed that the problem of Africa could be resolved in placing it in a wider context of world historical consciousness because Africa is a part of the world and its crisis. About the Author Max O. Thompson-Eleogu is a native Nigerian, who lives and was schooled in the United States of America, for both his undergraduate program and graduate program. He authored the book AFRICA---THE ROAD TO AFRO-MODERNITY. He is a Distinguished Fellow and founder of NobbleAfriq Institute, a select and innovative think-tank, whose trajectory is the transformation of African politics and its people. He was trained as a philosopher with an unwavering interest in African philosophy, African American philosophy and Continental philosophy. His other interests include African Mysticism and Spiritualism.