Village Schools International Fundraiser

We're so excited to share an update from Steve and Susan Vinton regarding our Village Schools International Fundraiser!


From Steve and Susan: 

How wonderful it is that the church would like to do another fundraiser this year for girls scholarships!  

We keep opening more and more schools, so the need never goes away. We were reminded when we read your email that it never matters how many girls we get who come, God just keeps on providing enough money for them. On July 2nd we opened another new school (#49), this time in the neighboring country of Malawi, and it was a reminder again of how it is with every new school.  

A couple of our college graduates from here in Tanzania went around with some of our leaders from Malawi to talk with people in the villages. We wanted to share that with the new school opening there will be special scholarships for girls. We want parents to think about sending their daughters, not just their sons. That’s always a hard thing every time we start out!  We have over 12,000 students in all of our schools and just over 6,000 of them are girls. And yet, every time we start out in a new area it takes a lot for people to believe – as people often times say it sounds like such good news that it’s “too good to be true” and so they find it hard to really believe.

I got word that of the 63 kids who have already shown up to start studying English, 43 are boys and 20 are girls.  Of course we’re thrilled for every girl who has come – each girl represents a huge victory – but you can see why this weekend Nancie (from Texas), Margret and Never (two of our college graduates from our college in Tanzania) and Pharisiana (a Malawian teacher) are going to be spreading out all of the villages there to seek out girls and encourage their parents to have them come to school.  So the scholarship program is just so important and truly we can’t thank you enough.  

Every single dollar that you raise will be put to good use. It costs $110 for a student to study for a year. But because of good people like you who will pay $75, their tuition fee drops down to $35. This news is what makes them look up and say, "Yes, we can take a chance and let our daughter go to school." So I’ll just say from the bottom of my heart, every single $75 that you are able to raise, will fulfill that promise for another girl and for her family. She’ll get a chance to go to high school! She’ll learn a lot more than physics and English and history – it’s in our schools she’ll learn about all the important health concepts, she’ll hear the Gospel, she’ll be inspired to serve God and other people, and she’ll get to start dreaming – we want her to get a good job, we want her to have the opportunity to go to college, we want her to have a future. Otherwise, for most of these girls, it means getting married off when they’re 14 or 15 and spending a life in real breaking poverty in the village. I honestly can’t think of a better way to spend $75 than in changing the whole direction of a girl’s life in a little village here. So thank you so very much for wanting to help.

One of the things that makes us happiest right now is to see Never and Margret joining with Alfred and Yotam and the four of them feeling so strongly that God has called them, not just to start schools here in Tanzania for kids here, but to cross the border and go to a new country, to people they do not know, to a village they had never been to before, and to work together to build a school and then to give kids a chance who would otherwise never get to school at all. The girls scholarship program made it possible for Never and Margret to study and now they are out there helping other girls to study. To me that is so incredibly beautiful – so please thank everyone at church.  We wish there were some way we could pop in and express from our hearts how thankful we are, but we hope you can let everyone know.

Challenge: Talk to your kids about this! Share with them the importance of school for these children and pray about what you're able to give. We are so excited about seeing God's providence in this. 

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