DA won an Exemplary School Program award from one of our accrediting organizations, the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), for our innovative and effective Student Outreach program. The following description (co-authored by yours truly) summarizes the program. Though the article looks long here, it's actually fills only a single published magazine page. And it's pretty inspiring.
Imagine . . .
- You pour a foundation, make 1,600 bricks by hand, lay the walls, raise the roof, and worship with local Christians in the church you just built for them.
- You play soccer with a high school team, then present the school with dictionaries, textbooks, and soccer uniforms.
- You hold two performances of mime and multi-language music, followed by an
evangelistic film and a call to freedom in Christ by a local pastor.Now imagine . . . you are in high school, you and fellow students did all of this, and more, in one weekend, and you financed it yourselves.
This real-life scenario gives only a taste of the varied ways that Dakar Academy DA) high school students use their diverse gifts to minister to people in Sénégal through DA’s innovative Student Outreach Program. Other facets of the program include monthly visits to an orphanage; soap and shoe drives for local ministries to street kids; and friendship evangelism at a large French high school near our campus.
What makes this program remarkable? The answers to that question fall into the following four categories.
Strategic Breadth
My Skills Count: The variety of activities staged in a single weekend—manual labor, visual arts, performing arts, healthcare, sports—enables virtually any high school student to participate meaningfully.
Multiple Sizes Fit All: This variety also broadens the impact: if one aspect of the outreach doesn’t touch a particular villager, another one probably does.
Participation Depth
Here I am Lord, Send Me: Outreach weekends attract more students than can participate; we consistently must turn volunteers away. One recent outreach involved 87 students—over 66% of the high school student body!
Pay as You Go: The program is self-supporting. They are funded by collections taken at DA’s Sunday morning worship services, attended by dorm students, some teachers, day students, and their families.
Chips Off the Young Blocks: The program’s vision is rubbing off on elementary students! A class of fifth graders who recently took a field trip to deliver Operation Christmas Child gifts to preschool children were proud to be doing something “like the big kids.” They realized that, though young, they can serve others for Christ.
Community Impact
Christian Identity: Students and staff from DA have built five churches in Sénégal. Beyond providing shelter for worship services, churches are a “24/7” symbol of Christian presence in the community. This strengthens local Christians’ identification with the body of Christ, and provides non-Christians with a visible reminder of the call to new life in Christ.
Spiritual Harvest: Sometimes fruit appears quickly: eight villagers chose to follow Christ during one outreach. Within weeks of another outreach, eighteen people had joined their village’s church—enlarging the congregation by more than fifty percent! Prayers for an end to drought brought the largest rains in 20 years.
Clearing the Path: The novelty of our students’ presence “in the bush” naturally attracts crowds. Their joy and generosity break barriers. Sénégalese children’s pastors report that our programs have opened doors for ministry in villages where previously they were not permitted to work.
Passing it On: Some DA teams have helped train Sénégalese Christian workers how to minister through puppetry and drama, extending the effect of our teams’ work.
Expanding Horizons
We’re grateful God is using us—teaching and equipping us to share the gospel across cultures. We are now developing partnerships with churches and schools in the U.S. and Europe, to help their students “catch” the vision, and extend the reach of the gospel in Sénégal.
May we be faithful and may God’s kingdom grow!
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