Not your father’s NGO

Good Soil Partners is not your father’s NGO, but it is Our Father’s NGO. Over the past years you’ve poured your generous gifts into launching Good Soil Academy. Today our pioneering class is at 53 students and we anticipate more students joining us for the next term. But our ultimate goal is not to create a donor dependent school. Instead, our goal over the next five years is to support the leaders of Good Soil Academy as they seek to create a sustainable and innovative Christian School. After all, if part of what GSA does is to equip young women to be entrepreneurs and leaders, it needs to lead by example.

That’s a different model from the donor dependent model. It means that your gifts are investments not just in maintenance of dependency, but instead, some of your giving will be used to support the ventures that are necessary to make Good Soil Academy sustainable. There will always be needs, Jesus said as much. Right now we have a gap between our cost and the tuition we can charge. We also want to be able to reach young women through scholarships who would not have the opportunity to go to school. But if we can support, coach and encourage Good Soil Academy to position itself to meet those needs through its own venture and its own efforts, that’s a far healthier model than one that perpetuates dependency. That is a true partnership.

So, Good Soil Partners is not your father’s NGO, but it is Our Father’s NGO. We are called by Our Father but we are called not just to give resources, but to give ideas, coaching, support and even start-up capital to launch the ventures that will help make Good Soil Academy sustainable.

What does that look like? Well, certainly it starts with food. Food is the second most costly element of a school; particularly if you make a commitment to provide three healthy meals a day. Fortunately on a 55 acre campus we can raise our own crops, and our own livestock. This year we harvested 100 bags of maize from a four acre parcel. We’ll be doubling that planting this season in anticipation of doubling our enrollment. We’ve planted cassava as well and that will be harvested late spring. Soon we’ll be looking to start a poultry operation for the eggs and chickens that are necessary protein sources.

GSA’s goal is to create a model that fosters sustainability, but along the way it will provide a wonderful opportunity for our students to see entrepreneurship practiced up close. Pray for our team at GSA that God will bless their ventures. Pray for GSP as we discern the wisest ways in which to support GSA in that goal.