Traditional short term mission trips focus on going to an area and "doing" work for a people group or "working alongside" a local ministry for a few days. Often when the mission team leaves it creates a hardship for the locals as the "doers" have gone leaving work still to be done. What if we could train the local believers to do the work that we are doing? This session presents just such a model. An empowering method of short term missions passes on teachable skills to indigenous people allowing them to do for each other long after a short term team has left.
Microfinance has become a very popular strategy for helping to stabilize and grow the incomes of poor families in the Global South. Given the close association between economic prosperity and physical health, there is a tremendous opportunity to integrate microfinance progams with various health initiatives. This workshop introduces the basic concepts of microfinance and gives examples of attempts to integrate health education and health insurance into microfinance programs.
Healthy individuals and families require healthy communities. Historically, many attempts to create such communities have used a "needs-based approach" which focuses on the deficits and short-comings in those communities, the assumption being that outside resources would be the catalyst for change. In contrast, an "asset-based approach" identifies, connects and mobilizes the resources within a community, believing that such resources are the key to sustainable change. This workshop introduces the key ideas of asset-based community development and suggests helpful tools to pursue this process.
ART (Atraumatic Restorative Treatment) is an minimally invasive method of treating caries in selected teeth which is being used in developed and developing countries throughout the world. It consists of restoring teeth with glass ionomer restorative material, hand instruments and materials available in limited resource areas.
The purpose of this lecture is to explain the ART approach including advantages and limitations by describing the ART procedure and providing evidence based references.
A discussion of the highs and lows of long term hospital based missions. Mission hospitals afford opportunities for deeply meaningful service but not without significant challenges and often at considerable cost.
