Imagine you wanted to help one village escape severe disease and poverty. And you wanted it to be their initiative. And you wanted it to be sustainable. And you wanted it to affordable. How would you do it?

Well, after you thought about it for a while, and you tried to keep it as simple and repeatable as possible, you’d probably come up with something a lot like our TCD – Transformational Community Development.

Check out the picture. Lokho (the one with the baby) and Fatuma are helping clear a field in the village of Gambella, Kenya. When I snapped this picture, we were working with the women of the village to create a TCD “Demonstration Acre”. Gambella would normally starve during the 6-month dry season when there’s virtually no rain. Children’s bellies would distend. People would die. But that acre showed them ways to efficiently grow food. As a result, Gambellans can now eat year-round!

TCD is honestly pretty simple. It’s not rocket science. It’s not magic or superhuman. But it does take deliberate, consistent effort, working with a village for 3-6 years. The main idea in TCD is to help villages like Gambella escape crushing poverty by teaching them how to form committees and implement the knowledge to become sustainable in FIVE critical areas:

Water – enough clean water for drinking, cooking and hand washing
Food – sufficient nutritious food to mitigate chronic hunger and malnutrition
Wellness — basic sanitation, hygiene and disease-prevention measures in practice
Income — startup resources for dignified and sustainable family income generation
Education — access to primary level education for every girl and boy

When they do that, a desperately poor village TRULY CAN transform!

Sound exciting? It is! And we’re going to tell you more about TCD and how villages are transforming as we go forward. You might even want to come on one of our Compassion Trips to see village transformation in action. But more on all that later…

Village Partnerships w/ GHNI from Jeff Power on Vimeo.