The Mission House Academy

The Mission House Academy exists to provide otherwise unobtainable education in poor communities in Madagascar.

The Academy

As well as past, present and future community enhancement projects, one of The Mission House Academy's key strategies is to help equip a person with the basic life skills they need to support their own wage and living.

Malagasy

Our ambitious plans to change lives through the transformation of individuals and communities is done so by working closely with those in the local community who speak the language (Malagasy) and who are totally familiar with the culture.

More about Malagasy

1990

Between January and February 2010 we conducted our first staff training

Well over 1,000 people have benefit from our life skills training

Background

The commitment to establish The Mission House Academy was made in early 2009, under the supervision of the Principal, where two core courses were prepared to form the foundation of the Academy’s curriculum. Since then, these courses have been translated from English into Malagasy, new staff have been recruited and where necessary we have relocated premises to enable us to market our courses to the wider community.

Foundation Course

Our foundation course is all about Life Skills and is offered free of charge with the exception of a small charge for a workbook. It is open to anyone, however we aim strongly at helping young adults. With most of the lectures kept secular, albeit run by a Christian organisation, this course holds a special emphasis on attitude and we have seen many students eager to learn how to grow to become a new person as a result of taking part.

Life Skills Course

This course leads students through a process of examining their personal world which includes covering vast aspects of their life:

Vision and Goal Setting
Worldview
Past Healing
Leadership
Conflict Resolution
Relationships
Volunteering and Community Involvement

Job Preparation Skills
Motivation
African Renaissance
HIV / AIDS
Self Esteem and Leadership
Finances
Personal Health and Development

Success Story

Perhaps one of the best endorsements for this course comes from a local company who had a member of staff complete our Life Skills Course. Due to the positive changes seen in the individual, the owner asked us to provide the Life Skills Course to the rest of their staff!

Overall, the course covers forty hours of content over one month and as well as the classroom content includes service to the community as part of a Mission House project.

Community Development Course

In the last week of our Life Skills Course we promote our continued twelve week Leadership for Community Development Course for all interested students who may wish to apply for admission.

Acceptance is by invitation only and successful students must be able to fully fund or partially fund themselves for the twelve-week duration. This presents a real challenge to people earning a dollar a day or less, and we welcome sponsorship to cover the costs of students who cannot find the funds to attend.

Course Content

The course content is very similar to Life Skills Course but includes reference to scriptures where appropriate and most of the students who have been through the course have come to faith at some time during the course.

After the initial six week residential period, students rotate through projects, assist on the Life Skills course themselves and go into new areas and villages to promote the Life Skills course. Thus, the whole process is self-replicating. The last week of this course is residential used for reporting and reviewing. This is the time when anyone wishing to continue with The Mission House as a full-time volunteer can make the commitment which is also followed by invitation only.

The Future

The goal is to establish a self-sustaining institution with its own property that may generate a revenue from an on-site social enterprise providing chargeable courses.

Some of the chargeable courses may include: