Our philosophy for helping the school is firstly based upon Christian principles. We believe strongly that we are responsible to a power higher than ourselves and we try to act in accordance with that. The Indonesian leaders at the school feel the same. Instead of starting something from scratch to help these children, we here in the states decided it best to empower the Indonesian natives who are already trying to help them and have a heart, understanding and vision for these children and their community.

Pastor Steven Pantow is an Indonesian native who started the elementary school back in 2004. We came alongside him in 2011 and found out what the needs of the school were and a junior high school was soon built for way less that it would have taken if we had done it ourselves, less than $8,000. The same was done in 2014 and 2015 for the building of a high school, vocational school and computer lab with 15 new computers for a total cost of only $15,000. Since only local labor and goods were used to build these schools, everything was purchased by locals and the dollar is really strong over there against the rupiah, we were able to complete these projects for way less that we ever would have thought. Pastor Stephen and his staff of around 50 teachers live in the community, speak the language, understand the culture and have close relationships with those in the community. Because of this we find that they know what is needed much better than we do and they are much more effective at communicating and making the relationships needed to make a difference. One word to describe what we do with and for the school is to “empower”. We empower those who can do what is needed to be done better than we can.