JACKSON, Tenn. — Nov. 17, 2014 — When Whitney Morreau signed up for a mission trip to Honduras while a student at Union University, she wasn’t expecting her short week abroad to change her life.
But it did.
“Honduras was really the start of me wanting to live and work cross culturally,” said Morreau, a native of Paducah, Ky.
She graduated from Union in 2006 with a degree in social work, and then spent two years as a missionary in Tanzania as part of the International Mission Board’s journeyman program. During her time there, she grew to love African culture and, after returning home to earn a Master of Social Work through the University of Georgia, began working with non-profits in Zambia.
There, God began to open her eyes to the needs of Zambia’s desperately underfunded and understaffed schools.
“I would go into schools and ask, ‘Who’s helping you?’” Morreau said. “And they would say, ‘No one’.”
The Zambian government can only afford to fund a fraction of the schools needed, so communities will form their own. However, without government funding or trained teachers, the schools struggle to survive.
The problem is exacerbated in slum areas, where the community is too impoverished for many to make a living, much less support a school. The slum Morreau works in is home to over 100,000 people. There are only two government-funded schools, however. The other 50 community schools receive no outside funding or support.
These schools average around 200 students in kindergarten through seventh grade and are staffed by three or four volunteers. Often, these volunteers aren’t formally trained, just “whoever in the community has a heart for kids,” Morreau said.
Last year, Morreau founded Impact One Initiative to address these problems. Impact One established partnerships with 12 schools that work with more than 4,000 kids. The organization also trains teachers in writing lesson plans, managing resources, giving tests and other needed skills.
“We want to provide self-sustainable, quality education,” she said. “We equip [the Zambian workers] with the skills they need and build on what’s already there.” In just one year, Morreau has seen Impact One positively change these schools.
“I was very inspired by the potential and the grass roots initiative of the community to address this need. … They have heart, commitment and perseverance that’s out of this world,” she said. “I’ve definitely seen them implementing the things they’ve been learning.”
Going forward, Morreau hopes to be able to provide more resources to these schools and see them come together as a network. She also wants to create a program for establishing schools and training workers that can be replicated in slums across the country.
Morreau credits her time at Union as crucial to her work.
“I really feel like Union was the foundation for so much in my life,” she said. “Everything helped shape how I view my work. It’s very much an integration of the practical aspects of social work and faith and discipleship.”
More information about Morreau’s Impact One Initiative is available at impactoneinitiative.org.