Two countries, one mission

Students partner with NGOs on projects

Lawson Hull
Bachelor of Arts student
Avondale College of Higher Education
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia

Students from an Avondale mission club partnered with two non-governmental organisations to complete community development projects in Bangladesh and Cambodia during their midyear holidays.

The college of higher education’s Cambodia One Mission team and Cooranbong-based Restore One built a house and a toilet for a family in a village near the capital Phnom Penh, presented a hygiene class at a school and visited hospitals and orphanages. The students, who raised enough money to cover the costs of all the building supplies and the hygiene products, also funded two toilets in another village.

Education students Brooke Davidson and Alex Mcandrew, on their second visits to the country, led the team of 21. Alex describes the experience as “challenging and exhausting but highly rewarding.” Alumna Megan Townend, a member of the Restore One association who lived in Cambodia at the time, managed the team during its visit to the country.

The Bangladesh One Mission team of 11 ran a children’s club at a school supported by the Adventist Development and Relief Agency in the capital Dhaka. The students also presented a health seminar in conjunction with a local Seventh-day Adventist Church. However, they did most of their work before arrival, raising money to provide 36 scholarships, about half of which went to students at the school and half to students at the college.

“Very little here makes a big difference there,” says Odailson “Dada” Fialho, a theology and ministry student who led the team with wife and nursing student Leticia Marquardt. “God looks after us when we’re willing to look after His children.”