Community transformation can look very different from community to community. When ACTS speaks about transforming communities, it involves going into extremely impoverished areas and helping to ease the social, physical, spiritual and economic hardships faced by the populace on a day-to-day basis. The kinds of projects that ACTS has undertaken or plans to accomplish include:

• Building a school to educate 4-7 year olds. This not only benefits the children, but also the parents as having the kids for several hours a day frees up that time for them to work to improve their family’s quality of living. Also the parents are grateful for the education the children are receiving which in many cases is an opportunity that was not given to them.
• Fencing in large areas of land to enable children to play freely without the fear or interference of roaming animals found throughout the region.
• Building kitchens so that warm meals may be served to the children each school day.
• Drilling a well so that the women (the water fetchers in this culture) can provide potable water for their families without having to travel 3-4 hours to the nearest well.
• Building hand washing stations and instructing the students on the benefits of cleanliness to prevent water born diseases.
• Planting small gardens to grow fruits and vegetables for use in supplementing the nutritional value in the meals.
• Erecting latrines to help in improving sanitation.
• Helping to educate parents to recognize the signs of malaria, malnutrition and parasite infection.
• Constructing small dairies so that school attendees can receive a beneficial glass of milk daily.

While many of these things may seem like basics to us, the communities in which ACTS is working or targeting have been doing without these “amenities” being available. By providing what ACTS does, the community’s standard of living is raised and the sense of hope is instilled.