The Birth of Open Schools Worldwide | Calling Story Part 2 with Alan McIlhenny (Ep. 205)

This week, hear the rest of the story from Alan McIlhenny, one of the co-founders of Open Schools Worldwide, with the mission to design and deliver life-changing learning to bring hope to marginalized children in developing countries worldwide. 

• Listen to Part 1 of the story here: Episode 204
• Four legs of the table of education are vision, people, materials, methods, with Christ at the center
• “[One of the biggest challenges] was finding the right people who understood the children that we were going to be working with.”
• “We need to take care of our volunteer tutors and help them because they’re being faced with awful situations that children should never have to face.”
• “When we are teaching the letter f, we talk about father, friends, and you can bring up discussions about friendship and the lack of fathers, which is common for so many of the kids.”
• “We play a lot of games and try to make the lessons fun.”
• “We called it Open Schools Worldwide because the need was worldwide.”
• “The need is worldwide, and God is good [...] We were dreaming big.”
• “We didn’t have to seek out growth. People came to us. The story spread.”
• “When Angie, our director [...] tells me that we have 14,800 kids enrolled now, it just brings tears to my eyes. It’s brilliant.”
• “Pray about it and ask the Lord to open the doors.”
• “I’ve always prayed that the Lord would open a door for something, and that if it was wrong, He would close the door and that I would accept the door closing. It’s easy to jump after things; it’s not so easy to say, ‘Well, maybe that’s not quite right.’”
• “I can’t do something on my own, but praying for the right people to join me has been a way to move forward.”
• “I was a very shy, retiring, quiet person, and if someone had said to me what was going to happen, I would not have in any way believed them.”

What’s changing our lives:

• Keane: Color-coded calendar to notice trends
• Heather: Road tripping with her brother’s family
• Alan: Worshiping in a thousand-year-old building

Weekly Spotlight: Open Schools Worldwide

We’d love to hear from you! podcast@teachbeyond.org
Podcast Website: https://teachbeyond.org/podcast
Learn about TeachBeyond: https://teachbeyond.org/