Chris Power currently works in AIM’s Southern Region office, based in Nairobi.
Before joining AIM, I worked in Liverpool for an environmental consultancy. At one point I was even nominated to be the ‘green officer’! 12 years later, it has been interesting to see how my role in the Southern Region office has led to involvement in some creative environmental initiatives. There have been opportunities for our members to be trained in Farming God’s Way, in transformational development, to launch an eco-tourism business and promote waste collection and removal. I was recently visiting the Indian Ocean Islands and it was with sadness that I witnessed dry riverbeds strewn with litter, especially plastics. There are opportunities for us all to raise awareness, model creation care, and promote small steps of change.
Another way we have done this is through our short term mission teams. We have run three Harvest Teams in Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar, and as well as getting a taster of cross-cultural mission they have also included an environmental element. These teams were composed of young people from Botswana, Lesotho, and Madagascar, and they introduced sustainable and simple agricultural practices to the communities. This November we are launching a new short term team called LEAP Lesotho. This will be a multi-cultural mission training team at the Growing Nations farm in Maphutseng. Being based in such a location provides an ideal setting for not just classroom learning but application and practice. We want to equip African missionaries to be environmentally aware and give them skills which help them gain access to and add value to the unreached communities they live among.
