Since Feb. 2, Dr. Dana Bates, the director of Northwestern’s Romania Semester abroad program and founder of New Horizons Foundation, has been leading a six-day intensive training for over 44 youth leaders of the Orthodox Church in Africa. Bates is working with four other trainers from his organization who specialize in the youth empowerment model that Bates developed, called IMPACT. Currently, Bates and his team are working with the Orthodox Church of Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan and Tanzania to launch a movement of youth development in East Africa, but they hope to see IMPACT expand to “other churches and even the public educational system,” Bates said.
“IMPACT was developed starting in 2002 in a coal-mining region in Romania that was extremely underdeveloped due to the Communist legacy.” Bates said. The goal of IMPACT is to get the youth “themselves to identify burdens in their communities.” These IMPACT clubs help youth identify problems that they see in their own communities and equip them to do something about it. Bates said, the kinds in these clubs “put love into action in serving the needy, but at the same time learn all sorts of valuable life and employability skills such as project-management, problem-solving, social-emotional intelligence and more.” Bates said, “IMPACT has proven effective in almost 50 countries around the world and has been embraced by the Christian Reformed Churches amd World Vision, as IMPACT is part of the core global programming with World Vision, and many others.” There have been over 3,500 IMPACT clubs, on five different continents, who carry out over 3,000 community projects each year.
After over 20 years working on IMPACT in Romania, Bates became connected with the Orthodox Church in Kenya when he started working with the Orthodox Christian Missionary Center in the U.S. in May 2024. Back in 2023, the head of the Orthodox Church in Uganda had asked the center for support for developing a youth program in Eastern Africa. “This happened right before I approached OCMC, so God Providentially opened the doors for us by this need for youth work arising from Uganda,” Bates said.
“The importance of quality youth development that combines both spiritual and socioeconomic development aims cannot be overemphasized. It is only through empowering tens of thousands of youths that these countries can begin to move out of poverty, and central to this task is more youth becoming problem-solvers and holding their leaders accountable.” Bates has experienced this firsthand. He said, “Corruption is rampant in these countries as it once was in Romania, and still is to some degree, and IMPACT has proven itself effective in developing agents of change, working for the common good, all across the globe.”
To learn more about Bates and his work in East Africa or to support his ministry visit: https://www.orthopraxis.net/impact-east-africa/
