South Africa faces a severe literacy crisis among children, with most grade four learners unable to read for meaning. David Durance from TeachBeyond says:

“When children are not provided that opportunity to break out, to have an opportunity to learn, and even the basic things, like literacy, when that’s missed, suddenly we recognize the last impact it is for this generation and for the next generation.”

The challenges don’t stop with reading.

Rural schools often lack reliable electricity and internet, leaving students behind in technology. Hundreds of public schools no longer offer mathematics. And overcrowded classes of forty to fifty-plus learners push teachers into crowd control instead of inspiring learning.

Clothes hanging out to dry in Phuthaditjhaba, South Africa (Photo courtesy of Satish Ajodha via Unsplash)

Durance explains, “We have to recognize that from an educational environment there’s a lasting impact on how these children will learn.”

TeachBeyond is finding creative ways to build healthy learning spaces. Durance points to an approach in their open schools project in South Africa that helps children shift into a learning mindset.

“You walk into that classroom and the way they introduce themselves to each other is about play. It’s not writing your name on some name tag and slapping it on your desk,” he says.

This playful kind of approach creates space for teachers to address serious topics and for children to engage more fully in the classroom. It also helps them understand, in their own language and way, who God is as the Author of their lives and even the Author of their play.

Walk alongside educators from TeachBeyond with prayer, action, and contribution. To learn about their trauma-informed education approach, visit this link.

“We think God’s prepared us for this moment to provide not only just any education, but transformational education, education that introduces the Gospel to the communities that most need it, because for many of them, they’ve never heard the good news,” says Durance.

Header photo: Kid in Bo Kaap, South Africa (Photo courtesy of Savannah Koomen via Unsplash).

David Durance, president of TeachBeyond, says those barriers begin early.

“Families are already saying to their young girls that they need to provide economically for the family. And then there’s the other side of that, which is a real social pressure to be married very young…. They’re married off at the age of 13, 14, and many by 15.”

(Photo courtesy of TeachBeyond)

Plan International’s 2025 State of the World’s Girls report shows how devastating that cycle can be. Across 15 countries, researchers spoke with 251 girls who married before age 18. Sixty-three percent were no longer in school, training, or work after marriage. More than one in three dropped out of school because of marriage — and only a few were able to continue learning afterward.

“If we were to map the two issues together – literacy issues combined with kids that don’t complete K to 12 education – then we’d see that this is actually a huge issue that needs to be addressed,” says Durance.

TeachBeyond is tackling that issue by offering girls high-quality education and free meals.

“When there is high-quality, affordable education…the equation changes for these parents,” Durance says. “It’s now saying there’s a practical invitation where my daughter might actually have an opportunity to have a different pathway forward in her life.”

(Photo courtesy of TeachBeyond via Facebook)

Educators with TeachBeyond are local believers who can serve as role models for their students. These Christian teachers point girls to Jesus, who calls them valuable, worthy, and loved.

Durance says, “We actually see this as, obviously a crisis, but a huge opportunity where – from the ground up, from the child up – we can pray for a whole society to receive the Gospel and be transformed by the power of the Gospel. “

Pray for young girls to access education, and for families to see daughters as valuable and capable. Thank the Lord for mentors inspiring girls toward Christ-centered leadership. Pray, ultimately, for Gospel transformation in communities trapped by poverty and tradition.

Learn more about TeachBeyond.

Header photo courtesy of TeachBeyond.

Andre Marotto is the national director at TeachBeyond Serbia. He says the subway tragedy ignited a backlog of frustration over increasing government control.

“Being a former socialist [country], the majority of telecommunication institutions, TV channels, have been still kind of controlled by the state,” he said. “The government has worked at length to secure their sphere of influence within major state-owned companies. The level of dissatisfaction, especially among business people, [with] the way the government has been working had been growing for many years.”

February 2025 protest walk in Čačak, Serbia (Photo courtesy of Dejan Krsmanovic via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)

At first, demonstrations were politically neutral and peaceful. Marotto says that out of almost 200 cities in Serbia, 80 to 90% of the cities have joined those protests.

“We had probably the largest protest in Serbia in March, with about 350,000 people,” Marotto said. Now in August, the number of daily protesters has decreased, “but it’s still sizeable,” he said.

“So many of the kind of good tricks in the ‘school book’ of how governments should handle protests have been tried and used,” Marotto explained. “In the last couple of months, the government has been more active in terms of repressing with some level of brutality, trying to dissuade people from coming to the streets.”

Students continue to protest at a high personal cost. Marotto explained that universities and schools have been on strike since November last year, since most of the protests are led by students. “Thousands of students have missed a whole or at least half of an academic year,” he said.

Since Serbia’s constitution does not allow for religious schools, TeachBeyond Serbia can offer Christ-centered education only through informal projects. These projects might involve English camps or other activities connected to language learning, working alongside local partners.

“We’ve had a few partners that we have been working [with] faithfully. That’s just good to see that God is opening doors for us to serve the local Christian community,” said Marotto. 

In the protests, pray for peaceful political change, but most importantly pray for revival! 

“We are also within a particular context, which is southeastern Europe and eastern Europe. [In] the whole European context, Christianity has been largely on decline in this continent,” Marotto said. 

Learn more about TeachBeyond here. 

Header photo: Belgrade on the eve of the March 15, 2025 protest (Photo courtesy of Emilija Knezevic via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

President Yoweri Museveni has held office for nearly 40 years. Ever since he seized power in 1986, Uganda has been “comparatively stable, but increasingly authoritarian,” according to a 2025 report from the U.S.-based Congressional Research Service. Uganda has never had a democratic transition of power.

Whether or not Museveni receives a seventh term in office will be determined in the January general elections. But Uganda’s 2021 elections were marred by a number of killings, enforced disappearances and other human rights abuses. Months ahead of the elections, David Durance with TeachBeyond said local staff are starting to see more of the same.

(Photo courtesy of TeachBeyond Uganda)

“[They tell us] that this is much more intense than it has been before, that there’s already pressure and even violence,” he said. 

As in most cases, the outcome of national government elections will affect ministry. Durance says there are two dimensions that TeachBeyond is mindful of and praying about. The first layer is that education policy changes can change the landscape. 

“[For example,] we spent years working on a school project that’s now open and really flourishing. But one swipe of a pen in Kampala could wipe that away,” Durance said.

The second layer that TeachBeyond is praying about is practical. Political unrest can prevent students from attending school or even make parents hesitant to send kids to a Christian school. 

“There’s all these [underlying] tensions that happen that impact our ability to really reach the communities that we’re trying to reach,” Durance said in summary. 

Yet in Uganda’s turbulence, Christians carry the gospel as the answer. One Sunday, Durance visited a Ugandan church where half of the worship songs were prayers for their nation. “It was amazing to see how this community of believers recognized that it was their responsibility as followers of Jesus to be praying for their country and that they want to be the active agents of having the gospel heard,” he said. 

“I thought what was interesting was not that they were actually praying for some sort of political revolution or even change. They were praying that people would turn to Christ, knowing that all those other things will fall into place.”

Pray with TeachBeyond for political favor for ministry and for the next generation of Ugandans to be grounded in the Lord.

(Photo courtesy of TeachBeyond Uganda)

Header photo from Iganga, Uganda courtesy of Zach Wear via Unsplash.

Secretary Marco Rubio hosts a Democratic Republic of the Congo-Rwanda Peace Agreement signing ceremony between Democratic Republic of the Congo Foreign Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner and Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe at the Department of State in Washington, D.C., June 27, 2025. (Official State Department photo by Freddie Everett. U.S. Department of State – Public Domain)

As nations, the DRC and Rwanda have signed and are slowly implementing a June 27 peace deal. In a separate, parallel dialogue, the DRC and the M23 rebel group believed to be backed by Rwanda also signed a peace accord on July 19. They have committed to adopting a final peace deal by August 18. 

At least six truces in the DRC-M23 conflict have failed since 2021, according to a report from Al Jazeera. Yet according to TeachBeyond’s president, David Durance, one of their local school leaders says the peace accord has prompted hope that citizens have not felt for a decade. 

“He said, ‘Somehow this does feel different, and there’s hope in our community,’” Durance shared.

The hope brought by the peace accord also boosted school attendance, helping TeachBeyond end the October-to-July school year well despite disruptions earlier this year. That’s what occurred back in January, when M23’s successful offensive in eastern DRC sparked protests in the capital, Kinshasa.

“There was unrest enough that families felt like it was unwise to bring their kids to school,” Durance said. “Anywhere [that] there’s unrest, kids are often the first that suffer.” 

Please pray

“We’re praying that, by God’s grace and mercy, this would stick. That we would have a lasting peace, a peace that allows for this government to flourish in both the DRC and of course Rwanda, where this is all spilling out from,” said Durance. 

Learn more about TeachBeyond’s mission to give Christ-centered education across the world here. 

Header photo: This representative 2015 photo depicts Congolese soldiers on patrol in the Ituri district. (Wikimedia Commons)

But David Durance with TeachBeyond explains the trouble on the ground: “It’s not that there’s a shortage of food, but there’s a shortage of access to food. The problem is actually getting food to the right people and right moment.”

He explains, “One of the challenges is when the unrest really hits, it doesn’t matter if we’re offering free food at lunch, because we can’t get people — mostly our students — to the campus when things are really bad.”

(Photo courtesy TeachBeyond)

Durance says TeachBeyond receives weekly advisement from security groups that work with missions agencies. “It’s incredible to see the real-time information that we can get now.”

In many cases, Durance says, Haiti’s lack of infrastructure means there are no authorities in place to work with. TeachBeyond’s local partners then must determine when and where aid can be given. 

Serving with the local church

Thanks to lessons learned during COVID, TeachBeyond’s campus easily pivots between in-person and online classes depending on security concerns. Missionaries with TeachBeyond see gospel significance in how the local churches respond to the crisis.

“We really want to be active in walking alongside the local believing community and seeing how we can be a part of that,” Durance says of their mission.

“I know many of our missionaries present in these situations are thinking about that: ‘How do we walk alongside the believing church in these moments, knowing this is actually the critical opportunity where the church can be most visible and most itself, if you will, in a community?’”

Please pray for Haiti! 

“When we see these [crises] happen, we always are praying that the local church can step into the hole, step into the void, step into the chaos as the place that provides stability and care and, of course, eventually hope that is ultimately delivered through the Gospel,” says Durance.

“When I think of Haiti, it starts with the letter H — we want to pray for hope. We know there are so many people in this country that are waking up today without hope, and we need to pray that they have hope and that that is grounded in a reality that God delivers this nation from the turmoil that they’ve been living under.”

Another prayer point is “wisdom and deliverance for those that need to be making decisions here, both in country and those are trying to support out of country.”  

Header image is a representative stock photo courtesy of Miguel Caret Serra via Pexels.

In recent years, Central Asia has seen a wave of new laws and regulations related to extremism. While the idea of protecting national security sounds reasonable, the concept is often vague and flexible. Almost anything can be considered a threat — if someone in authority decides it is.

David Durance from TeachBeyond explains:

“And although some of this is under the guise of trying to be secular, it really does, in practice, go against our Christian brothers and sisters in their ability to practice simple things like gathering, things that we’re interested in, which would be Christian education, freedom of speech,” he says.

Photo courtesy of 光曦 刘 via Unsplash.

He compares the atmosphere to a landscape that changes overnight: “You walk out your door and you know what your front yard looks like, and then you walk out the door the next morning and the front yard looks different.”

That change in “landscape” can take many forms, such as the sudden revocation of a building license or the introduction of new, restrictive regulations on educational activities. One day, someone might securely own and operate a school; the next, that ownership is nullified in a moment by the decision of a single official. The pressure is real, and uncertainty weighs heavily. Yet in the face of these shifting circumstances, believers are stirred to think creatively and adapt with wisdom and resilience.

“How we can pivot to thinking about a learning center rather than a school, and pivot towards thinking about how we can live within these constraints of the law and still have the Gospel presented in a really meaningful way through the relationships that God continues to build here,” Durance says.

He says that even in the crisis of losing a building, the relationships formed over years — or even decades — become the foundation for moving forward. He adds that TeachBeyond finds opportunities to serve: “And as is often the case, the local municipal work that we get to do, especially in schools, ends up providing a bit of an umbrella for us to continue the work in a way that we would not otherwise be able to do.”

Pray that local believers are inspired to find new pathways forward so the work continues despite restrictions!

“Amazingly enough, we often see growth in that — as we see persecution happen, as we see the landscape shift, God often uses that to really further the Gospel,” Durance says.

Tashkent’s Amir Timur Square: header image courtesy of Dasha Novikova via Unsplash.

David Durance from TeachBeyond says the violence and atrocities occurring in the rebel-occupied Eastern cities are echoing in the capital city, Kinshasa. There, protests and uncertainty in the streets mean unsafe school commutes for children. Teachers and parents face constant trade-offs. 

“That’s a by-day decision trying to determine whether it’s safe for kids to go to school,” Durance says. 

He believes it is best for students to maintain the normalcy of school attendance, but dangers in the city have turned TeachBeyond’s programming into a balancing act. 

“Safety in the city – just getting from one place to another – can be a real concern, so we’ve had to really adjust our schedule and at some points not offer any programs just because we’re not recommending people leave their homes,” Durance says. 

Photo courtesy of Pixabay.

Local teachers and school heads say kids are confused and shaken by recent events. The unknowns they face in the absence of school routines create gaps that are immediately flooded with fear. 

“There are underlying issues of trauma that come out of this where kids have to deal with the fear of just doing normal life,” Durance says. 

Things like walking to school or picking up a grocery item at a local shop are off the table. Educators must think creatively to maintain safe school environments. Durance says they ask the question, “How do we educate in the context that life is happening for the students God has given us?”

A partial solution is to relocate educational efforts, at least temporarily. TeachBeyond is opening schools outside Kinshasa, where some kids can still be supported educationally. Regardless of school attendance, Durance says this is a time when children are open to the Gospel. 

“Kids are ready to hear that ultimately our hope is not in a government leader or a rebel leader or anything like this,” he says. 

Whether they are witnessing violence, being uprooted from homes and routines, or even facing conscription threats, kids need to be grounded in the Kingdom of God so they have an eternal lens for processing earthly events, Durance says. Herein lies an opportunity for Christians. 

“In the DRC, the Christian community is responding – even in some ways taking the lead in trying to bring peace to their country,” he says. 

Christian leaders are banding together to promote peaceful messaging and action. By doing so, they are putting themselves at great harm. Please pray for them, and pray that their testimonies will affect citizens and rebels alike. 

Pray especially for the children of DRC’s unrest: that they would find hope and freedom from fear in the shadow of the Almighty. 

Durance gives believers three other prayer points for the DRC: 

1. That the region would see lasting peace. 
2. That the church would remain faithful. 
3. That everyday people would be helped physically and spiritually by the hands and feet of Christ who are responding to them. 

For in-depth background and analysis of the DRC conflict, see the American Enterprise Institute’s special report. 

Featured photo courtesy of Kimberly Farmer via Unsplash.

Roughly 2,500 new refugees arrive in Uganda weekly, mainly from the DRC.

“Uganda is, I think, unique in the world in that they have an open door policy to saying people that come are going to be given land and provided with the basic national services that their citizens would be,” Teach Beyond’s David Durance says.

Through teacher training and a Christian academy, TeachBeyond uses educational services rooted in a biblical worldview to impact the lives of teachers and students. More about that here.

“There are tens of thousands of people, either in the most remote parts of Uganda or refugees coming in that are really not able to access even the core essentials of a school because there’s just far too far away,” Durance says.

“I probably could open up a suite of schools and have 10- or 20,000 more students in those schools within a couple of days.”

TeachBeyond needs your help to meet these colossal needs. Support TeachBeyond’s work in Uganda here. “When you’re working on a mission with this part of the world, in this particular context, people need to walk alongside [us], or we’re not able to move forward,” Durance says.

While giving is the best way to help, “going” is another option. Connect with TeachBeyond here to learn more.

“If you’re an educator with a real passion for this, we want to hear from you,” Durance says.

Header image courtesy of TeachBeyond.

France isn’t the country you’d expect to be facing government collapse. Many countries make headlines for economic or political instability, but France isn’t usually one of them. David Durance of TeachBeyond says:

“We recognize that the whole world is kind of groaning at the moment, and we think that, ‘Oh, that’s only going to be in Syria. Oh, that’s only going to be in some parts of Ukraine, et cetera.’ I think what we’re actually seeing from Bolivia to France to Syria,to some places that we’re working on in creative access in Southeast Asia, is that there actually are seismic shifts happening underneath all that’s going on.”

In other words, tensions in France’s Parliament are symptoms of a global need for God-given stability. “When we see no-confidence votes, when we see a government fall, what looks like unexpectedly, we recognize that underneath there is unrest,” Durance says. “There’s unrest right now around the world, […] much closer to home than we might think.”

This kind of unrest goes against the fundamental basis of Christianity. Scripture calls believers to be bearers of peace and to speak peace into a culture of turmoil. That’s what TeachBeyond wants to do—but that’s easier said than done when staff numbers are down. 

“When we see unrest, it becomes very difficult for us to start a recruitment cycle,” Durance says. “Right now, it’s full on. We’re trying to recruit 100 missionaries right now, and a good portion of those go to Europe.” That’s much more difficult when the same governments that are supposed to distribute passports and process travel visas don’t have leaders.

Pray that TeachBeyond will be able to fill those roles and find teachers and missionaries, because the need is great. “The more unrest and unsettledness, the more the Gospel is sharper in those areas,” Durance says. “As we deliver Christian education, for example in France, we want to be the bearers of the hope that brings.” 

If you want to participate in the work TeachBeyond is doing, we’ll connect you right here. If you can’t go, pray.

“Father, as we pray for peace, may the Gospel be the agent of change in countries. We don’t want a band-aid; we’re looking for the ultimate solution to seeing peace come.”

Header photo courtesy of Unsplash.