Community Development

In isolated regions, using a full range of aviation, communications, and distance education services, MAF helps meet some of the most basic human needs, thereby gradually improving the quality of life for the local population. MAF helps improve living conditions and enables thousands of families to develop safe, healthy, and productive communities.

MAF missionary-pilots assist in community development by transporting Christian staff and needed supplies for health and community improvement projects, as well as devoting many hours of personal time.

"Even though you reach out to the farthest corners of the globe, it is the person to person relationships that I see as your greatest strength. You have a huge impact in the areas you serve as there are no resources within the national culture to accomplish what you do."
—Brenda Mantel,worker at an orphanage in Lesotho.

For example, in Mali, MAF has enabled dozens of water projects that provide clean and safe drinking water for thousands of people. Digging water wells by hand has opened opportunities to share the Gospel with grateful villagers.

In one village alone where MAF staff dug a well, more than 35 new believers now attend a church initiated and built by the village people.

Likewise, MAF solar panels enhance village resources. By providing electrical power, children who need to work in the fields by day are able to study at night. They remain in school, gain an education, and thus begin to break the cycle of illiteracy and poverty.

In other remote regions of the globe, MAF brings in teams of experts who teach mothers, daughters, aunts, and even grandmothers how to sew or plant gardens in order to provide families with a steady income. Then by transporting their produce, handicrafts, and hand-made clothing to distant marketplaces, MAF helps families earn a living.

Recently in Haiti, 1,500 tilapia (a quickly reproducing species of fish) were loaded aboard an MAF flight destined for a Haitian orphanage. The goal was to provide its sixty-some children with a continual supply of food and much needed protein. A local ministry supplies tilapia from breeding ponds for transport to many locations. Once people are trained to care and feed this fast-growing fish, they benefit from a renewable food supply.