The Meet Hope Podcast
The Meet Hope Podcast
116: HOPE in Motion: Creating Educational Pathways in Malawi with Lonjezo University
In this final episode of our four-part series, Pastor Jeff Bills talks with Bruce Main of UrbanPromise about Lonjezo University. The conversation reveals a pressing challenge in Malawi: only 3,000 university seats exist annually for more than 50,000 high school graduates. Urban Promise's seven high schools alone graduate 700-800 students yearly, with most having no pathway to higher education. Lonjezo University addresses this gap with a 60-acre campus featuring dormitories, classrooms, and facilities designed to provide quality education in an environment where students can thrive academically and spiritually. Learn more and make a gift to HOPE in Motion today at meethope.org/motion!
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Welcome to the Meet Hope podcast, where we have conversations about faith and hope. Hope is one church made of people living out their faith through two expressions in person and online. We believe a hybrid faith experience can lead to a growing influence in our community and our world for the sake of others. Welcome to Hope our world for the sake of others.
Ashley Black:Welcome to Hope. Hello listeners, we are so glad to be in your ears today. Today's episode is the last of a four-part series we've been doing about Hope's capital campaign for 2025, called Hope in Motion. If you haven't listened to all of them, please go back and do so. Each one is informative in terms of what each part of the campaign entails, but also gives you an opportunity to hear from our incredible team of leaders here at Hope who do their very best each day to make church welcoming, accessible, fun, inspirational and meaningful to every person who comes in the front door or finds us online. Today, we are excited to share with you that, because of your generosity, we are halfway towards our goal of $125,000. And the campaign has only been live for a little over a month.
Ashley Black:We're encouraged and inspired by this community's desire to see hope in motion for generations to come, locally and globally. If you have not already done so, now would be the perfect time to give to Hope in Motion. Pastor Jeff has specifically asked the Hope community to consider giving 10% more than your regular giving this year. We also know that that is not possible for every individual or family, but please know that every gift matters and that no amount is too small To give. Go to meethopeorg slash motion and click the give button. You can also send your donation to HOPE at 700 Cooper Road, Voorhees, New Jersey, 08043, or, if you are in our lobby, drop your gift in one of our giving stations. Please be sure to include a note or memo that says Hope in Motion when you do so, so we know to include your gift in the campaign totals.
Ashley Black:As we listen to today's episode, know that even your decision to listen right now, to spend 20 minutes of your time connecting on this podcast, means something to this community. We are grateful for you. As a listener, as a community member, as a volunteer or any other way. You are a part of HOPE. Thanks for listening and now we hope you enjoy this conversation between Bruce Main of Urban Promise and Pastor Jeff.
Jeff Bills:Hey friends, welcome to the Meet HOPE podcast. I'm Jeff Bills and I'll be hosting today and I am really excited to be here with our good friend, bruce Main from Urban Promise. Bruce, how are you? I'm great, jeff. How are you? Doing good? Doing good, if you've been around Hope for any time at all.
Jeff Bills:We have a great relationship, have had a 35-year relationship with the good folks at Urban Promise in Camden. We have seen volunteers work there. We've been contributors financially to the work. They've been contributors financially to the work. We've watched it and celebrated its growth from a ministry in the city of Camden alone to cities around the US and now international there's a UP international. So what a great story. And we're always excited, bruce, when you come and bring folks from your organization to Hope in January. But today we're talking about something very specific. So, as our listeners know, we are in a time right now where we're raising funds in a campaign. We're calling Hope in Motion and we have three priorities and one of the priorities is to help support Urban Promise International in the development of Longezu University in Malawi. And Bruce, you've told us that Langezu is a native word in Malawi for promise.
Jeff Bills:So we'll call that Promise University, and so I just wanted our folks to get inside your thinking and the vision for this. So let me just begin by asking the obvious question how does a ministry in Camden end up involved in Malawi?
Bruce Main:Well, great, great question. You know, and I've shared this story before, but I'll I'll share it again Cause I think it's relevant. Uh, you know, we were pretty content with what we were doing here in the U? S and especially in Camden, you know, just trying to keep a, a local grassroots nonprofit, alive and growing here locally. Uh, was was, you know, plenty to handle?
Bruce Main:And uh, again, I was sitting in my office about 20 years ago, 19 years ago, and, you know, knock on a door. I look up, there's a young man. You know who are you? My name's william neasulu. Okay, where are you from? Malawi? Uh, where's that?
Bruce Main:And uh, you know, he described that it was, you know, sort of the southeastern Sahara portion of the continent. And you know, and I was like, well, why are you here? And he said, well, I'm here to do my internship. And I'm like, well, did you apply? And he's no, I said, well, you know, I'm just curious, how did you end up in my office? And he, you know, he said I bumped into a friend of yours in South Africa at a Bible conference and he said go to New Jersey and meet Bruce.
Bruce Main:So anyway, long story short, you know, he starts an internship with us and a couple of months later comes into my office and says you know, we, we need this in malawi. Uh, and I, I said we'll put together a little proposal and, and you know, tell me what you want to do, how much it's going to cost. And so he comes back with this proposal. He wants to start a summer camp, after-school program and a little orphanage for boys, and know it's going to cost about $12,000 for the year and I'm like you can't do that for 12,000. And so we raise a little money and he goes back and he starts an organization called Youth Care Malawi.
Bruce Main:And about a year later I go over and I'm amazed at what this young man's done. You know he's got a summer camp of 350 kids and he's rented a house. He's got 12 boys that were living on the streets of the Capitol and now they're back in school and they're getting two meals a day. And you know they've got a safe place to sleep. And you know, and again he's doing all this on, you know, a couple hundred bucks a month. And you know, and again he's doing all this on, you know, a couple hundred bucks a month.
Jeff Bills:So you know that Jeff just really kind of opened my eyes and said you know, why are we sending Westerners to Africa, to, you know, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars?
Bruce Main:send a family Missionaries that you're talking about, missionaries, yeah, and you know it's like, wow, we've got leaders in this country who, with a little training and a few resources, can, you know, really do something significant. So that opened the doors for this program we call the fellowship, where we bring young leaders from, started primarily with young leaders in Malawi and then it's expanded to other African countries. But they come, they spent two years with us in the US. We helped them get a master's degree in nonprofit leadership and during that two years they incubate and kind of, you know envision what they want to do when they go back, and it's been wildly successful. We've trained probably 150 now these fellows over the last, you know, 19 years. In Malawi alone. They've gone back to start 13 independent ministries, and these are schools and women's empowerment programs, farms, medical clinics, orphanages all started by, you know, indigenous leaders, and so that's that's how a little ministry in Camden ends up in, you know, malawi.
Jeff Bills:Sounds like a God thing right.
Bruce Main:It can't be anything else. I, you know like how, how does yeah I. I, you know like how, how does yeah, I mean you think about, I mean you've been a part of urban promise in Camden since the beginning and you think this, this little nonprofit, uh, now is reaching, you know, all across the globe.
Jeff Bills:It's. It's such an amazing story and and such a God story and say enough about it, which is why we bring you every year to say more about it. So fast forward. You now have these ministries in Malawi that are doing great things for young people and, as you've told the story, you have students graduating high school. You have students graduating high school, but there's no opportunity beyond that in Malawi because of the limited space in colleges and universities, and country from college or high schools that you, your fellows, have created, have no place to go. Is that right?
Bruce Main:Yeah, that's, you're spot on. We have seven high schools now in Malawi, I think. Collectively between them we're probably educating about 3,500 kids a day. We're about to add two new high schools, probably in the next year. I know one for sure is opening this September.
Bruce Main:So you know that number is going to increase and these are really good high schools, like they're graduating kids, and I think I heard recently from one of our leaders there there were 3,000 seats available for university across the country this year and the population of high school graduates in the country is somewhere north of 50,000. So you know the seats are limited and so we're graduating 700, 800 kids between our high schools each year and you know only a fraction of those will go on. So really felt like okay, you know, hey, it's great to get these kids to 12th grade, but then what? And a lot of these kids were going back to, you know, their villages, subsistence, farming, lives of real struggle and real poverty. So it just seems natural and appropriate that the next step would be to create another opportunity for these young people.
Jeff Bills:So let me ask just a practical question. It's a question that I know folks have, whether they voice it or not. I've heard from some folks as we've been raising this vision Aren't you concerned that the money that we're raising to build this university in Malawi is going to be taking funds from other ministries, whether it's in Malawi itself or in the US? So it's the question of are we overextending?
Bruce Main:Well, that's a great question and nobody feels that more than me, I'll bet. But let me give you an example. Okay, so when we started Urban Promise International, we actually incorporated it as an entity in 2009. Our first budget for UPI, the international portion, was $250,000 annually and about that time the budget of Camden Urban Promise was about $3.2 million. Okay, so that's in 2009. $3.2 million Okay, so that's in 2009. So, fast forward to today, you know 2024, the UPI budget, the international budget, we were about 3.2 million and Camden's budget is now like 5.1 million. So you know, again, like those are the numbers.
Bruce Main:That same question was being asked to me in 2009. Why are we starting an international branch? Isn't this going to cannibalize funding for Camden? It's done the exact opposite. You know it's. Both organizations have grown tremendously and I think there's a deeper kind of like there's resources out there, Jeff, yes, you know, like America is a wealthy country and there's a lot of, you know, wealth and there's a lot of good people that are looking for good things to give to, that are really making a difference, and so and people give to vision. You know people, and and not just vision, but also when they see results and they see organizations that are really fulfilling the mission that they're articulating. Um, people give and you know I I mean I I run into people that have a lot of money and they say you know, the hardest thing is to give it away because, like, like, I just don't know what to give it to.
Jeff Bills:And so I want to give you my email address after this is over.
Bruce Main:So we're, you know we're, but you know, I mean, does that? Yeah, absolutely.
Jeff Bills:It's you and I have talked about this over the years the abundance versus scarcity mindset. And so when people are convinced that there's a limited number of resources, and you know there's only so much to go around than you, hold on to what you have. But we know from Scripture and from a lot of experience that, to your point, when God is involved and people catch the vision, there are resources that we had no idea were available and were out there, and I'm absolutely convinced that's going to be true here as well.
Bruce Main:Yeah, you know one other thing too, jeff I find that a lot of people, you know, they want to give domestically and they want to help you know things that are happening in their own backyard, but they also they're also concerned about the world. And you know, uh, we have poverty in the U S, granted, but we also have poverty, and you know, in other countries, and and severe poverty, and so I think, you know, I I see this with churches, I see it with individuals. It's like, yeah, I want to do both, and it's not one or the other, and I think that's something that sometimes people miss.
Jeff Bills:Let's talk about Langezou University. Can you describe for us the vision for Langezou when it's fully functioning? It's you know it's. The buildings are up and students are coming. What do you envision Longezu looking like?
Bruce Main:Yeah, well, a couple of things, you know. One is we want to create, you know, a top school, like a good school and a beautiful school. We want a beautiful campus. We've purchased 60 acres of land. We've already dug a couple of wells on that land. We're farming that land. Right now it sits just outside of the city. It looks at this beautiful mountain and so you know all the architecture is going to be sort of facing the mountain.
Bruce Main:So it's, it's going to be beautiful and we want, you know, these kids, jeff, I mean they're coming from. I mean a lot of them live in, uh, you know, mud huts with no running water, no electricity. Uh, you know they're, they're coming out of real, you know real, impoverished. You know situations. So you know we want a place where young people can come and, you know, sleep well and eat well and have access to resources that kids with money have access to, kids with money have access to. So it's a Christian university, so that we want it to be.
Bruce Main:People have said, well, why don't you just everything's going online? Why don't you just make it an online school? And part of it, jeff, is again when kids are living in the conditions that they're living in. You know there's no light at night to study with, you know there's no reliable electricity or Internet, and so part of this is like bringing young people to a campus that not only develops them intellectually but also develops them spiritually and provides, you know, true formation of the whole person, and I think that that's growing middle class, which I think in impoverished developing countries, that's really critical, and so those kinds of things are the sorts of things that we hope to see at this school.
Jeff Bills:That's pretty exciting and you've given me a sense of where we are now. So right now you've got land, you're beginning to develop some things on the land, some farming and wells and so forth. Do you have an idea of when you anticipate the first class to get started?
Bruce Main:Yeah, well, it depends who you talk to.
Jeff Bills:Best case scenario.
Bruce Main:Yeah. So right now, two things. One is we look to break ground. We're hoping to break ground on the first buildings in April, this April, okay. So you know we've got enough money raised so far to build some classrooms and build a dorm and some other support facilities. So we need more money because we, you know, we want to build a dining commons and a student center and but our first sort of buildings are going to be, you know, again, classrooms, dormitory, laboratory and some other facilities.
Bruce Main:So the best case scenario is that if those get built, starting in April, that maybe we bring a freshman class on in September. That would be pretty ambitious. So we do have right now 135 graduates of our high schools in a program called the Longeso Scholars Program. So these are real kids that have graduated from our high school. They would just be sitting around for the year.
Bruce Main:So what we've done is we've created a program where each week they get about 10 hours of supplemental education and then they also do about 10 hours of supplemental education and then they also do about 10 hours of community service. So these kids have been engaged since last June of 2024. And so the hope would be is that they would be our freshman class, and so we've got the kids ready to go and they've been doing again some sort of pre-college kinds of, you know, academic enhancement things and so, and we've been building kind of a culture within this group of kids so that they would be coming onto campus, you know, I think a few steps ahead of most of the high school graduates in the country.
Jeff Bills:Such a smart program. That's awesome. Hey, we're tight on time, but I did want to ask another question. We've got, as part of our Hope in Motion campaign, we're sending a team of Hope folks to Malawi. So I think we have a team of 14 being led by Pastor Rick Court and Pastor Dave Falcone, and so they're meeting now and I know they've met with you and some members of your team. But for our listeners who won't have the opportunity to go, could you give us a sneak peek into what is our team going to see? What are they going to experience during their week or 10 days in country?
Bruce Main:Yeah, well, here are my hopes for the trip. One is for them to see what Urban Promise International is doing in Malawi. And I think you know, until you really get on the ground and you see what these leaders many of those leaders have been in your church, yes, you know, over the years. You know when we come in January and they've shared about what they were going to do when they get back to their country. And now to have a group of hopesters come to Malawi and actually see what these leaders have done, I think will be super inspiring. And so I'm looking forward to that.
Bruce Main:Just introducing them, reintroducing them to the leaders and having them sort of, you know, walk the campuses, meet the kids, so that will happen. And then also campuses, meet the kids, so that will happen. And then also, you know, I hope to have them do some manual work on the new campus, absolutely Put them to work. My hope is that the classrooms will be built and that you know your group would come and maybe do some of the final touches, maybe painting and some of the landscaping, those kinds of things. So it'll be a mix of things. And then I think, just also, you know, when you take groups on these cross-cultural sort of experiences, just the time together and processing and debriefing you know what you see, what you hear I think it just has such a deep and lasting effect on people. So I think people are going to come back really excited about what they've experienced and I think it'll be a real blessing to the congregation as a whole blessing to the congregation as a whole.
Jeff Bills:Amen, and I you know, just like we did with Haiti and Cuba, we'd love this to become a ongoing relationship and that other teams of folks in years to come will also have the opportunity to go and visit Malawi and be on the campus of Langezu, and we'll see this thing literally from the ground up and the amazing things that I know God is going to do through this, what is now a vision, what will soon become a fully functioning Christian university in Malawi. So, Bruce, blessings on you, man, You've done great things for the kingdom of God and obviously the Lord's not done with you yet.
Jeff Bills:Well not yet, we'll see. Hasn't put yet to pastor yet.
Bruce Main:No, but you know it's been just such a gift, jeff, to work with you. And you know, I mean I remember when that corner, where your church is now, you know it's just a piece of dirt and you know to see what it's become and it's not just the building but it's what happens inside of it and this is an outpouring of your leadership and your investment into the lives of your people over the years. And to be part of that, like you said, I mean I remember the first time I preached at your church we were in a little junior high and I think you had me setting up chairs before I got up to speak.
Bruce Main:Anyway, but to see what it becomes and again just to be part of those kinds of things in Malawi and other countries where you just remember walking the dirt and now it's a vibrant campus with hundreds of kids learning and growing. It's really, really special to be part of that and very life-giving.
Jeff Bills:Indeed. All right, brother. Okay, you have a good day. And to our listeners, thanks for tuning in to the Meet Hope podcast. If you want more information, you can go to our website, meethopeorg, and we have a Hope in Motion page and there'll be more information there about Langezu University for you to check out. So have a great day and we'll see you next week.
Intro/Outro:Thanks for being a part of the Hope Community as we continue our conversations about faith and hope. If you don't already, please join us for worship on Sundays or on demand. You can learn more at meethopeorg or find us on socials at meethopechurch.