Goals:
For youth living in villages in Sub Saharan Africa, going to secondary school is nearly an impossible dream―especially if you’re a girl. And without education, most people in villages will never escape the cycle of poverty. Steve and Susan Vinton established Village School International, in 2004, with an admittedly impossible dream: the day when every youth in every village has the chance to go to school, and each of them gets to hear a clear presentation of the Gospel.
In the first year, their goal was to build 3 schools although local officials said it would take 3 years to get one school completed.
Strategies:
Founded on faith, in 2004, Steve and Susan Vinton came to Mexico Beach to meet with us to design their logo and first website. They knew brand image would be important toward their first objective of attracting potential student volunteer teachers at the Urbana Student Missions event.
They asked that we consider the colors of Tanzanian flag with a design that doesn’t come across as flashy or slick but professional and respectable.
To generate awareness, we also created:
- Small, easy-to-carry brochures
- Event posters
- Print ads
- Video used for promotional presentations and YouTube
Results:
In their first year, VSI exceeded their goal opening FIVE (5) schools in Tanzania. We’ve been serving them ever since and here’s what they say..
“Of course, you can include a case study on Village Schools. We’re thankful for the way that you helped us, and we’d be glad for people to know about how you did that, and about how that contributed to the actual results on the ground. We do indeed have 73 schools open — but that number is going to change next month when we will probably open at least 2 and perhaps as many as 5 new schools. We actually have people making bricks in 13 villages right now working to build new schools — more than we’ve ever had at one time! So, use the number 73, but know that within a pretty short time that number is going to be “outdated.” For our first 17 years we essentially moved at a pace of about 3 new schools a year (which really seemed fast!), and then in 2022 we opened 6 and already this year we’ve opened 10 and like I said we are hoping to open between 2 and 5 more this September! We’ve got over 17,000 kids in school Jack — and what is really wonderful is that it’s not like we’ve pulled kids out of other schools to come to our schools, it’s that for almost all of these kids they simply wouldn’t be in any school at all and they would simply not be getting an education. So, know that you’ve been a part of something that truly has been wonderful Jack. It was all just a dream when we sat in your office years ago ….”
―Steve & Susan Vinton
Share this study: