It is with great thanks that we acknowledge God's unending benevolence to the Beacon of Hope ministry by blessing us with such great donors.  This year has been a challenge for everyone across the planet but we hope you can find something to be grateful about during this Thanksgiving season.

Here are some of the ways that Beacon of Hope has been challenged and blessed this year and we are grateful to all of supporters for making our successes possible:

1. Smart Choices Aids Preventions, Gospel presentation and Discipleship program.  
   Our teams were only able to reach 4348 students before the lockdowns took effect and shut our teams out.  They normally reach between 18,000 and 29,000 students each year.  The schools are gradually and tentatively opening up again and the teams will be doing all they can to reengage with the students.  We are grateful for over 209,000 students that have been trained in one of these programs and have all seen the Jesus Film and heard the gospel, since 2004.
2. 2020 COVID Feeding Program.
   In April our team leaders started to urge us to allow them to use Smart Choices dollars to start feeding programs. People were becoming more fearful of dying of hunger rather than COVID.  We naturally agreed and initiated a feeding fundraiser to supplement the teams monthly funds. Thanks to your benevolence and support we raised an additional $6625 to supplement the feeding program. A total exceeding $22,000 has been spent on feeding. This represents 20 tons of product touching 250 families and 1200 individuals.  
3. Farm Project Fundraiser.
   We did a special fundraiser for one of our team leaders in September to fund a farming/market gardening project.  Motivated by COVID 19 feeding program and the realization of how quickly a lack of food can become a crisis, Abraham set about initiating a farming project to boost his ability to help those that need help and also to make his ministry more self-sustaining.  Thanks to those of you that engaged in the fundraiser and enabled Beacon of Hope to cover the purchase price of the farm property.
4. Equipment replacement fund.
   Last month we did an emergency fundraiser to replenish some ageing and broken equipment.  Our awesome donors, within 24 hours covered our immediate and pressing equipment funding requirement and within the next week more than doubled our immediate need.  We now have a little surplus in our Equipment fund, which is a welcome relief.

We don't only have stories about how our financial needs have been met.  We also have stories about some remarkable feats of our teams.

1. Our team leader from Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe (Cyprian Shumba) has been traveling down to South Africa by bus for one week each month for the last two years to attend seminary.  He has just completed his Bachelor of Theology (BTh) degree.  Congratulations Cyprian.
2. In January we sent four representatives from our Smart Choices teaching teams to a training program with an organization named Kerus Global for a program names It Takes Courage.  This course covers all of the HIV/AIDS content in the Smart Choices program but also includes 8 more lessons covering various aspects of character development and life skills. The representative from Kitwe, Zambia is a qualified teach and has been given the opportunity of presenting this program over the radio in Zambia.  Well done Sharon.
3. Over the past three years our teams in Richards Bay, South Africa, have strived to become financially independent of Beacon of Hope International (BOHI).  Beacon of Hope - Kwa Zulu Natal - None Profit Corporation.(BOHIKZN-NPC) is an independent None Profit Organization established by us but now operating independently.  In January we were excited to acknowledged BOHIKZN-NPC for achieving financial independence for achieving financial independence from BOHI by accessing alternate funding for two out of the last three years.