The Senior Captsone Projects

Dear Friends,

Greetings from cold and snowy Michigan.  Though we are used to these conditions, we know that our brothers and sisters in Texas are not so accustom to them.  May Texas warm up quickly.

News from Betty Memorial Institute is encouraging.  The Senior Capstone Project Teams now have names and have selected problems to solve.  Pastor Varney Freeman, Co-Founder of Betty Memorial Institute, provides the following Capstone progress update.  I took the liberty to Americanize some of his language in a way we might better understand.

We have six seniors this year.  They represent the first ever graduating class at BMI.  All six seniors are in the electrical department. They have accepted the challenge to participate in an extra-curricular Capstone Project that will conclude just prior to graduation in August.  This Capstone Project is intended to showcase the skills acquired during the years studying in the BMI Vocational Program.  The class has been divided into 2 teams of 3 persons each.  Each team has investigated and discovered a problem from communities around Tewor District in Grand Cape Mount County.  Teams will be providing a solution to these problems from locally sourced materials. 

I am pleased to inform you that after an intensive process of investigation each team now has a name and has identified a problem and with it a solution.  Team "A" prefers to be called "Muyamaih" (from the Vai Vernacular) which means "We will do it".  They have decided to build a palm-kernel-processor which will add value to the labor applied to palm oil. All around Liberia, tons of palm kernels are wasted because the people do not have the capability to produce what we call in Liberia "palm kernel oil." Palm kernel oil is expensive because it is scarce on the market. Imagine each major community owning a palm-kernel-processor; those who riskily climb a palm tree can benefit, not just from the red palm oil, but instead of wasting the kernel, they can secure them and process them to produce kernel oil. 

Team B prefers to be called "Kpomann" which is a phrase in the Kpelle Vernacular that means "help me". They want to manufacture a "Red Oil Palm Processor”. Team B, after an investigation, realizes that palm oil is eaten everyday by each person living particularly in rural Liberia. The process the locals go through to produce palm oil is so difficult, primitive, and unhealthy that palm oil processing equipment will be a light at the end of the tunnel for them. 

Both teams will need your prayers. This twelfth grade year is intensive in Liberia because the Government of Liberia wants this school year to be completed before or in early August. Twelfth graders are also writing the West African Exams which they must pass if they are to graduate. 

Thanks for your continued prayers and support. God bless the works of our hands.

Thank you for this update Pastor Varney.  

For the King and His Kingdom, Bruce