HI Community Center

The HI Community Center is a concrete manifestation of the flame of compassion the Institute seeks to share with those who are most in need. It has been designed as an integrated delivery hub for a range of rural empowerment services, all supporting one goal—to fight poverty, illiteracy, and inequality. The four pillars of a HI Community Center are education, healthcare, vocational training and internships, and sustainable micro-enterprise.

Taken collectively, these rural empowerment services form a toolbox of sorts to offer flexible, custom-tailored solutions for the specific needs of each community. By combining vocational training & internships with sustainable micro-enterprise, the vision is to offer integrated training and job creation. By launching these sustainable micro-enterprises under the auspices of the Community Center, it is envisioned that HI Community Centers will achieve self-sufficiency within just a few years, enabling a sustainable and scalable deployment model. Target rural empowerment projects for each category include:

Education

  • Primary and secondary schools for children, especially those who have fallen outside the traditional safety net of family and society
  • Public libraries and community reading programs

Healthcare

  • Primary health clinics and dispensaries, offering general public health programs
  • General public health programs, including health counseling, hygiene, diet, and nutrition
  • HIV/AIDS prevention and treatments programs offering traditional and alternative paradigms

Vocational Training & Internships

  • Adult vocational training supporting local craftsmanship, including metal-workmanship, carpentry, construction, dairy farming, bee keeping.
  • Sacred Link Jewelry vocational training and internship.
  • BioVedic Energy Farming training programs.
  • Training in micro-business management and the HI Community Cooperative model.

Sustainable Micro-Enterprise

  • BioVedic Farming projects promoting cultivation of a range of medicinal, aromatic, and energy crops which have both local and global application and marketability.
  • Sponsoring and supporting local cottage industries for indigenous production of locally needed good and services. These will revolve around the skills and training provided in our vocation training programs.
  • Organizing and supporting HI Community Cooperatives to produce and market agricultural and locally manufactured products


We believe piecemeal solutions can only serve as a stopgap, and can’t adequately address the myriad of intertwined social, economic, and environmental issues that challenge rural communities today. What is required is a holistic, multidisciplinary, spiritually-grounded solution, enabling the rural masses to harness and unfold their latent potential, and act as a catalyst for change in their own communities. On a practical level, it means empowerment instead of aid, providing knowledge and the means to put into practice.

The HI Community Center in Cameroon (West Africa) is the Institute’s flagship rural empowerment project in Africa. It will serve as a model for the many HI Community Centers envisioned to spread across Africa.

 

HI Community Center Cameroon                          HI Community Center Group

 

For more information about the HI Community Center in Africa, click here.