Transformational Education for Abundance Culture: A Value-Centered Creative Educational Model for Shifting African Families and Institutions from Scarcity Culture Towards Enduring Holistic Peace And Development

This project explores the most effective intervention strategy to reverse the Congolese Paradox and transform its consequences that have turned one of the richest countries of the world, the DR Congo, to be one of the most unstable and peaceless countries, and its population one of the hopeless poorest. Still, 80 to 95 percent of DR Congo population claim to be Christians, making DR Congo one of the most Christianized countries, not only of Africa but of the world.
This study shows that DR Congo has been suffering from a Scarcity Culture (SC) and its consequences (wars, poverty, corruption, etc.) that resulted from a scarcity-based educational system. Conversely, it takes an eclectic intervention strategy using an appreciative communication approach consisting of the use of an innovative transformational education model that will result into the creation and diffusion of an Abundance Culture (AC). Such a model I refer to as the TEAC Model: Transformational Education for Abundance Culture.
This qualitative research has followed an Appreciative Inquiry approach in all its aspects. Data were collected through literary search, participant observation, and a case study in the form of a school project in Kinshasa city. Narratives, questionnaires, and interviews were also used.
The main conclusion indicates that the Congolese Paradox is reversable over generations. This reversal is possible through the training, mobilization, multiplication, and synergizing of Christ-centered Agents of Abundance Culture capable of discovering and leveraging existing assets in order to create and spread peace, justice, and prosperity everywhere, focusing on families. From the experimentation of the TEAC Model in Kinshasa City within the AROMA of Life school project, the main outcome was that an AC is a direct result of the intentional instilling, of the three ingredients of AC DNA. The concerned three ingredients are critical thinking skills, creative mind-set power and core values orientation in the education system targeting the equipping of basic educators (parents and teachers) and other Professionals of Wide Influence (PWI) to become catalysts of AC within their circles of influence. Another major interconnected outcome has been the designing of an appropriate approach for the implementation of the TEAC Model referred to as A-DISC learning approach: Appreciative, Discovery, Individualized, Synergistic and Creative. The study has postulated that cultural transformation for the Congolese (and African) Paradox is possible through a profound rething of the educational system by the implementation of TEAC Model and the use of A-DSC approach at all levels and in all forms of education.