The Global Action Partnership (GAP) between Be The Change International (BTCI), the office of the Anglican Communion at the UN and the LBL Foundation for Children was officially signed into life Monday, November 23, 2009 in New York City.

Present at the signing of the memorandum of understanding was The Rev. Dr. Robert V. Lee, chairman and CEO of Be The Change International and Jacksonville, Florida-based organization FreshMinistries; Hellen Wangusa, Anglican Observer at the United Nations; and Olara A. Otunnu, president of the LBL Foundation for Children, winner of the German Africa Prize in 2002 and the Sydney Peace Prize in 2005, and 2011 Uganda presidential candidate.

From left, Olara A. Otunnu, Hellen Wangusa, The Rev. Dr. Robert V. Lee

GAP will be focusing on achieving the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and will be the first program to attack all goals at once. Using education as the point of entry to community mobilization and development in Haiti and Africa, GAP will use schools as central points for promoting collaborative action on other areas of need: safety and security, gender equality and family values, health education and care, shelter, and economic development (by addressing environment and climate issues).

These six areas all interlock with each other; if one area isn’t addressed, action in the other areas can’t be fully effective. This makes the GAP different from other international initiatives, which usually only address one area of the MDGs at a time.

“In our many years of trying to bring about social change in core-city Jacksonville, Florida, we’ve learned that to create community-wide change, multiple social factors need to be addressed simultaneously,” said Dr. Lee. “The 6-Point Community Initiative in Jacksonville has been very successful so the Anglican Communion asked as to recreate it globally.”

GAP will be most effective when supported and partially owned by the community in which it is initiated, according to Dr. Lee.

“If a community doesn’t want to help itself, you can’t force the help upon them,” said Dr. Lee. “We know that only when a community champions its own cause and takes ownership of the potential improvements can this be truly successful. We can see it happening in Jacksonville right now, and I have no doubt we’ll soon see it happening around the globe.”

Part of a community championing its own cause is focusing on children, according to Dr. Lee.

“Health and educational opportunities available to the children within a community are indicators of the community’s overall vitality and future sustainability,” said Dr. Lee. “Securing these and other opportunities for children require collaboration and ownership within the community.”

It requires hands-on participation from the residents, children, local faith leaders and numerous program partners, according to Dr. Lee.

“Investing in the education of children and youth is the most effective way to facilitate overall recovery and development in a war-torn society,” according to the LBL Foundation for Children.

GAP’s methods are also advantageous because its programs will be easily custom-tailored to fit the unique sets of circumstances and needs of each community in which they are implemented.

“This concept is the way you get things done,” said Dr. Lee. “Small grassroots efforts are more effective in working with individual communities than large-scale efforts because they are able to customize and personalize their approaches and adapt quickly to changing needs.”

Wangusa agreed, adding that community involvement is a key to GAP’s success. “If the community is going to own this and be a partner in this, we have to be able to listen to things that are important to them and apply that.”