Bringing Real Hope, Change, and Truth to Africa

ThriftSmart partners with African Leadership to make a real difference in the lives of millions of God’s children in Africa

The thrifty lifestyle can be a real win-win experience.

• For those who contribute items to their local thrift store, they are decluttering their lives.
• For consumers, buying from a thrift store like ThriftSmart means huge savings on some very nice things.
• For workers, thrift shops provide meaningful employment and genuinely serve their community.

But perhaps most importantly, here at ThriftSmart, 100% of our proceeds benefit locally-based charities.

ThriftSmart’s Dedication to Helping Others

ThriftSmart exists to help God’s children all around the world. In fact, co-founder Dick Gygi’s trip to Africa in 2005 was the catalyst for the foundation of ThriftSmart.

“I observed the poverty in Africa and came back to Nashville to the realization that we had significant poverty, even in Nashville, with more than 1000 homeless children living in the backseat of a car. I knew we had to do something to make a difference!

Tres Scheibe and I launched ThriftSmart to provide funding for African Leadership to eradicate poverty in Africa and provide education for pastoral training and community development. ThriftSmart was visualized as a long term funding source for African Leadership.”

Many people around the world struggle with poverty in ways that we in America can scarcely imagine. They are the least of our brothers and sisters, not because they are any less God’s children, but because they are most in need of help.

Imagine living on an income of $1,483 per year. That is the average income of a person living in sub-Saharan Africa. Keep in mind that Americans, on average, live on 40X this amount.

According to World Vision, there were 234 million chronically undernourished people in sub-Saharan Africa in 2019. The situation is especially acute in East Africa, where 7 million people are at risk of starvation and 12.8 million children are severely malnourished.

Life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa is only 46 years, more than 30 years less than in the U.S.

And of course, the COVID 19 pandemic has only made these problems much worse.

ThriftSmart’s Partnership with African Leadership

ThriftSmart is proud to partner with the organization African Leadership to bring help to the beautiful people of Africa.

African Leadership is passionately dedicated to spreading the love and word of God throughout Africa. But to African Leadership, this means more than just preaching; it means making fundamental change:

• Changes in people’s hearts
• Fundamental and powerful changes in the conditions of peoples’ lives.
• Changes that help real people find prosperity and happiness by working and building connections with their local communities
• Change that leverages the inherent strengths in the local cultures

Working primarily in war-torn and traumatized East Africa, African Leadership is building a new class of African leaders from the ground up. Leaders grounded in the Bible and inspired by God.

African Leadership has trained and educated over 80,000 students. The courses of study include trauma healing, the biblical worldview, and civic leadership. African Leadership collaborates with national leaders in 11 countries to help build thriving local communities.

African Leadership students have created projects to dramatically improve the lives of their fellow Africans in their own communities through:

• Establishing clinics that have served over 650,000 patients
• Giving 100,000 people access to clean water, reducing the risk of disease
• Graduating 1500 medical professionals to fight sickness and disease ravaging African communities
• Building orphanages
• Ministering to those traumatized by war and other sufferings
• Reuniting families, even a pair of twins who were separated at birth

Help ThriftSmart Help Africa

At ThriftSmart, we are proud to partner with African Leadership to help them provide assistance and hope to so many people in Africa.

ThriftSmart is more than just a place to find great bargains. We are a Christian ministry. We know that God’s love for each of us is boundless, and His love is showered upon all of His children equally. And, as Christians, we know we must minister to those of God’s children who are suffering the most.

By working with African Leadership, ThriftSmart is doing God’s work in Africa and ministering to the needs of the people. When you donate items to ThriftSmart you are doing so much more than clearing out your closet.

When you shop at ThriftSmart, you are doing so much more than picking up great bargains.

When you support ThriftSmart, you’re not just helping yourself; you are helping to make the world a better, more loving, and more caring place…for all of God’s children.

At ThriftSmart, we salute and thank African Leadership for the amazing and wonderful work they are doing in God’s service.