Head, Heart and Hands

All Nations is well known for pioneering holistic mission training, what we like to refer to as H3: Head x Heart x Hands.

It is not that we have specific academic modules, spirituality and personal development modules and hands-on, practical modules. The point is that we integrate those three areas. Clearly all modules have an emphasis but we consciously include academic, personal and practical elements in each.

Although we know that there is “nothing new under the sun”, we did find out an interesting little fact recently. We were certainly not the first to consciously emphasise these areas... Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the son of a Hawaiian missionary was studying in Virginia, USA when the American Civil War broke out. He became Lieutenant-Colonel of the Ninth United States Colored Troops Regiment in the Union army. He was so concerned about the lack of education of the African American troops under his command he began the Hampton Normal and Agricultural institute on 1st April, 1868 to give “hand, head and heart training."

In Hampton's highly structured program, the morning was devoted to religious exercises and academic classes, the afternoon to vocational trades and work. Armstrong insisted that students learn by doing. The skills Hampton taught included blacksmithing, carpentry, cooking, dressmaking, farming, laundering, sewing, and shoemaking. The students themselves helped build and maintain their campus.^₁

It sounds very much like the Missionary Training colony begun by Captain Godfrey Buxton, the man who brought All Nations to Easneye.

Apart from holistic training, the connection with Armstrong and All Nations at Easneye goes even further! After the partial release of the slaves in the British Empire in 1834, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, (the Father of the man who built Easneye), was successful in obtaining the Lady Mico Trust for the education of freed slaves in the West Indies. In 1836 the Mico trustees “established four teacher training institutions and hundreds of elementary schools in the British Colonies in the West Indies, Mauritius and Seychelles.”² Today Mico College is the second largest teacher training college in Jamaica. Some of the graduates of Mico College even went, as missionaries to West Africa!

We are proud to say that holistic training and the eradication of slavery are fundamental aspects of All Nations history and lay at the heart of who we are today.

All Nations Learning Ethos
All Nations Approach to Training
All Nations Heritage

¹www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1801-1900/hand-head-and-heart-at-hampton-institute-11630545.html (accessed 3/4/2017).
² www.themico.edu.jm/web/www/history  (accessed 3/4/2017)