Charity Started By Local Brad Otto Hits A 10-Year Milestone Of Giving

Pastor Brad Otto’s sense of call to launch the Acts of Wisdom non-profit organization started with a worship service in the Chapel of the Abiding Presence at Texas Lutheran University in 1998. Adjunct Professor Michael Birnbaum spoke about his passion to serve among the desperately poor people in Central America and invited students to come with him on a mission trip to Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Otto signed up.

What this born and raised in Fayette County student witnessed over those three weeks planted a seed. That seed eventually grew into Acts of Wisdom, launched in 2013. The organization’s primary purpose is to provide schoolbooks and supplies, expand classrooms, build libraries, and equip teachers with materials to teach effectively. Over the past decade Acts of Wisdom has reduced school dropout rates from 35% to under 9%. Those schools Acts of Wisdom helps consistently get top ranking student performance levels.

Otto recalls that on his college mission trip, “I spent most of my time under an umbrella tree listening to a little boy named Jimmy read to me. He wanted to be a teacher someday, but sadly, that dream wouldn’t come true for him, as it doesn’t come true for many children around the world. Most boys wind up working with the drug lords and girls became prostitutes. That was my first look at poverty up close and it changed me.”

When Otto was called to serve Messiah Lutheran in Houston in 2009, he worked with the congregation to participate in the Austin based non-profit Water to Thrive to build a well in Ethiopia. Water to Thrive was launched from Triumphant Love in Austin, Texas in 2008, with a vision to deliver clean, safe water to rural African communities. Over the past 15 years they’ve installed 1,687 wells, improving the lives of over 800,000 people.

In May 2013 Otto accompanied members of Messiah to Ethiopia with Water to Thrive to build a well the congregation had funded. “I saw this same kind of poverty I’d seen in Central America. I witnessed a huge education crisis and it tugged on me. I asked questions like ‘Where are the books for kids?’ They had only one book for every ten kids in the rural areas. A student had to wait for a turn to get the book. By the time you get the book, the class might be on a different topic.

“Communities might have schools built, but no students, because they didn’t have desks, books, or even chalk boards. Some of the larger non-profits would build the schools, but rarely furnish them so teachers could actually teach. This just seemed wrong to me. Here we are, the western white folks, coming to help this African community but we don’t bother to ask, ‘What do you really need?’” He came home and realized, “I really felt called, compelled to do something about it. I’d never started a non-profit, though working as a pastor in a congregation is good experience for that. I didn’t have money in a bank to get things going. I went to a Half Price Books and found a copy of Nonprofit Kit for Dummies for seven dollars and followed it step by step.

The people with the skills and financial resources to help showed up when needed until the fledgling organization had a board of directors, a name, a mission, and a donor data base. In January 2014 Otto learned the IRS had approved Acts of Wisdom as a 501c non-profit.

“The new board and I decided to start with the $3,500 it would take to supply one school in Robit, Ethiopia, with the books they needed. It started to click that this was doable. It was a solvable problem.”

Otto was in an Ethiopian market while on his first trip to see the school where the organization was supplying books. “Two kids approached me. I thought they wanted money, but it turned out they wanted pens. They needed them so they could do their homework. That was all they needed. Something we take for granted is the key to unlocking a kid’s potential to become something. Now whenever I take groups to Africa, I tell them to bring pens because the kids love pens. They use them for homework, to draw, write, imagine. The power of the pen. I still carry a picture of those two kids.”

Over the years Otto has developed a close partnership and friendship with Ethiopian Johannes Wassie. The relationship started when Wassie was Otto’s personal guide on his first trips. Today he is a Words of Wisdom part-time staff person who checks on the schools, delivers the supplies, and helps keep track of the organization’s paperwork. Acts of Wisdom has enabled him to evolve from his work as tour guide to an administrator, who now also works locally with Water to Thrive.

Wassie excels at being a guide for those who visit, wanting to do good for the communities they see. He’s also an interpreter between the local people who speak Amharic and the Englishspeaking visitors.

Words of Wisdom started with one school and a philosophy Otto picked up from Pastor Andy Stanley at Northpoint Church in Atlanta, GA. “Do for one what you wish you could do for many.” That one has grown into four schools in Ethiopia, two in Uganda and one in Liberia. The school in Ribit has grown to 2,000 students from kindergarten to fifth grade. A total of 6,000 students benefit from the organizations work in the four Ethiopian schools.

Over the past two years Words of Wisdom has expanded into Monrovia, Liberia where the number of students served has increased from 60 students to 130 and is now approaching 150. The most recent, and perhaps most ambitious, project currently underway is a $250,000 capital campaign to build an orphanage for ten to twenty Liberian elementary school age youth with an adjoining six-bedroom guest house.

By providing housing for mission trip visitors, Acts of Wisdom can reduce the cost per visitor by half, enabling more people to travel to see their donor dollars at work. The current price per participant for a ten-day mission trip with Acts of Wisdom is around $3,000. By providing housing, that cost drops to around $1,500.

Part of the capital campaign plan includes investing $25,000 to start an Endowment Fund to ensure there will be funds available to address future financial needs.

Meanwhile in Uganda, Words of Wisdom is building a new classroom wing to house a student art project. Students apply the art techniques they learn to produce art which Acts of Wisdom sells in the States, sending the funds back to the school in Kampapa, Uganda.

In its first year Acts of Wisdom received about $10,000, primarily from donors who knew Otto personally. Over the past decade they’ve received $500,000 and are on track to receive $100,000 in 2023. The funds raised cover the cost of $35 to $40 per student for uniforms, vaccinations, school supplies, and food during the time they’re at school. Donor dollars also provide some housing for teachers. The Ethiopian government pays teachers, but in Liberia teachers donate their time and have to find other ways to pay their personal expenses. Acts of Wisdom is purchasing motor bikes for teachers to help with the five-to-six-mile trips they travel each way each day to get to school. The bikes will also give them more time and a resource they can use to generate their own income during the half days they aren’t teaching.

Since its inception in 2013 Acts of Wisdom has provided 60,000 schoolbooks, all bought in the countries where they are used. COVID-19 caused a pause in the three-trips-per-year schedule, but Otto is again planning mission trips. He’ll lead three groups in 2024: Ethiopia in January, Liberia in April, and Liberia in the fall, on a date yet to be determined.

Otto realizes, “I have been incredibly fortunate in my life to never have to experience the difficulties I see in the world every day. I can’t imagine what it’s like to go hungry, to not have clean drinking water, and to not have access to quality education.”

Apparently, he can imagine it well enough to work with his seven-member Board of Directors and his growing list of donors to respond in tangible ways to the need for both safe drinking water and an education. It seems God has heard the people’s cry for mercy and justice in Ethiopia, Uganda, and Liberia and tapped Pastor Brad Otto to do something about it. For more information contact him through

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