Geography is not my strong suit. In fact, the blue Trivial Pursuit wedge represented the category that usually kept me from winning that famous ‘80s board game. Like many American Jews of my generation, my life and classroom experiences left me under informed about most places on the globe other than the United States, Eastern Europe and Israel.

You can imagine my enthusiasm when I learned our professional team would have the opportunity to accompany our foundation’s trustees and rising trustees to the little known country of Malawi in south-eastern Africa. Our site visit with a new grantee, Innovation Africa, gave me the chance to add a new country to my shortlist of spots I could find on a map. It also gave me a chance to answer this key question: why would a foundation committed to proliferating Jewish wisdom and values in the contemporary world deploy such a large delegation to visit unknown villages in Africa, so far from the heartbeat of Jewish education and outreach?