Africa Field Directors.
Dana Mahan was born in Iowa and grew up in Arizona. He became a Christian through Young Life during high school, a ministry with which he served for five years while attending the University of Arizona. After completing his undergraduate program, Dana started his first mission assignment with the Mennonite Central Committee in Swaziland. Four years later, he moved with his new wife Sibongile to Boston, where he received an MDiv from Harvard University. Dana began his second mission assignment in 2006 and now works with Ripe for Harvest World Outreach, based within the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Pretoria, where he leads a support fund that invests financially in ministry research and training across Southern Africa.
Sibongile Mahan is from Mpumalanga, South Africa. The tenth of eleven siblings raised by a devout Christian mother, Sibongile came to faith as a young child, studied education while in college, and then started her career as a high school teacher in the mining town of Emalahleni. She married her husband Dana in 2003, then moved to Boston, so he could begin seminary. While in the US, she studied Early Childhood Development at a community college and worked at a preschool. Upon returning to Africa, Sibongile earned her PhD from UNISA and uses her position with Ripe for Harvest to increase the capacity of local Early Childhood Development educators, as well as the sustainability of the preschools where they work.