Mission Statement ...

• Operation ReachBack, Inc., (ORB) is a charitable, educational and nonprofit organization of professionals of African descent within the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.  Its purpose is to foster research, provide scholarships, facilitate role models, promote professional and spiritual development and undertake other projects, programs and activities that will strengthen and solidify the Black community with special attention to Africa. 

• Fostering research.  Through such projects as the book Perspectives:  Black Seventh-day Adventists Face the 21st Century (Review and Herald Publishing Association, Hagerstown, Maryland, 1996), ORB strives to conduct analysis that is the basis of planning and action.
• Providing scholarships.  ORB is sensitive to the education challenges of our youth and young adults, but especially those seeking Christian education.
• Facilitating role models.   ORB understands the value of example and encourages identification and exposure of Black Adventist achievers as a means of inspiring others.
• Promoting professional development.   ORB's programming includes both education and sharting in intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary networking.
• Promoting spiritual development.  ORB is not organized as a devotional activity, but is thoroughly committed to socioeconomic initiatives that are based upon and inspire spiritual commitment.
• Undertaking activities that will strengthen the Black community with special attention to Africa.   ORB believes that " charity begins at home," but as Joseph who was taken against his will from his home, placed into bondage, delivered from slavery, blessed with a position of advantage and authority in Egypt, reached back to help his family - so should we.

Garlan Dulan, PhD., Director of the education department in the General Conference, and Jesse Wilson, D.Min, Pastor of the Riverside, California, Kansas Avenue Seventh-day Adventist Church, present Karlisa Whittaker with a plaque commemorating the scholarship presented to her by the Southeastern California chapter of ORB.