Use Your Talents the Congregation as Primary Development Agent - A knowledge development project based on voluntary work and a focus on local human resources and networking Vejle 26. april 2017 - Sigurd Haus sigurdh@nms.no
The possibility to do it yourself in cooperation with others The village needed a bridge to get easy access to the dispensary for women who are going to give birth gain access to school for the children also during times of flooding to make it easier to bring products to the market place The work was done on voluntary basis and organized by the local development committee (right picture) within FLM. The municipality provided the stones and the army provided the wood
The Congregation as Primary Development Agent The Malagasy Lutheran Church has about 3,5 mill. members and more than 6000 congregations all over Madagascar. One of the main ideas in their policy document (2005) is that development starts from the grassroots, when people go together and seek to solve their own problems.
Voluntary Work in the Congregations What we have learned in Madagascar is that the Church and its members are involved in a lot of development work within the church and in the local society. Building schools Build bridges or maintain roads Tree planting Courses in cultivation of different plants Advisors in agriculture Building rice-stores Building health care units Protecting the environment Running Care Centres for sick and needy people Etc, etc
The question was: How is it possible to stimulate and facilitate this kind of voluntary work?
Vision: To stimulate and support everybody in the church to use his or her talents to build a better Madagascar. Use Your Talents
MLC-Strategy The main task in this project is to establish separate functioning development committees at all levels, and create a network of relationships inside and outside the church that could support local development initiatives, not by offering financial support,
MLC-Strategy but by offering training and exchange of experiences. The role of the committees is to promote development in the village or the area where they are located
Cooperation This work leads many people to take initiatives and do things without external resources. But we also see that many of the most active people cooperate with local NGOs and local authorities on a very broad basis. In that way this work could be seen as a kind of base work that gives knowledge, develops self-confidence, connects people and creates networks, all factors that we see as crucial for development. In this context projects are something that is initiated locally. And the local actors also own and conduct the activities. Use Your Talents contributes to the ideal where the local actors are the prime actors and the NGOs support them based on decisions within the community. This could also been seen as an advantage for the NGOs. They can concentrate on their professional knowledge and cooperate with a partner that is reliable and competent; a partner that also has a long-term perspective and wants to continue the work after the cooperation period is finished.
The local church in most cases has not been involved in the development process in most African countries. What usually happens is that development departments are set up at the church denominational levels and are given the responsibility to carry out development programmes at the community level (Musa: 2002 ). Danladi Musa, Nigeria 2002 The local Church as Primary Development Agent The result is that the churches, or local congregations, do not have the positive impact on the local community which could have been possible.
Use Your Talents Knowledge Development Project Could this approach be used in other contexts, in other churches, or is this approach only applicable in Madagascar? Is it possible to find general factors that are useful also in other settings? Is it possible to improve the work in FLM by implementing ideas from other churches?
The overall objective for the knowledge development project Use Your Talents the Congregation as Primary Development Agent is to: Develop a model for community development work within a church context.
Exchange of Experiences During 2012 three churches and their Norwegian partners showed interest in the project, and a work-shop to discuss the project was held in Nairobi in December 2012. The churches are: The Malagasy Lutheran Church, Free Pentecostal Fellowship in Kenya, The United Methodist Church - Zimbabwe Episcopal Area Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus. Their partners are: NMS (Norwegian Mission Society), PYM (Norwegian Pentecostal mission), The Methodist Church NLM (Norwegian Lutheran Mission)
4 Study Tours During 2013-2014 we have had study tours to all the four churches with 3-4 participants from each of the other churches and their cooperating partners. In the beginning of each study tour each of the participants stay in a family for two days to learn what the family does for their living and in what way they are engaged in development work in the church and in the society. The reports from the stay are then used as the basis for the discussions about if and how this approach could be applicable in the different churches.
National Work-shops in 2015 The main purpose of the work-shop is to sum up experiences and reflections about Use Your Talents in each Church and discuss if and how this approach could be further developed within the Church
2 Academic Workshops in 2015 Smaller work-shops together with universities and other institutions to discuss and develop training programs.
Study Tour to Malagacy Lutheran Church 2013 In the first study tour we went to The Malagacy Lutheran Church (FLM) and the district of Mahasoabe, not far from Fianarantsoa. About 30 participants from FLM worked together with the international team. In Mahasoabe we were divided into small groups that stayed in a family for two days. After that we had work-shops and discussed our experiences. In Mahasobe we learned about a highly organized system for training and follow up of volunteers (MAFI) that become specialists in their field. The keywords are Training- Practicing-Sharing.
What can we do with what we have here and now? That is the main question in Use Your Talents.
New bridge Ambaniriana October 2015
Mrs. Charline makes handicraft from used plastic bags
RESULTS AND IMPACTS The income of Mrs. Charline increase. She could hire 6 people to work with her. The community and the Christian members of her congregation could recycle their used plastic bags by giving them to her. She is selling her products online and building network with other companies to export her exports
Offering to Development Work (red basket) in Ankafobalo
12 families working together to produce and sell handicrafts in Ankafobalo
AMBALAVAO FLM Two months IT-courses run for free by the Youth in the Congregation Financed by the Youth Association in the Church 100 students the last 8 years, 50 of them has got a job
Hanta created in 2010 an association for women in her town: 80 women are members One of their activities is to provide material for women who are giving birth in the hospital The result is that now almost all the women are going to the hospital to give birth. Before only a few did, because they could not afford the material. This makes it easier for the mother to recover and the risk to die during the birth has decreased. Hanta also trained the families in family planning. Now 10-12 babies are born each year. Before it was about 50 babies that was born each year in the area. The training was done in the hospital so that the parents could get rid of their fear for the doctor/hospital.
USE YOUR TALENT- ON THE BREEDING OF BUSHVELD ROAD RUNNER IN CHIKWIZO COMMUNITY Zimbabwe Rev Margaret Macheka
Five families are in this project and we are trying our best to sensitise other people in the community. Most families breed common road runners but we are encouraging them to breed Boschveld chickens as well. This will help them financially since they will be selling eggs and the chickens in large numbers. Once people get something to sell they will improve in church support and that is our aim regardless of denominations. We are a group of 5 families and are doing very well with our common road runner and mostly Boschveld which we are breeding in large numbers.
USE YOUR TALENT- ON THE BREEDING OF BUSHVELD ROAD RUNNER IN CHIKWIZO COMMUNITY We are teaching about this project in our churches. The five of us have improved in our church support and we demonstrate this by giving tithes faithfully. As a pastor, when doing my visitations i encourage my members and their neighbours to this profit making project so that we may sell eggs and chickens in the city where we will make more profit. We are also encouraging the community to grow more grains this coming season since we feed the chickens on grains. We hope and pray that more members of different denominations will help us and improve their lives financially.
In an Introdution to Use Your Talents workshop in Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cameroon in December 2015, Madame Rose presented some examples: About bridge building in a village. Sambolalo is a remote area. They had a big problem to sell their products because of a big river. They looked for means without looking for external resources. They did the work themselves and collected 3 mill to pay for the cement and the engineer to build the bridge. The women provided meals. They worked every Thuesday. After 6 months they finished the bridge. The cost for them was 6 mill. (If it was built by the government the price would have been 50 mill). They built all together 4 bridges. The impact of the bridges has been very big.
Honey Production. They produced and maintained the boxes together. They started to produce and then the state came and trained them. The production has tripled. Another village was interested and learned from them. They could contribute to build a school and make a well. Potable Water In another village they lacked potable water. Children died because of this. There was a retired man there from the government who trained them. Then they digged a well. They collected money to build it. They saw that this was a good example, we can do other things too. They installed a pump. There was a problem with maintenance. They collected money for that. Let us send one of our young men for training on how to maintain the pump. They did and for 3 years they did not have any problem. Then they invested the money they saved in a farm. Small ideas could bring good achievements.
What have we learned so far?
We will do things differently after this. We will value our resources in a different way. We need to speed up our fight against poverty. Only one synod of EEMCY is part of this network. We need to highlight it for our leaders. As a synod we have started on the work to be self-reliant, but now we have changed because we see that we can not only think for ourselves, but for the whole community. Very often everything is about money, but this is different. It is exiting. I am looking forward to see what will happen. Will it change our way of doing project work? I hope so. This can really change the whole country if every church member takes it in to consideration.
The program of The Use of Your Talent has been an eye opener in my life and has helped me to realise potential talent that I can use to develop my family needs and to support my church.
It creates a lot of enthusiam It works It is spreading