Churches Launched on Development Training DPS
Episcopal News Service. April 2, 1987 [87073]
NEW YORK (DPS, April 2) -- A collaboration among the Diocese of Tananarive; the Overseas Development Office at the Episcopal Church Center; and Trinity Church, Wall Street's grants program is bringing development training to Anglicans in the Malagasy Republic.
Tananarive, on Madagascar, is one of three dioceses of the Eklesia Episkopaly Mlalagasy, part of the Church in the Province of the Indian Ocean. It is a poor diocese -- much of its support comes from the Church of England's United Society for Propagation of the Gospel -- in a desperately poor country. Subsistence farming is the normal way of life and the problem of starvation affects the clergy -- whose ratio is one per 1,000 Anglicans and who are paid only when the funds are available -- as well as their people.
Contacts between Trinity and the diocese's bishop, the Rt. Rev. Remi Rabenirina, led to a consultant being sent to Madagascar to do a needs assessment. Out of that came a plan to send an expatriate (there being no local person with sufficient training) development officer, now in the process of being selected, to Tananarive to work with the diocese for a minimum of two years and to train and work with an indigenous counterpart. Together, they will assess needs and available materials, then focus on training -- how to work with communities so they can plan their own small projects. Training and technical assistance will be provided by the Episcopal Church Center's Overseas Development Office.
The project took shape recently when Kirsten Laursen of the Church Center, a development consultant, and Trinity's consultant, M. Carol Jaenson, spent a week in Madagascar working with the diocesan development committee and about two dozen participants in a pilot program to help them create a vision for development in the diocese. Topics included the role of the church in development, a theology of development and ways to work with communities to plan local development projects. Two clergy consultants -- at least one of whom will be from a developing country with a similar program -- will run a workshop in August to help the diocese's clergy define their role in development.
The other two dioceses are being invited to participate with the hope that the work will expand into those areas.
Another part of the plan over the next few years is to provide training and support for development agents on the local deanery level. The Mothers' Union also will have a strong role in raising up and training local leadership.
Laursen spoke of the eagerness of the people she met to learn and to help the Church grow and meet the needs of the people, of their strong commitment, and she described the purpose of the training as "to help Madagascar's church to effectively plan and manage their own development work. They'll know how to develop training and develop small projects that they can manage on their own." She added, "The potential to do something creative here is very high." Laursen also noted that Tananarive is currently hoping to find a Companion Diocese.