Facilitators Empowered To Spearhead Development in Church
At least 31 facilitators have undergone a 2-week training on church and community development in the ongoing Church and Community Mobilization Process (CCMP) programme that aims at empowering the church and communities to overcome donor dependence.
Addressing participants during the training in Kisumu, NCCK Reverend Canon Peter Karanja acknowledged that the CCMP had transformed lives. Canon Karanja urged the facilitators to be an engine in the lives of communities they serve. He added that the Council had invested in economic empowerment of communities.
“This is a noble course and CCMP resonates with NCCK policy decision. We have invested in various areas like hospitality and health for the benefit of the common man”, he said.
The sentiments were echoed by NCCK’s Senior Programmes Officer for Capacity Building for Membership (CBM) Grace Muthungu and her Monitoring and Evaluation counterpart Alice Mutile. “There is observable change in their leadership and that has helped to do away with dependency syndrome”, stated Mutile. She noted that the church in Kenya had been empowered to take a leading role in development.
Tear Fund Programmes Officer in charge of Monitoring and Evaluation Mary Mbiuki underscored the importance of the training and promised more support to implement the programme.
Facilitators who spoke confessed that the church had been awakened. They said that they had already mobilized resources for small projects for themselves while reaching out to communities. Fourteen NCCK staff members were among those who attended. The programme that is funded by Tear Fund is expected to end in 2016.
