AMECEA: This Far We Have Come: AMECEA’s Journey Towards Establishing Child Safeguarding Standards & Guidelines
Mr. George Thuku, AMECEA Child Safeguarding Officer
The journey towards developing Child Safeguarding Standards and Guidelines began in 2015 at Kurasini Center in Dar-es-Salaam Tanzania when National Pastoral Coordinators from AMECEA Region during their meeting resolved to do something about child abuse, which according to Fr Emmanuel Chimombo, Coordinator of AMECEA Pastoral Department, is a painful reality in the world.
According to Mr. George Thuku, AMECEA Child Safeguarding Officer, all the countries represented at the Kurasini 2015’s meeting admitted that the problem of child abuse affected all of them. Unfortunately, at it was noted that AMECEA region lacked standardized guidelines to approach the problem and therefore AMECEA Pastoral Department was tasked during the Kurasini meeting to lead in coordination and review of AMECEA Episcopal Conferences’ policies.
In February 2017, AMECEA organized the first training on child protection for the sake of South Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia which did not have any initiatives at all. Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe were invited to share their experience and initiatives with regards to child safeguarding.
AMECEA Pastoral Coordinator
“At the Malindi training, we realized that the experiences shared by different conferences with some kind of initiatives towards child protection were quite varied,” Fr. Chimombo explained.
“The Kenyan and Zimbabwean initiatives were more of an educational policy, not Child safeguarding policy per se. The Zambian experience on the other hand was more of the universal Pontifical Missionary Childhood approach. It was therefore a wake-up call for us as AMECEA to come up with standardized, common and universally accepted guidelines that can be used across the region for Conferences to come up with policy documents that match the standards and reflects the issues as they emerge in their local contexts,” explained Fr. Chimombo.
In October 2017, the Pastoral Department presented a draft concept of the standards and guidelines to Secretaries General from AMECEA Conferences during their ordinary meeting in Juba, South Sudan. On 20th October 2017, AMECEA Executive Board members approved the the draft concept during their meeting in Eldoret, Kenya and promised to support its implementation. Upon approval by the Executive Board, the AMECEA Child Safeguarding Standards has formally been adopted by AMECEA.
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By Pamela Adinda, AMECEA Online News
