KENYA: ACWECA Set to Empower Religious Women be Master Trainers on Child Protection
KENYA: ACWECA Set to Empower Religious Women be Master Trainers on Child Protection
Sr. Jecinter Antoinette Okoth, FSSA
Following Pope Francis’ call on protecting children and preventing them from falling victim to any form of psychological and physical abuse after the global summit held last year on Protection of Minors in the Church, the Association of Consecrated Women in Eastern and Central Africa (ACWECA) are set to empower Religious women to be master trainers and make use of child protection policies and guidelines to safeguard children across the region.
“It is the responsibility of the Church to protect children, and as Religious women we have the role to safe guard them and care for their needs holistically. We have therefore developed a program to train Religious women to be master trainers and answer the mission of Christ’s love by respecting the dignity of children and vulnerable adults,” ACWECA Child Safeguarding Officer Sr. Wilhelmina Uhai Tunu told AMECEA Online in an interview Tuesday, November 17.
“Many abuses are happening to children and it is a concern in the Church today. As an Association we saw the need that even though the Religious women may not be in direct contact with the children, indirectly they reach them through the people they serve in various institutions,” Sr. Tunu a member of the Little Sisters of Saint Francis (LSOSF) disclosed adding, “The training will help the nuns since most of them have little knowledge on how to care for children and unknowingly can be perpetrators of abuse.”
ACWECA which is a regional body comprising of ten National Associations of Sisterhoods from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and, Zimbabwe, aims at fulfilling its vision of “in empowering Women Religious with enhanced evangelization tools to promote the dignity and validity of human life.”
According to the Secretary General of ACWECA Sr. Hellen Bandiho, training Religious women opens way to reaching more people in the society since nuns are spread in various institutions and reach many people in their service.
“Training Religious women is the commencement of our expansion. We are aware that abuse of children takes place in the society where the nuns serve,” Sr. Badhiho a member of the Sisters of Saint Theresa of the Child Jesus said during the Tuesday interview and continued, “By having Religious women as master trainers, they will train other people whom they work with including care takers of children in the institutions, staff in the institutions, the families and all other stakeholders who takes care of children.”
She added, “This project is a wake-up call to help the Sisters know what is right and what is wrong for the children. So, a training guide will help us reach more sisters and more people in the society.”
The project which is supported by Kindermissionswerk, a German-based organization whose objective among others is to support development cooperation projects geared towards children, has conducted a three-week virtual training of 12 Religious women identified from ACWECA region as they anticipate for another training before master trainers are commissioned to the field to begin the mission of training others.
Explaining why ACWECA opted to train the Religious women on child protection, the Finance Officer Sr. Betty Grace Atim from Little Sisters of Mary Immaculate of Gulu (LSMIG) disclosed that most congregations have developed child protection policy but are not implementing the document.
“From the survey, we did it was clear that most of the congregations and the National Associations have child protection policy and the concern is that the document is not used but shelved, hence the need of training the Religious women on how to use the child safeguarding policy,” Sr. Atim narrated.
She highlighted further that even though the Associations have child protection policy, there is need for review to incorporate directives on preparedness in cases of pandemics.
“Covid-19 has reawaken us and we need to review our policy to include some aspects of preparedness for future eventualities,” Sr. Atim said and continued, some basic education for children on how they can care for themselves should be included in the policy.”
ACWECA envisions that Religious women who are the master trainers will further train about 300 people taking care of children and later more will be trained.
