Zimbabwe MRA/IofC report to the Africa Coordination Group since the Nigeria Training
Following the Africa Coordination Group (ACG) sponsored training in Nigeria early in February 2016, the Zimbabwe team continued to work towards attaining some of the core issues relating to governance. Since the Council of Management team had already been put in place prior to the training, the whole group met to get a report back from Roy Ncube who had attended the training session wearing two hats: that of ACG member as well as secretary of Moral Re-Aramament/Initiatives of Change (MRA/IofC)Zimbabwe.
The youths continue to reach out into the community as they engage with other service clubs like the Interact clubs in schools, visits to orphanages and homes of the physically impaired. One of our youths, Victor Nyanhete is a Caux scholar this year at Caux.
Some planning work was undertaken relating to budgeting for future activities going up to the end of the year. It was also agreed that since Zimbabwe is having presidential and parliamentary elections in 2018, there is need to have a Clean Elections Campaign which must begin to run some time in 2017.
Since the Nigeria training, the Chairperson and Secretary of IofC Zimbabwe met with the Department of Social Welfare officials on three occasions in pursuit of the registration process that was kick-started last year. Good news is that the team is now being recognized by the authorities as being legitimate, pending the result of our application for registration!
On the 11th May 2016, the Creators of Peace (CoP)team ran a landmark Peace Circle (PC) that included one official from the Department of Social Welfare and two men as participants! That PC acknowledged the part men contributed to the absence of peace in the home. The conclusion arrived at in that PC was that more men should be involved in future workshops.
The official from the Department of Social Welfare on the other hand shared how much she had been enlightened on how best to deal with corrupt practices in her department that had, for some time, bothered her conscience. She asked to be invited to the next PC so that she could invite her colleagues.
The youths meanwhile have also gone a step further by establishing an MRA/IofC group at the University of Zimbabwe where two of our students are currently studying. This was done with the support and nurturing of the same Council Members who are keen to grow the numbers of young people in order to move the organization forward.
TheTreasurer has produced financial results for 2015 which the team is going ahead to have audited. Meanwhile the team agreed to send four ladies to the 25thCoP anniversary celebration to be held in August 2016 at Caux, Switzerland. The team endeavors going forward to continue pursuing the major objectives espoused at the Nigerian training.
In the meantime it must be observed that all the active team members are not employed, local donors are hard to come by and due to the hard economic conditions currently prevailing, getting the necessary finances to get the team to do more things like printing newsletters is the biggest challenge being experienced.