Mobilising the Zulu churches to fight AIDS

We realise that we cannot tackle all the problems in the community on our own. It is far better to work with others and build them up so that they can also work towards the same goals as us.There are hundreds of small house churches in the area we cover. In the Bible it encourages believers to help widows and orphans in distress. Therefore the churches seem like a good institution to partner with in our work.

We started working with church groups in 2006. At first we found a lot of paranoia among the leaders; they were worried that we were trying to steal their congregations and get the precious donations that these congregations contribute towards their church leaders (many leaders are unemployed and have no other source of income). After some gentle discussions, we persuaded 60 pastors to attend a basic training course on HIV. This was done in 3 groups of 20 pastors. Some pastors confessed that they had believed that HIV was a curse from God and were grateful for being put right. What also came out of the workshops was that the pastors felt a great need for leadership training as most of them were self-appointed leaders and had had no formal training at all.

We therefore arranged leadership training for church leaders using John C Maxwell's Million Leader Mandate material. The first 3 modules had already been translated into Zulu, but we had to translate the last 3 modules ourselves. Over the next year, we trained 120 pastors in 5 groups, spending 100 hours with each group. There was a very joyful graduation ceremony at the end.

Some of those who were trained, are now in turn training other pastors who live in areas we did not reach. They state that they now feel more comfortable in their role of leading their churches and are strengthened in their faith.

Now that these churches are stronger, they are more able to reach out and help others. At some of these churches, some of the congregation members are now volunteering as "Family Supporters". They visit and befriend families with orphans and vulnerable children in their neighbourhood. Each support on average supports 10 children, assisting them with practical tasks like housework, fetching water, washing clothes and cooking. They also help with homework and give advice on general matters and HIV prevention. There are 100 Family Supporters now active, who liaise closely with our Family Support Coordinators.

We are now training 60 Sunday School teachers to relate better to children and hope that this will result in more adults reaching out to support vulnerable children.

This sort of work does not provide the instant results which many funding agencies want to see. Nor can it involve a workplan with targets and planned outcomes. Working with communities can take years to build up trust and involves taking into account what the community's perceived needs are and meeting these before seeing how we can work together. However, the results are hopefully going to be a long term change and commitment by the churches to support the vulnerable children around them.