God’s love transforming the community

In some parts of Uganda, the church is not considered an institution that can aide general community development or be placed at the forefront to lead meaningful and long-lasting community transformation. However, in Buliisa District in western Uganda, it is a different story.
When Buliisa area development under World Vision Uganda was being introduced in the region, it among other things focused on child development where it sought to partner with the church to bring about development in the community.
William Kiiza, Buliisa area development programme manager says all-round community development involves the church working with the community.
“When church leaders speak, community members listen and adhere to what their leaders say, compared to when another person, irrespective of their position in the community, speaks.”
For that matter, church leaders partner with NGOs to reach out to the community.
The Catholic Church in Buliisa owns up to 75 per cent of the land with schools and churches in the district. So, different NGOs seek to carry out a number of activities including constructing classroom blocks and teachers’ quarters at different schools.

Provision and unity
Spreading God’s love to vulnerable and needy people in the community is not only done through preaching the gospel, but also providing materials such as books, pens and clothes to needy school-going children. This is also aimed at uniting the church.
In the past, before church partnership, there were no instances of different faith denominations working together to promote unity in the church as a whole. This way, churches take part in planning, implementing and monitoring development activities.
In spiritual activities, church partnerships focus on strengthening Christian nurturing of children through capacity building of Sunday school teachers by establishing Sunday school classes in 43 churches in Buliisa District.

Empowering children
Magadalena Namutebi Mbihya, a Sunday school teacher at Kalengejja Miracle Church, says through the Sunday school project, they have learnt to do church outreaches by visiting different churches.
“From September last year, children from my church and I have visited three churches; Nyamasoga Catholic Church, Akollo Church and St Sitini church to see how they do their activities.”
In return, they hosted Nyeramya Church of Uganda and Butiaba Revival Church members. On the last Sunday after every three months, Namutebi says children have a theme Sunday, an idea, Namutebi got from the training
“Church leaders irrespective of their differences, are all at the forefront of promotion of education and child protection as major issues affecting the community of Buliisa since they all serve God,” Kiiza says.

Community will
In the on-going activities and procedural stages of constructing a classroom block at Nyamasoga Primary School in the district, the community members are taking the lead role. It was as result of the Catholic priests who asked the residents to participate in brick laying so the organisations could begin the construction process.
Community members including men and women, Kiiza says, willingly gather at the school every Thursday to make bricks that will be used in construction of the school block for the good of their school-going children.
Fr Ponsiano Kisembo of St Mary’s Biiso Catholic Parish says: “Every week, we expect a congregation. What we tell them, they oblige and put it into practice.” This he says has eased the work of some NGOs in their struggle to help community members. “In some areas such as local resource mobilisation that an organisation such as World Vision Uganda may not provide, church leaders ask community members to help out something they willingly do,” says Fr Kisembo.
The act of community work has promoted capacity building as some members have started working individually to set up permanent homes as opposed to the majority mud and wattle structures.