52 participants (including 11 pastors) from 18 churches registered to attend. Only 29 participants, however, received certificates of completion for attending the entire workshop.
Pr. Allan Kisakye coordinated the mobilisation of churches and participants for the workshop and was assisted by his wife, Harriet Kisakye, who handled logistics throughout the five days. 10 participants lodged at the boarding houses at Eagles Wings Children’s Village (the campus on which LCC is located) and the rest commuted from their homes. The facilitators camped in tents at the church grounds.
Workshop Leadership and translation
Three leaders were elected at the start of the workshop, a chair (hands out certificates at the end of the workshop and provide leadership throughout the week), a timekeeper (ensures that sessions run on time) and an energiser (someone to take the group through energisers in between sessions in order to keep the participants lively and awake). Norah Ademun was chosen as the Chair, John Kakonge as timekeeper. Charles Wasswa helped with translation from English into Luganda and was assisted by David Balage.
Participants were engaged through questions in group discussions and presentations. Adult education principles were employed throughout the workshop giving both the participants and facilitators the opportunity to dialogue and learn from one another.
Feedback from Participants
No formal feedback was asked of the participants. However, in conversation several said how much they have appreciated the content and learning approach of the workshop. The participants were able to discover the answers to many of their problems on their own. To this end, the group from Bukakata Promise Faith Centre (about 55 km from Lubumba village) has scheduled to hold a Transformational Development – Week 1 in May 2022.
Challenges
The main challenge encountered was the time it took to translate into Luganda in real time as the facilitators steered the workshop. As a way to address this, Mazima College has considered undertaking a TD Luganda translation project of the workshop material. In the interim, however, well-trained native speakers who also read and speak English would work great. We’ve made great strides in that regard. Also, the beauty of the TD learning approach of group discussion based tasks, aided and enabled Luganda-speaking participants to better understand the principles.
Transformational Development Principles
TD principles were covered under several topics including:
- The Four Relationships God Created For Us At Creation
- Made In The Image Of God
- Shalom – Holistic Health
- Basic Principles Of Sustainable Development
- Choosing A Community Open To Development
- Sunday-Monday Christian
- Appreciative Inquiry
- Beginning An Initiative
- Choosing A Committee
- Monitoring
- Setting People Free To Be All That God Wants Them To Be
- Poverty
- Sustainability
- The Role Of Donors
- Income Generation
- Responding To The Poor
- Building Trust
- Culture And World View
- The Change Cycle
- Learning That Motivates
- Partnership
- A Living Holistic Church – The Body Of Christ
- Role Of A Transformational Development Leader
- Mobilizing The Church For TD/Holistic Mission
- Implementation Of A Simple Program Without Outside Donors.
Initiatives planned
On the last day participants gathered in their respective groups/churches, discussed and presented the following simple initiatives that they intend to start when they returned to their respective communities:
- Bukakata Promise Faith Church: Stewardship Review of the church.
- Centre of Knowledge and Wisdom Church, Lutente: Piggery project as a means to introduce TD to the church and community.
- Passover Church, Kasunga: Start a poultry initiative for sustainable development.
- Lubumba Community Church: Begin a new piggery project involving the entire church membership.
- Minyinya Community Divine Church: Build a seedlings nursery as an income generating initiative to improve community livelihood and wellbeing.
- Faith Remnant Church, Kalungi: Sustainable utilisation of locally available resources to bring change and evangelise the community.
- Fire on Alter Church: Consult church and community through appreciative inquiry on what project to undertake.
- Lukaya Town Council: Women’s Savings Sacco (Village Savings and Loans Association) to improve their standards of living.
Follow Up
Together with Pr. Allan and Harriet Kisakye we are in touch with the participants and we will try to get them together within 6-12 months to share experiences and stories of change and run TD-Week 2.