CHE at work in Pageri, Southern
Sudan:
In July I met with
Pastor Moses to discuss his ministry and CHE program in his village. At the
beginning of our meeting Pastor Moses appeared to be anxious to get through the
typical African formalities of discussing each other’s families and move on to
something exciting, that was obviously
on his mind. With a huge smile on his
face Pastor Moses said “I have some great news……. I am building a guest house
and I have used many of the principles of CHE (using locally available
materials) to accomplish what I have done to this point. I needed to make
bricks so I dug large holes in the lowest parts of my property to collect water
from the rains. I then scraped all the topsoil (clay) from the area around the
property to make the bricks and when I ran out of Clay I remembered that the
Chinese were building a main road in town and that they had an overabundance of
topsoil to dispose of so I asked them to deliver many truckloads of topsoil to
my property where I was able to make and bake enough bricks (20,000) to
complete all of the walls for an 8 room guesthouse”. This will be the only guesthouse near town,
will employ people from his village and eventually provide some income for his ministry. May Moses’ creativity and passion be
contagious throughout Southern Sudan.
The total cost to do what you see in the picture was less than $200.00
in cement and steel bars around the top of the walls. The Guesthouse will also
be used for (CHE) Community Health Evangelism trainings and housing for the
participants. Moses has already begun
making bricks for his new church building. The biggest challenge facing Moses
and this project will be in purchasing the materials for the roof, doors and
windows.
Upon my return to Tanzania I received the following email
response from Pastor Moses:
Hi Tony
Thank you for those kind words, they are encouraging and motivating. I will
keep those words in my file. Yes! CHE- has been of a great
help here ,people are creating job for themselves, while others got
employed by Government using the CHE - certificate and diploma
awards and NGO's too are valuing the documents of CHE. Pastor Isaac Vuciri got employed by JTZ( NGO)
etc. The EFCS church is being recognized by the community.
Over the past five year CHE has been
conducted by Calvary EFC’S short term mission team’s to EFCS Sudan and the
community. This training has a greatly enlightened and motivated people here to
focus on development rather than relief during the country’s transitional
period to independence,
However, as of now south Sudan has its
independence, the churches , and the community are beginning to embrace
sustainable micro economic development but lack of entrepreneurship
ideas and capital remains are major challenges among the churches although
partly CHE-program has provided required skills to EFCS
(Evangelical Free Church of Sudan) and
its community.
The practical application of CHE Ideas of
using local available recourses to meet community need to realize sustainable
development to generate income have proven cost effective and successful, as
witnessed in the new guest house project in Pageri, to meet the most
pressing needs in this community and as an income generation business. ………………………..Thank
you so, so much. Keep it coming!
