Africa, the Stage is Yours!

Just over a week ago, I arrived back in Uganda from Johannesburg, South Africa, where I was attending the second Africa Roundtable on Christian Education hosted by the Association of Christian Schools International.  It was an amazing week of meeting with 150 other educators who are involved in Christian education in over 30 different countries all over the continent.

Some of the East African delegation (from Rwanda, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania)

The theme for this conference was “Africa, the Stage is Yours!”  There is definitely a strong move of God in raising up educators who have a passion for transforming African societies through Christian education.  For many years, different individuals, churches and organisations have worked often in isolation because of poor communication and lack of networking (many of us ‘out in the bush’ wondering if anyone else was doing anything similar to what we were trying to do in our small corner of the world).  The roundtable in 2007 brought many of us together for the first time and encouraged us that God was indeed at work in many different places, helping schools raise a generation with a heart for God and serving others.  This roundtable five years later was so much more encouraging, as we see how much progress has been made in just 5 years of cooperative effort, unified prayer, and sharing of ideas.

      

The chairman of our Christian Schools Assoc. (Uganda), Vincent Zaake, and our director of Kibaale Community Centre, Peter Ochulu, sharing with the delegates about the work of Christian schools in Uganda

There were many very inspiring speakers, one of them being the Vice-chancellor of the Uganda Christian University.  The Dean of Education, Medard Rugyendo, who has visited our work in Kibaale and at Timothy Centre and is working to help us move ahead with accreditation of our teacher training program was also in attendance.

At the conclusion of the conference, we all signed the strategic plan that we drafted together as a group, committing to work together towards forwarding Christian education in Africa, by God’s help, in the next 5 years. 

It was especially encouraging to me to meet 4 others (from Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Tanzania and Rwanda) who are all doing teacher training and who were keen to share resource materials so that we can all improve our programs!  

It was a week well spent.  Thank you, Lord!