Danmission’s Church & Dialogue department is involved in the Sunday School, women’s and stewardship programmes in Karagwe Diocese. The main goal of the women’s programme is to educate a group of female leaders to oversee the work of the women’s groups in each of the parishes of the diocese in order to ensure the quality of the work. There is generally a long way to go in terms of educating women in Tanzania as illiteracy and the low status of women in society make progress difficult.
As in many other countries Tanzania is fighting poor management on all levels of society and this is also the case within the church. The stewardship programme is trying to improve the economy of the church by stressing the responsibility that each individual member of the church must carry in order for the entire church to prosper. Courses in stewardship have been run for evangelists, pastors and heads of church councils in each parish and one person in each parish has been taught the fundamentals of stewardship in order to reach out to all of the 105 congregations in Mabira and Murongo deaneries.
The Sunday School work has improved over the last years as efforts to strengthen the capacity of the teachers and to raise the general awareness of the importance of children’s education have been successful.
Theological education
Danmission is supporting the education of evangelists and pastors in KAD, NWD and SELVD through Ruhija and Nkwenda bible schools. The need for well-educated pastors is great and especially in SELVD, where the church is growing. There are currently 40 parishes in the diocese; however, several of them are without trained pastors. Since the demand for foundational faith teaching is so high, Danmission is also supporting projects that seek to satisfy that demand.
Diakonia
Danmission also supports the Diakonia department of KAD, which teaches the diakonia committees in the local church congregations. The focus here is on sound procedures for handling and distributing funds and gifts within the congregations and how to report back satisfactorily.
Dialogue
In Zanzibar, Danmission is partnering with the interfaith dialogue centre Zanzic, which held an epoch-making national dialogue conference in 2014 that brought together 100 religious leaders from Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania. In the wake of the conference, 200 madrasa teachers were taught the principles of interfaith dialogue and a curriculum for a diploma course in intercultural relations is currently awaiting its final approval from the Tanzanian department of education.
On Zanzibar, Danmission is also running the sewing school Upendo, which is a project that gathers Christian and Muslim women together to teach them how to sew, so that they can help improve the financial situation of their families. They also learn how to talk and work together, however, in a culture in which religious violence is not unknown.