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Rev. Pauline Wanjiru Njiru, eastern Africa regional coordinator for the World Council of Churches Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiatives and Advocacy (EHAIA), has worked with young people, church leaders and parents for several years now.

On 12 March, Jane Murenga, a head teacher at a local Anglican Church-sponsored primary school, was raped and murdered in Githure village, Kirinyaga County in Kenya. She was hosting her younger sister at her home. She left the main house to take a shower in the bathroom which is detached from the house. Her sister decided to check on her, only to find her on the ground lifeless with a man on top of her, raping her.

Like many people brought up in rural Kenya, Catherine Mwangi had a long walk to fetch water for home use from a nearby river in what she calls her “humble upbringing”. For the past seven years, Mwangi has been the executive director ADSMKE (the Anglican Development Services of Mount Kenya East) and water access is an important issue in her work.

“In our community, HIV is not spoken about openly. And the challenge is, it’s like people are both informed and not informed. They know what HIV is, that it’s an illness that can be treated, but still they don’t want to really talk about it, like they don’t really want to know about it…”

Hope in a Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace formed the integral thread for proceedings at the meeting of the Central Committee of the WCC in Trondheim, Norway this week. The 2016 meeting took place 22-28 June, the second gathering since the Central Committee was elected at the WCC 10th Assembly in Busan, Republic of Korea in 2013.

Starting preparations for a Global Ecumenical Theological Institute in the context of the 2018 World Mission Conference in Africa was a tangible result of a meeting of 20 ecumenical educators from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific. They met from 22-24 May in Halle (Germany) at the invitation of the World Council of Churches project on Ecumenical Theological Education.

The World Council of Churches Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network (WCC-EDAN) will flourish and become a source of increasing education and dialogue, said the programme’s leaders at a meeting in Kenya on 10-15 April.

While news headlines continue to document tragedies on land and sea as desperate people flee violence and abject poverty in their homelands, representatives of governments, UN agencies and civil society organizations, including churches and faith-based organizations, met 18-19 January at a high-level conference on the refugee and migrant crisis in Europe, hosted by the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva, Switzerland.

Commemorating the Armenian Genocide of 1915-23 was to have been the principal focus of the service of Sunday morning prayer on 15 November in the cathedral church of Saint-Pierre at the summit of Geneva’s old town. Following terror attacks in Beirut and Paris killing and wounding hundreds of civilians over the preceding days, the prayers of the Protestant Church of Geneva and the WCC Executive Committee took on a new dimension.

Despite significant steps taken by the Kenyan government, coordinator of the WCC Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network Dr Samuel Kabue says that “more needs to be done” so that people with disability can enjoy their rights.

To promote strong measures against climate change, the WCC and the Geneva Interfaith Forum on Climate Change, Environment and Human Rights organized a side event to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The moderator of the WCC Central Committee called for an openness to change in an era of encounter with “different types of cultures and religions”.

While 2.2 billion of the world's population is children, churches both in South and North have often ignored children amidst God's ministries. Children's issues, their place in churches and children's rights in the world, all need a strong united Christian voice.