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The Mothers Union from the Church of Uganda (Buganda region) in collaboration with the World Council of Churches Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiatives and Advocacy and Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance programmes have been finding strength and inspiration during the 16 Days campaign against sexual and gender-based violence. 

At an online roundtable hosted by the All Africa Conference of Churches, male “champions for gender justice” shared their ideas and insights during their yearlong service as men who are helping to prevent gender-based violence.

Rev. Fr Dr Lawrence Iwuamadi is dean of the Ecumenical Institute, the graduate school which opened its academic year this week. Below, Iwuamadi reflects on the arrival of new students at the Ecumenical Institute during this remarkable time.

The Thursdays in Black campaign for a world free from rape and violence has been intensified in Namibia, bringing awareness of the heightened risk of violence against women and children during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Young people in Uganda are on fire for change that will free the world from both HIV and sexual and gender-based violence. Spreading sparks of knowledge and enthusiasm, they have been visiting schools to inform and inspire even more young people.

As Makerere University in Uganda admitted new undergraduate students in August, trained “ambassadors of change" were able to speak about preventing sexual and gender-based violence and HIV transmission. The ambassadors were trained though workshops offered by the World Council of Churches Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiatives and Advocacy programme.

Students at Makerere University in Uganda have launched an evangelical and health mission in Kayunga, one of the rural villages in Mityana district located about 50 km from Kampala, Uganda.
The initiative follows the October 2018 launch of the Thursdays in Black Campaign against sexual and gender-based violence in Uganda by the Anglican community of the College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources and Biosecurity at Makerere University.

As they met with the staff from the World Council Churches (WCC) Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiatives and Advocacy programme, religious leaders in Uganda realized they are well-placed to empower adolescents and young people with knowledge and skills to negotiate issues relating to sexuality.

The life of Rev. Dr Rena Joyce Weller Karefa-Smart is being remembered and commended this week by the WCC fellowship after her passing last week. Karefa-Smart was the first Pan African woman to graduate in 1945 from Yale Divinity School. She was a champion for global ecumenism over the course of a long and distinguished career. An attendee of the first WCC Assembly, she was also a procession leader and author of the liturgies at the second WCC Assembly in Evanston, Illinois (USA).

You wouldn’t pay two thousand times more than the value of a cup of coffee, so why pay that for a glass of water? That’s one of the reasons why members of the World Council of Churches’s Ecumenical Water Network (EWN) are encouraging you to consider joining the “Blue Community” and to stop using bottled water in places where tap water is safely and freely available.

In 2018 we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the World Council of Churches. In order to create a lively firsthand account of the ecumenical fellowship and of our shared journey, member churches have contributed stories of people, events, achievements and even failures, all of which have deepened our collective search for Christian unity. This story was written by Olle Eriksson, a Namibian who worked for 35 years (1968 – 2003) with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia, Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission and Lutheran World Federation.

Sierra Leone has been burying hundreds of victims of a mudslide that swept away homes on the edge of the capital Freetown. “Please continue to pray with us”, asked Bishop Arnold Temple, from the Methodist Church Sierra Leone.

Almost 800 participants, including 324 delegates, are gathering in Windhoek from 10-16 May for the Twelfth Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), the highest LWF decision-making body that meets every six years. World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit will address the plenary on 12 May.

A plenary discussion on support by religious communities for the rights of children, and a first draft of the statement of “principles for child-friendly churches,” captured the imagination of the Central Committee of the WCC on 27 June. The document will now undergo further revision and be resubmitted at the next WCC executive committee meeting.

The African continent bears witness to the tragic consequences of the manipulation of religion to incite violence. Yet it is also the home of untold instances of the power of religious leaders and actors to exert a positive influence, said panellists at an international meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, today.

A WCC member church in Kenya has consecrated its second woman bishop, Rev. Alice Muthoni Mutuma, on 31 January in Meru. Rev. Pauline Wanjiru Njiru, East Africa regional coordinator for the WCC Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiatives and Advocacy, attended the service and brought greetings from WCC.

When 505 percent more girls than boys get infected with HIV, the virus that is in its fourth decade can, indeed, be said to wear a woman’s face.

Botshelo Moilwa, a young African woman from Gaborone, Botswana, called on churches to affirm the dignity of women amidst the realities of HIV and AIDS and sexual violence, if they are to realize the Christian vision of justice and peace.