This is part of a series of articles, here at African Christian, that profile African Churches that are working to fight poverty in Africa. We believe the hope of Africa is the local church and prayer for more leaders and churches to be raised up who will lead the way in Africa and world in showcasing how local churches and care for and alleviate local poverty.
Pastor Joyceline Njama of the Lutheran church is a woman on a mission of helping other women who are in need meet their daily needs and support their families in an aim of eradicating poverty in Tanzania. Pastor Njema through the Angaza Women Center, supported by the Lutheran Church, is assisting women through training and recognition of talent and opportunities which the women can empower themselves. The pastor also counsels spouses on how to live better in a marriage. Empowering of the women through leadership training has led to more acceptance of women as leaders and stewards not only of their own homes but also in the community and has seen an increase in the number of women being given leadership opportunities in the villages.
The Angaza Women Center
The Angaza Women center is located 60 Ki
lometers from the town of Moshi in Tanzania’s Siha district in Kilimanjaro area. The center runs under the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania, Northern Diocese. The center is dedicated to offering women an opportunity to become spiritually, intellectually and economically empowered to face the challenges that they face each day. Although designed to cater for women, the center also receives and welcomes men who want to gain the skills taught here. The center has received trainees from as far as Kenya and other areas in East Africa. The center was initially started to offer training in the areas of agriculture, livestock keeping and cookery, but many of the women could not meet the fees requirement and therefore the center opted to introduce other cost friendly courses like hotel management and sewing Tanzania. Program fees range from Tsh50, 000 to Tsh750, 000, depending on the type and duration of course, but more than half of women going there cannot afford to pay, particularly widows and those living under difficult conditions.
The programs and interventions
Gender relations-The center has taken initiative of training women and also men on the need to maintain harmonious family relations and avoid domestic violence. The center has also created awareness on the capabilities of women and the importance of inclusiveness in decision making not only at home but also at the community level and the need to give women an opportunity to lead.
Training – Angaza runs training programs in the following fields, Basic Hotel Management, Tailoring and Tie and Dye, Entrepreneurship, Food Processing, Computer knowledge, English, Home Economics, Small-scale Farming. This is done with the aim of equipping the women trained with skills that can enable them start businesses and generate income for themselves and their families. The center is also a key player in empowering women by training them before they can get funding from financial institutions to start different businesses.
HIV/AIDS– The center offers voluntary counseling and testing services to the community in Siha. This is aimed at keeping the pandemic on check and giving the people, especially the women, more control of their health since poor health is one of the leading causes of poverty in Africa.
Environmental conservation– The center offers training in the areas of sustainable energy, environmental conservation and efficient energy use with the aim of conserving the environment. The center took this initiative so as to enable the community appreciate that development must be sustainable so as to offer long term solutions to the problem of poverty in Africa.
We’d love to hear the story of how your church is working to end poverty in your community – Make a comment below or email us your thoughts.
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