wfn.org | Episcopal Church women help empower African women

[Daphne Mack <dmack@dfms.org>]

99-032
African women gain the resolve to stand for life

by Ed Stannard
(Episcopal Life) Women of Vision, an educational and 
training program, has brought leadership and assertiveness skills 
to women all over the world.

In Africa, it could mean the difference between death and 
life.

Women of Vision, begun in 1987 by the national Women in 
Mission and Ministry office (WIMM) and Episcopal Church Women, 
seeks to empower women, to give help them discover their own gifts 
and to seek a better life for themselves, their families and their 
communities.

A training session is scheduled for Kenya. But it was one 
held recently in Ghana, which, like much of sub-Saharan Africa, 
has been devastated by AIDS, that demonstrated the possibilities 
for Women of Vision and how important are its goals.

"I believe one of the most important things in Africa today 
is creating awareness about AIDS," said Pauline Muchina, a Kenyan 
studying at Union Theological Seminary in New York, who is a 
consultant to the WIMM office. "People are afraid to talk about 
these things. Talk about sex and talk about death is not something 
they do."

AIDS awareness
As many as one in four sub-Saharan Africans are infected 
with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Thousands of children, many 
of them infected themselves, have been orphaned by the disease.
According to Julianna Okine, wife of Archbishop Robert Okine 
of the Church of West Africa, cultural expectations are partly 
responsible for the disease's spread. Many men leave the home for 
days at a time and practice infidelity, without protection against 
sexually transmitted diseases. Their wives are expected not to ask 
where they've been, to say no to sex or to demand that the 
husbands use condoms.

Okine requested Women of Vision come to Ghana. "She's a 
mover, this woman; she just made it happen," said Sister Hel'na 
Marie, associate director of WIMM. "She's a woman who can't be 
stopped."

Okine said that, as a result of Women of Vision, two 
seminars were being planned on AIDS awareness and advocacy. "We 
are trying to let them know we are all partners ... we are not 
subordinates," she said.

Pointing out that women join men in perpetuating sexual 
oppression, Okine said, "When they know their husband is 
promiscuous they have to say no to sex unless they use condoms." 
Too often, the response is, "`I didn't marry you to use condoms.' 
That is another problem," said Okine.

However, Okine is hopeful. "We have seen signs now. It's 
working - slowly, but it's working."

To Muchina, communication is key. "Education is the first 
component of [Women of Vision] and then just opening it up for 
discussion. In the church, [AIDS] is regarded as a stigma. The 
more we talk about it in the women's groups, the more people will 
be free to talk about it outside the women's groups."

Another component of the fight against AIDS is helping women 
to take care of their families economically. "If we can help 
women, especially younger women, to be self-reliant in economics, 
then they won't go into prostitution, where they can contract 
AIDS," said Muchina.

Leadership training essential
Fighting a problem in society like AIDS is like trying to 
remove one wrong-colored thread woven into a blanket. The issues 
involved - education, literacy, poverty, roles of men and women, 
sexual habits, both homosexual and heterosexual, the availability 
of condoms and the drugs that slow the virus, taboos against 
speaking about sex and death - are so embedded and intertwined, 
that the task quickly becomes daunting.

"It's very sad, it's very painful, and I think the church 
is still in denial," said Muchina. "They are not preaching the 
message of love to those who are infected and at the same time 
they are not preaching prevention. A lot of parents are in denial 
too."

Underlining the task, Sister Hel'na Marie said, "If women 
are not educated and not trained in leadership, a lot of issues, 
from population to domestic violence to AIDS, are not going to be 
addressed."

Women of Vision attempts to face that gantlet of problems by 
addressing the core issue of leadership training. The program 
focuses on identifying gifts and developing self-worth; literacy 
is not required.

"I think one of the most important things is raising 
consciousness amongst women," said Muchina. "Helping them 
discover their leadership skills and helping them learn to be 
assertive and how to use their faith to better their living 
conditions in their country."

It's really an epiphany for many, said Ann Smith, WIMM's 
director. "Once they know their spiritual gifts, then they sing 
about it and dance about it and [say], `God has empowered me.' Try 
to stop them - they are so charged up!"

With their newly found exuberance and self-assertiveness, 
women then can advocate on their own behalf for education and 
training, in order to rise from poverty and oppression.

"If you want to lower the birthrate, you must increase the 
educational level of women," said Smith. "Ghana is a very poor 
country, so access to education is still a privilege." Free 
education does not exist in Ghana; even the required uniforms are 
too expensive for most.

Smith said that since the government is doing little to 
improve women's position, the church must step in. "And who is 
the church? The women." Women make up 80 percent of churchgoers 
in Africa, said Smith.

Muchina described how delicate is the task of empowering 
women: "How they can do it in a way that does not antagonize 
their community but they are making a contribution to bringing 
their community together.

"The crucial thing is to help women come to a point where 
they themselves do not internalize their own oppression," said 
Muchina. It's a real turning point "once they realize that they 
are children of God and have rights."

One program, many cultures
Women of Vision has achieved many successes since its first 
workshop in Guatemala in 1987. One formerly illiterate woman in 
Nepal was even elected to Parliament. Smith said, "It's on-the-
job training and mentoring and it's working. We have hundreds of 
women trained."

In Ghana, 35 women were certified to present the program in 
pairs in villages and colleges. "They really took the material 
and mastered it," said Sister Helena Marie. She said her 
experience was a revelation. "Here we are being witnesses to this 
wonderful ability to take the material and run with it and they 
needed very little instruction. They just zapped it up."
Muchina said the ability to bring the program into different 
cultures is one of its strengths. "What really challenged me ... 
is that you present the material and the women take it and 
contextualize it. ... You open a door for them [where] they 
weren't able to make the connection before."

Smith said that, though the program is aimed at women, down 
the road "the ideal thing is that there will be the same training 
for men.

"The women get it first and then it should be men and women 
together. Then it should be called People of Vision."

Africa will continue to be a major focus of Women of Vision. 
Smith said she hopes to hold five regional training-of-trainers 
sessions on the continent in 2000. The goal, she said, is "so it 
will be African down the road, and we wouldn't have to come again 
except to cheer them on."

--Ed Stannard is news editor of Episcopal Life, the church's 
national newspaper, where this article first appeared.