One location where social principles were taught in the last few months
Assistant General Secretary Neal Christie led a training on the Social Principles in the Yugorobi District of The United Methodist Church in Nigeria.
The change it made in the community
This Social Principles training in Yugorobi community has moved the entire community to change their perception towards gender equality and made themselves advocates of female child education.
Yugorobi community is a small village of about 2,800 people. This community is under Lau local government of Taraba State Nigeria. Most of the folks who live in this community are peasant farmers and herdsmen.
Prior to the Social Principles training gender inequality and discrimination against women socially, politically, economically and religiously was a normal way of life. Socially, women are not allowed to sit, with men in the family to offer suggestion on the day to day running of the family affairs. Their opinions don’t count simply because they are women. Politically, they are not giving leadership position in the community beyond their domestic chores. In fact, many in that community believe that women education ends in the kitchen, therefore it is a waste of time and resources to send a girl child to school. When offered to send their children to school, many will prefer to send a male child than a female one. A female child is considered a property that will end up in some one’s kitchen as a house wife.
After our Social Principles training, part of the action plan the participants come up with was to start a door-to-door and one-on-one advocacy campaign on gender equality and equal educational opportunity for both sexes.
This advocacy yielded so much fruit that helped the people of Yugorobi change their perception on gender. This perception change gave birth to a dream of standing an elementary school that will provide equal educational opportunity to both boys and girls in Yugorobi. Today, through Community Organizing for Change work, the folks in this community were able to come together through mostly directly manual labor built a block of three classrooms. Over 100 children of both sexes are attending this school now.
One person it has change
Zinas Matthias one of the participants at the Social Principles training in Yugorobi has this to say, “the Social Principles training has been an eyes opener for me and the rest of my men folks in this community to see women as equal God’s creatures with every one of us. I now see dignity in them and I respect and appreciate the gifts of God in their lives. My wife is now my number one counsel.”
He added that he has seen examples of women who have arose to positions of authority and are making significant impact in the development of this country.
Next step
The next step is to do more of this training in other districts of The United Methodist Church and to engage more and more people in conversation about issues rise in the Social Principles that is relevant to their context. This will go a long way in making more congregations put their faith into action.
The Social Principles have been serving as motivational tools that help communities and congregations put their faith into actions. Part of our next step is to advertise what happened in Yugorobi community to other communities so that can emulate from. To enable us do this effectively we need more copies of the Social Principles be translated into Hausa language which is the language of many people in Nigeria.
