SECAM Reaches out to Women and Youth to Implement the African Year of Reconciliation

CANAA || By Fr. Don Bosco Onyalla, Nairobi || 20 August 2015

The Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) has organized Pan African workshops targeting women and the youth on the continent in the process of implementing the recently launched African Year of Reconciliation (AYR).

The workshop targeting the youth is scheduled to take place in Kinshasa in DR Congo from August 21-25, 2015, while the one targeting women is slated for  August 30 to September 3, 2015 in Nairobi, Kenya.

On July 29, 2015, SECAM officially launched the AYR as it commemorated its 46^th Anniversary since it was founded, a continent-wide celebration that will conclude on July 29, 2016 during the 17^th Plenary Assembly of SECAM scheduled to take place in Angola.

Each conference of bishops in Africa is expected to put in place some programs to mark the AYR.

The Kinshasa youth workshop will bring together over one hundred youth and facilitators drawn from 37 Bishops’ conferences under the theme, “Moving Towards the African Year of Reconciliation (AYR) and the African Youth Days (AYD): Education for the Culture of Peace and Reconciliation.”

According to the concept paper about the youth workshop prepared by SECAM Secretary General, Father Joseph Komakoma, SECAM considers the youth a priority constituency because they represent more than 65% of the population in Africa.

“The youth are therefore the most important sector of African population on whom we ought to count on, as a priority, in the scope of Church actions such as formation for the culture of reconciliation and the Year of Reconciliation in Africa,” the concept paper reads, adding that the youth “are also the sector who merits a particular care from the Church such that the exuberance of the Church is self-evident.”

The Kinshasa meeting is meant to start off a process that will see the youth get actively engaged in activities that will promote the “values of justice, peace and reconciliation for a transformed Africa” and the realization “in a future that is more or less near, the big event of the World Youth Day.”

Meanwhile, the dozens of women representing Women’s Catholic Action Movements will gather in Nairobi at the end of this month under the theme, “The African Woman Moving towards the African Year of Reconciliation.”

Like the workshop targeting the youth, the women workshop has the objective to prepare for the celebration of the AYR.

“In all aspects of the pastoral work of the Church, at parish and diocesan level in particular, women excel in their commitment and are numerically and qualitatively, without doubt, more efficient among the laity,” reads the concept paper explaining the significance of women as a target group.

Through the women leaders, SECAM hopes to reach out to as many women as possible during the process of celebrating the already launched AYR.

The two workshops are being realized through a partnership with Missio Aachen and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and are part of SECAM’s five-year strategic plan 2013-2018 ratified during the 16^th Plenary Assembly held from 8-15 July 2013 in DR Congo.