Anglican AIDS Project Shows ‘Hope in Despair’

|PIC1|The working group Theological Education for the Anglican Communion (TEAC) has been visiting local church-based HIV/AIDS projects as it meets in South Africa to discuss the forward development of theological education.

The 34-member body met last week to draft its proposals for the reshaping of Anglican theological education, as mandated by the Primates in 2002.

Brisbane member of the TEAC, Elizabeth Appleby, said after the visits to the HIV/AIDS projects that the work of churches alongside people living with AIDS was a sign of “hope in the midst of despair” because it showed unconditional acceptance of people when they were most vulnerable.

TEAC members visited numerous projects, arranged by the Rev. Marlene Rodda, a deacon in the diocese and coordinator of the diocese’s social responsibility programmes.

Wednesday morning was spent with two community-based projects run by Anglican churches in the Diocese of Highveld, east of Johannesburg.

The first visit was to All Souls’ Parish in Tsakane, a major centre for home-based care and HIV/AIDS counselling, and a day care centre for children affected by AIDS.

One stop for the team included a visit to the parish’s Tsepo-Hope Project – endorsed and supported by the South African Departments of Health and Social Welfare. The project has been described as the “flagship” of non-governmental HIV/AIDS programmes in South Africa.

According to Project coordinator Flower Boyi, the centre’s main activity was to send volunteer home-based care workers (HCWs) into the community, both to visit people in the advanced stages of AIDS-related illnesses each day, and to help their families to care for them.

|TOP|Struggling families receive food parcels each month, while the HCWs are supported by parish-based counsellors.

Children orphaned by AIDS-related diseases, as well as children who are HIV positive themselves, are fed and cared for at the parish day care centre.

The Rev. Ziphozonke Mnyandu said on welcoming the TEAC group to All Souls that the church’s role was to be servants of the wider community.

TEAC members were also given the opportunity to visit a Roman Catholic job-creation scheme that includes many people living with AIDS.

The Kopanang-Sithand’izingane Centre, run by nuns of the Roman Catholic Dominican Community, was established in 2002 in response to the 80 per cent unemployment rate in the area and trains women in sewing, embroidery, paper-making, and work with beads.

|AD|It also does organic vegetable market-farming and houses a day care centre for HIV/AIDS-impacted children.

Coordinator Sister Sheila Flynn said: “We need to walk with the suffering, without always being able to ‘fix’ it.

“AIDS challenges us to do theology that is rooted in human dignity, because it reveals how we deal with each other,” she said. “Theology is ‘God-talk’ – so our theology must be rooted in the reality of people’s lives.”

The TEAC team rounded up their visits with a look at the Bambanani Community Care Centre in the industrial Dukathole, a diocesan project that serves a community of 15,000 people living in an informal settlement squeezed into a small area between the local factories.

With around 80 to 90 per cent unemployment, the area is affected by severe poverty and high HIV infection rates.

Following the visit, Marlene Rodda told of a mother whose child had just been buried after dying from AIDS-related diseases. When a friend asked, “How can you believe in God when all this is happening?” she replied: “How can you not believe in God at a time like this?”

TEAC members reflected that their visits to the numerous HIV/AIDS projects had demonstrated the importance of theological education that would help Anglicans go beyond simply dealing with urgent needs, and to analyse and critique current realities like the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

“What we did today was an example of good theological education: we engaged and dealt with real issues in a situation, and then reflected on it together,” said Bishop Simon of Chiwanga of Tanzania.

The second plenary meeting of the Working Group, which included representatives from most of the Anglican Provinces, met to develop the work it has done since its first meeting in June 2004 and make specific proposals with suggestions for implementation.

The meeting had a special focus on theological education in Africa and included some joint sessions with ANITEPAM, the African Network of Institutions of Theological Education Preparing Anglicans for Ministry.