Nepal's church communities inspire Welsh pastors

Two Welsh pastors are heading to Nepal to see the work being led by churches to transform their local communities.

Roger Grafton and Simeon Baker will travel with Tearfund Wales Director, Hywel Meredydd Davies, and visit Tearfund projects that are releasing communities from poverty.

“We heard about the work of Tearfund’s partner agency Sagoal working with remote communities in Nepal and just had to see what was being achieved,” says Rev Grafton, of Tabernacle Baptist Church.

“The idea of empowering people, helping them enough so that together they are able to lift themselves out of poverty, is very exciting. I am hoping we can learn from Sagoal and draw on similar thinking to meet needs in our own local Welsh communities.”

Churches provide an important base for development work around the world because of their situation at the heart of communities, especially communities that are remote and have little in the way of amenities or communal facilities.

Tearfund works through such churches to help them come up with effective solutions to the development challenges on their own doorsteps.

“Local churches around the world are in the thick of it facing the same challenge of engaging their local communities,” said Rev Baker, Senior Pastor of Bethel Baptist, Cardiff.

“I hope to learn from them some of inspiring ways they are making a real difference to some of the marginalised and poorest of their community."

Ten years ago the people of Shivnagar, a village on Nepal’s western plains, were entrapped in bonded labour and unable to be free of debt. They had no access to education and health care and their future remained bleak.

A local pastor from Tikapur Christian Church was determined to help the villagers and, working with Sagoal, was able to set up education, food security and health care programmes.

“Pastor Madan has been an inspiration in identifying the practical, social and spiritual need, and in helping the people of Shivnagar to realise their own potential,” said Mr Davies.

“This is what is central to Tearfund’s approach. I think we can all learn from this empowering mission focus that we have seen translates across cultures and continents.”