Human and Community Development

Letters from a great grandfather Dear my grandson. I am thrilled to know that finally you are reading my letter. I hope and believe that you will share with other young people. You should. Perhaps its contents may heal our community. The community I so much loved and cherished. As my fleshless bones, what remains of my fingers, coil around the imaginary pen, I writhe with pain from the greaseless friction. Yet I have to write, regardless of the pain and suffering. I have to write. It’s a duty I have to the human race, to my grand sons and daughters and to God. The Community Security System is dead. My grandson, the human head has lost its wisdom and that has made our communities vulnerable. I look at what you call advancement with sad eyes. How you now secure our beloved communities with lock and key. How you trust physical substances with your life and invest in material inventions to secure your lives, your health, your being. Your generation has lost it son. Have ...

Learning to shy away from danger Human beings have supreme thinking capabilities as compared to animals. Unfortunately, that does not make us intelligent in all aspects of our being. There are some areas were we lag behind, areas which animals perform with great expertise and efficiency. If we study these animal abilities and borrow their skills, we become more intelligent, more supportive to each other, more tolerant and more conscious of our environment.  In this newsletter we focus on Snakes. Many people are afraid of snakes. There are a lot of myths about this legless reptile and as a result, many people associate it with evil. It’s true to say that many of us have heard of stories of witches using snakes in their witchcraft acts. Even in the bible, the animal is portrayed as the devil alluring Adam and Eve into sin. Most people would not think of anything positive coming from a snake and that is a wrong perception. Snakes have a lot of lessons for u...

Learning how to control our inert desires Snakes have a strong drive to attack. It is an instinctual drive which is necessary for their survival. In the jungle, it is usually survival of the fittest and they must have this inert desire for them to be able to survive. Although this inert drive is very strong, snakes do not unnecessarily kill. They only attack their prey and only when they want to feed. In many situations they are able to restrain this internal drive until the opportune time. No wonder their strikes are usually very precise and effective. Young people are blessed with many inert desires and several of them are important to their survival. One of the desires is that of having sexual intercourse. This internal drive when grated its wishes without reason, values, rules and morals it can yield very detrimental results.  The wisdom of the snakes advise us to restrain the inert desires until the opportune time, when it is right (as per our values, rules and morals) to...

  AHAPPY AJAN has just launched its AJAN HIV&AIDS Prevention Programme for Youth (AHAPPY). Twenty-five Jesuits and co-workers involved in HIV prevention attended an AJAN workshop in Nairobi from 15 to 19 June 2012 to receive “training for trainers” in AHAPPY, which is a unique education package created by AJAN for Jesuit schools and other educational institutions in Africa. The participants came from eight countries, including seven that will be part of the AHAPPY pilot project. One of the participants, Time Baluwa of the Jesuit AIDS Project in Zimbabwe, reflects on the workshop: There are many reasons why the AHAPPY programme is a masterpiece but this reflection dwells on just five. First, its unique ability to go beyond prevention and to touch on integral youth development, embracing psychological, spiritual, social and physical aspects. AHAPPY is not just a response to the pandemic but a response to social and moral degradation in our communities. ...

Few days ago I watched one of my favourite poets from Passion for Christ Movement Ezekiel. His poem Almost (Saved) helped me to have a reflection on our young people in Zimbabwe. We as youths we are being faced with numerous challenges. Some of them are developmental challenges and others are challenges we invite because of our actions. HIV and AIDS falls under one of these categories. We have read from many sources, heard facts being shared on national radios, HIV and AIDS awareness programmes broadcasted on national televisions yet we fall short of preventing ourselves. There are many reasons why we fail but this document presents one of the unique ones. We live in the “Almost Era”. We have developed a contemporary culture where we do things in almost perfect ways. We have lost the desire to pursue excellence in our everyday endeavours. This approach to life affects all aspects of our “human” development. When we look at our faith, we are almost Christians. Our commitmen...