VeNews March 2006

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ARHAP Participates in the 9th General Assembly of the WCC

Vesper Society’s African Religious Health Assets Program (ARHAP) was privileged to participate in the ‘Mutirao’ sessions of the Ninth General Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, February 9–24, 2006. Dr. Steve de Gruchy, a partner in ARHAP, reported on the gathering.

Alongside the more formal business sessions of the WCC meeting was a wide-ranging series of participatory discussions that were termed mutirao from the Portuguese for ‘meeting place.’ These covered a range of issues that concern people involved in the WCC, such as ecumenism, Palestine, water rights, women’s participation, youth participation, and economic justice. At any given time, there were about six mutirao discussions going on in parallel sessions, as well as the plenary discussions and other working groups.

ARHAP participated in Mutirao 57, Religious health assets: the key role of religious values and organizations in fostering health in all its dimensions, which was sponsored by Difaem, the German Medical Mission. The discussion was planned and chaired by Dr. Beate Jacob from Difaem, who is a great supporter of the work of ARHAP. There were around 50 participants in the discussion, 20 of whom were from the youth group that presented.

After an introduction from Dr. Jacob, Dr. Steve de Gruchy presented on the work of ARHAP, using each of the five words in the term ‘African Religious Health Assets Program’ to unpack the meaning of the work. As there were a number of Portuguese speaking people present, not least the youth group, each of the five words was translated into Portuguese, which also enabled there to be a contextual discussion about the meaning of the words. A copy of this presentation is available here (103KB PDF).

This was followed by a presentation in drama, song and dance by a youth group from the Lutheran Church in Belem. This has emerged out of work by the Lutherans in Belem amongst the people of the Amazon, and is focused on integrating the spirituality and culture of the young people with a view to giving them a positive self image. It was a colourful and vibrant moment. One of the young people spoke about the impact of the work. Dr. Jacob made the point that this is a concrete example of what a religious health asset (RHA) looks like at the local church level.

She then introduced the Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network (EPN) as a working example of a wider RHA. Eva Ombaka, Director of the EPN in Kenya, spoke about the work of the agency in coordinating the churches’ action for better access to drugs in economically poor countries. Dr. A. Petersen of Germany contributed to this discussion as well.

In wider discussion, there was great appreciation for the concept of RHAs, and people were grateful for the opportunity to have the theoretical framework and then to see two real examples of what we are talking about. There was ample time to discuss the following issues: (1) finding a common language between the fields of public health and religion; (2) noting that it is not just the health professionals, but often the churches that do not realise the capacity they have for engaging in public health issues; (3) what it means to make health so broad (almost as a synonym for ‘development’), and whether this is helpful or unhelpful; and (4) the relationship between medicines and faith.

Dr. de Gruchy was very pleased to attend a meeting later in the week on the Church’s response to HIV and AIDS, and to hear a South African HIV-positive woman and church activist on the panel, who had attended our mutirao session, integrate the whole idea of RHAs into her presentation. It struck him then that our desire to help shape the theoretical framework of and provide a helpful language for the wider dialogue was really beginning to bear fruit.

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Vesper Society, a private operating foundation, promotes social justice locally and globally by addressing critical social issues including the provision of health services for the underserved.