Annual Report 2011

THE Council of Churches in Zambia (CCZ) has for the past three years running managed to complete on time over 80% of its planned activities, says Head of Programmes, Mr. Abraham Chikasa.

According to Mr. Chikasa, this exceptional performance has been due to the continued trust and support of CCZ's programmes by the partners both local and international. He said the other reason has been the dedicated  united efforts and zeal of the Council's members of staff and its administrative structures.

"The Council has continued working at halting the spread of the HIV virus among its constituent groups and among Zambian communities at large. CCZ also continued in its support for families and orphans affected by the HIV-related deaths and problems," explained the Head of Programmes.

Mr. Chikasa also said CCZ trained elections monitors that were later during the General Elections dispatched throughout the country. He said the role of CCZ in the elections ensured that these elections were held in an atmosphere of trust because of the presence of monitors from the church.

"The Gender programme managed to take gender mainstreaming training to 8 theological colleges, where pastor trainees are expected to be introduced to gender education as part of their pastoral training," said Mr. Chikasa.

He said CCZ was also concerned by the negative effects of climate change among the member churches and Zambians at large. Mr. Chikasa said the effects of climate change were affecting the way of life of many of the vulnerable church groups in disaster prone communities.

"As such, the Emergency and Development programme, within which the climate change programmes are being implemented, has increased its focus from merely reacting  to the occurence of natural disasters to undertaking capacity building and awareness programmes in mitigation, risk reduction and adaptation," he said.

In the area of social and economic justice, CCZ continued raising the awareness of communities living in mine areas of the expected corporate and social responsibility of the mines owners and their government in as far benefiting from the mine activities in their communities was concerned.

In that score, CCZ continued holding meetings with chiefs and their subjects in the mine areas of Solwezi, the copperbelt and Siavonga ensuring that residents understood both the benefits and negative effects of these mining activities.

"In order to consolidate the work that CCZ has been doing in the area of Natural resource management, especially with a bias on uranium mining, CCZ developed a proposed uranium mining policy that has since been launched and handed over to the Zambian government. This policy is aimed at sealing identified loopholes in the current Zambian mining legislation especially when it comes to mining of radio-active materials," explained the CCZ Head of Programmes, Mr. Chikasa.

For a full report of the works of CCZ in the year 2011, please email us for your personalised copy.