Delegates from throughout Africa and from all other regions of the world opened the first consultative conference for the Anglican Alliance for Development, Relief and Advocacy in Nairobi last Monday 11 April.
Co-hosting the consultation five-day conference with the Alliance, the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA) set out its blueprint for organisation of the church, and its strategy for development, focusing especially on economic empowerment, education and HIV and Aids.
For south east Asia, Ms Elijah Fung from St Johns Cathedral of Hong Kong, set out the development of her region, and her own work on HIV and Aids, focussing especially on services for migrant workers. Fr Alejandro Manzoni of Promocion Humana, the Anglican development agency in Uruguay spoke of the need to get some regional co-ordination to meet the challenges of the region, which were around exploitation of the environment, and increasing inequalities, despite the economic growth.
His regional colleague Cole Frantz from Haiti described some of the natural disasters which had beset Haiti, culminating in the earthquake. He will be making a presentation on the recovery from the earthquake at a session on emergency relief on Friday. And George Kiriau, from the Solomon Islands, said in his region of the Pacific, the challenge facing small island states was above all to tackle climate change and prevent the wholesale loss of islands to rising sea levels. The Alliance provides the small islands with new hope to tackle some of their major problems resulting from climate change.
Presenting the work of two Anglican development agencies were Alison Taylor of AngliCORD, from Australia, and Adele Finney of the Primates World Relief and Development Fund in Canada.
Also during the Nairobi conference a unique customised mapping tool for the Anglican Alliance was unveiled. The mapping tool, linked to the website which will go live later this year, will make it possible for every diocese throughout the Communion to showcase its development work.
Each diocese can have a photogallery on the Alliance website, and details of their development, relief and advocacy work will be included in a database. This will enable people to share best practice. It will also demonstrate the huge amount of development work undertaken by Anglicans around the world, and provide powerful evidence for use in advocacy.
The website and mapping tool have been developed in a partnership between a UK and Polish company. It is designed to be easily accessible by people with limited access to the Internet and only basic computer technology. Delegates were able to trial the mapping tool, and put in recommendations for the final design of mapping tool and website.
The new logo for the Anglican Alliance for Development, Relief and Advocacy was also launched at the conference.