በወላይታ ቃለ ሕይወት ቤተክርስቲያን የጠረጰዛ ልማት ማህበር Wolaita Kale Heywot Church Terepeza Development Association HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION TDA as Development Programs Wing of WKHC Wolaita Kale Heywet Church and its holistic community transformation mission didn’t smoothly come over decades. There were challenging and hectic times when the existence of the church was claimed by many. For instance, the Italian invasion of 1928-1933 put the first and horrific actions against the church and its mission to the extent of detaining, inhumanly punishing the followers and even killing many who showed strong resilience. This invasion fired all the foreign missionaries out of the country and the local ones couldn’t strongly and persistently promote and expand the idea. However, few determined and committed local missionaries kept it up in Wolaita and surroundings. During the imperial era of the country, the church revived and sent local change agents to different parts of southern Ethiopia. The communist regime of the country was also putting a gradual restriction on religious freedoms of the followers ending up total closure of the local churches and brutal punishment and detention of members and leaders. These situations eventually tended to discourage the religious aspect of the mission and rendered supportive services for the development programs to the extent of requiring separate licensing conditions for the church’s development wing. Consequently, the development program of the church was registered as “Wolaita Kale Heywet Church Development Program (WKHCDP)” in 1991. After working for quite nearly a decade, the naming of this program was found to be as contradictory and competitor against the “Ethiopian Kale Heywet Church Development Program (EKHCDP)”, the national one. The immediate uniting action-led leaders of EKHC told the leaders in Wolaita to freeze all the development programs of its own and submit to the EKHC Development Program. After thorough discussions and arguments with EKHC leaders and judiciary bodies it was later decided that WKHCDP has to change its naming to similar naming conflict of interests. The visionary leaders of the WKHC discovered another naming of the program that could equivalently recognize the place of its establishment, the mission and the services it provides. With this understanding the leaders got the name “TEREPEZA” which was know and the famous throughout the country, being the historic and first center of Holistic mission in Wolaita. So, from 1992 onwards the development program of WKHC was registered as “TEREPEZA DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION” with registration number of 736 until it got new registration number 0316 in October 2009. TDA’s OPERATIONAL EXPERINCES The devastating problem of the communities in Wolaita which was a big threat for survival during the arrival of missionaries was the health problem. So, the medical team led by Dr. Lambe stationed at ‘ottona’ and started treating the sick. In addition to undertaking medical diagnosis and medication supplies, the missionaries trained the earlier followers and leaders on sanitation and hygiene to reduce the spread of diseases. All the followers started teaching among the community the health and hygienic education creating awareness among the wider community. So, this became part of the community centered Social development strategy and many people duly recognized that it was worthy to accept for physical, spiritual, and social transformation of the community. Since its establishment TDA of WKHC has been operating in all the districts of Wolaitta Zone. It has been implementing more than 30 programs and projects on soil and water conservation, education, HIV and health, child sponsorship, food security, integrated rural programs, emergency relief programs and SHGs development. These programs have enabled poor households, particularly women; free themselves from the grips of poverty through personal saving and engaging in alternative income generation activities. TDA of WKHC had been working over the years to address the food insecurity problems of people living in Wolaitta Zone by designing and implementing short-term emergency interventions and long-term food security and livelihood projects that complement the national food security strategy. The most recent examples of emergency response activities include the distribution of 2,448 MT of Maize through FFW emergency project in Damot Woide Woreda (Nov 1, 2011-June 2012), distribution of 1,409.8 MT of supplementary food to 22,366 children and women in 38 kebeles of Kindo Koysha from April 2003 to December 2004, the flood emergency response to a total of 6,252 flood affected people in Humbo Woreda through the distribution of 562.8 MT of maize grain in 2006 , the church also supported 14.5 MT of supplementary food, 86 tents, medical supplies worth of 75,532 birr and 250 Bio-sand filters. In the period between 1995 and 1999, WKHC implemented a soil and water conservation program in Offa Woreda through Food-For-Work (FFW) activities. This work was supported through the grant provided by the Canadian Food Grains Bank (CFGB) of maize grain amounting to 1,000 MT. In 2008 FFW project was implemented and benefited the total of 15,560 with 1167MT of wheat (imported from Canada through support of Canadian Food Grain Bank and World Relief Canada) and 200MT of Maize (locally purchased) through support from Tearfund UK. And recently WKHC-TDA has been running a Cash For Work project in Ofa and Kindo Koysha districts with the total budget of 5 million ETB targeting 13,200 people, through the support of tearfund UK and Tear Netherlands. From 2008-2010, food security projects in Kindo Koysha and Offa Districts was implemented with total budget of Birr 6.5 million (by support from Tearfund UK and World Relief Canada/CFGB. And also from 2008-2010 Self Help Group Promotion project was implemented in Soddo and Boditi towns (Supported by Lakarmissionen, Sweden and Tearfund UK) and currently being scaled up for the next three years. In general, TDA of WKHC has developed significant capacity in emergency operation through time. All our staff members have experience in relief programming and implementation including procurement, transportation, storage, food distribution, nutrition survey monitoring, beneficiary screening reporting and evaluation. The systems and procedures in relief operation are in place which we have developed since 2000. Moreover, TDA of WKHC is well situated organization at grass root level, nearer to the beneficiary population which gives opportunity to quickly respond to immediate needs.
Posted on: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:49:24 +0000
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