We’re encouraging supporters to bake and sell cakes for brakes – flans for vans – biscuits for toolkits….anything you like really!

To join in the fun, contact Mary Sumner House for posters for your cake stall or strawberry tea (or any other yummy event!), and they also have fliers to get your whole branch, youth group, class or office involved and excited! Once you’ve got something arranged – tell us what it is, and we’ll tell the world!

Downloadable A5 colour poster: WheelsAppeal2010_A5flyer

Mothers’ Union has families of Diocese stretching across the world who pray for each other regularly, and who collectively form a ‘Wave of Prayer’. One of Winchester’s permanent links is with Kajo-Keji in Southern Sudan, and from tomorrow (January 21st) they and their partner diocese of Kitgum and Muhabura (in Uganda) and Masasi (in Tanzania) will be at the centre of all Mothers’ Union prayers around the world.

As one of the key agencies from the Church involved in bringing humanitarian and development assistance to the people of Sudan, Mothers’ Union has spoken out to lend support to Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul, from the Episcopal Church of the Sudan, calling for urgent international support for efforts to maintain the fragile Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The CPA was signed in 2005 ending a long and devastating civil war, but violence is now on the increase across the region.

[Full details of the situation and issues surrounding it can be found among recent Chatham House papers, and recent speeches by Archbishop Rowan Williams, and Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul can be downloaded from the Archbishops website.]

A Mothers' Union literacy group in Southern Sudan

Mothers’ Union has a membership of 15,000 women in Sudan, and runs an extensive Literacy & Development programme (MULDP) in the country, working closely with the Episcopal Church of the Sudan. The CPA has enabled Mothers’ Union Sudan’s Literacy Trainers to extend the programme to communities in Southern Sudan who were previously isolated through conflict. This progress is at risk should the fragile peace not be protected.

Naomi Herbert, Senior Programme Officer for Mothers’ Union said “Before the CPA our development programme couldn’t reach out of the controlled area of Juba and the areas in the North. Since the CPA our volunteers have brought the programme into isolated and previously inaccessible interior regions. Communities are now engaging in new businesses, roads enable markets to be accessible, more food is available, and people have better access to healthcare and natal facilities. All efforts need to be made by governments and agencies to facilitate open dialogue between north and south on key issues of wealth sharing, so that the people of the South are not plunged in to a conflict over resources at a time when peace is making such a difference to the lives of ordinary women, men and children across Sudan.”

However, there are other issues that specifically affect Kajo-Keji. The Diocese of Kajo-Keji has not yet been able to introduce and implement the MULDP. Funding provided by Mothers’ Union for the programme (which also operates in Burundi and Malawi ) used to be matched by funding from Comic Relief for the project, but that source is now exhausted. The challenge is therefore to find funding for the Mothers’ Union’s Literacy and Development Programme that will allow it to continue in the areas it has already reached, and specifically to expand into regions like Kajo-Keji where it would prove equally effective.

Hand washing stand at Lowero Model Home in Uganda (photographed August 2006)

The government recently recognised the unique contribution that faith-based organisations like Mothers’ Union make in delivering development and connecting with community needs.

As part of its white paper “Building our Common Future” the Department for International Development have said they will be doubling funding to to faith-based groups engaged in such work.

In the mean-time Mothers’ Union is continuing to help an increasing number of communities in Uganda (and soon Kenya) bring about their own development through the Family Life Programme.

Mothers’ Union also welcome the white paper’s recognition that the multiple challenges created by growth, climate change and conflict, can not be solved by the state alone.

It is really encouraging to know that Mothers’ Union is already seeking to do just what the white paper is encouraging; linking with churches, regional and national governments, and fellow development organisations to bring about global solutions to problems which communities experience at a very local level.

This is particularly obvious through the Mothers’ Union Literacy and Development Programme. Click to download an information sheet: MULDP update March 2009.

Although this ground-breaking scheme has helped 45,000 people become accredited literate in Burundi, Sudan and Malawi, Kajo-Keji Diocese in southern Sudan is not yet one where the scheme has been formally launched – due to lack of funds. (Mothers’ Union in Kajo-Keji Diocese is linked to Mothers’ Union members in the Diocese of Winchester.)

The Literacy and Development programme has recently been reviewed, and despite it’s success Mothers’ Union is trying to improve it still further by increasing the financial skills taught in the numeracy part of the course, so that people can understand how to create and manage household budgets and organise the simple profit and loss accounts needed for business development and income generating projects. It is now partnering Five Talents International to achieve this.

However, this Literacy and Development programme alone needs £1 million to fund this development and role it out into new diocese in identified as being in most need of the skills it can provide. Kajo-Keji is one such diocese.

If you would like more information about the Literacy and Development Programme or the Family Life Programme, please contact us using the email at the bottom right of your screen. If you wish to make a donation to the development work of Mothers’ Union please post it to our contact details.

Without your interest and help this work can not be expanded.