Carol’s off to Zambia for life-changing project – Life & Times

The Church of Scotland Guild has donated more than £40,000 to the Journeying Together project since 2018.

Run by the United Church of Zambia, it supports 50 girls who live in a densely populated area which is often struck by severe flooding during the rainy season.

Poor drainage and sanitation – very few homes have toilets – can lead to outbreaks of cholera and dysentery, with babies and small children most at risk. The project, spearheaded by Deaconess Mable Sitchali, provides core training in essential skills like nutrition, parenting and sex education and works to build confidence in the girls and challenge social injustice. They are given the opportunity to return to school to finish their education or provided with vocational training in a skill to enable them to make their own money.

Ms Finlay, an elder of Carrick Knowe Parish Church, is the Twinning and Local Development Secretary of the Faith Impact Forum of the Church of Scotland, which is organising the trip at the end of the month.

She said. “The opportunity to take a group of members of the Guild to visit the Journeying Together Project in Kanyama is a privilege not granted to many of us. We will spend the week with the teenage mothers that UCZ is supporting through this project and with the support of Guilds around the country, including in my own congregation of Carrick Knowe. We will hear about the life of young girls and the challenges they face daily of stigma and injustice.

“The project aims to help these young women to develop life skills to allow them to care for themselves and their children and to help them to get back into education or find an opportunity for supporting their family.”

More than 50% of the population in Kanyama, around 365,000 people, are under 18 and there are only five primary schools and one high school. Scotland’s links with Zambia go back to the 19th century to the days of missionaries like David Livingstone. UCZ was formed in 1965 from a union of denominations.

Ms Finlay said Guild members will share their experiences with others upon their return to Scotland. “We hope that sharing the stories of these young women will open up conversations with people in various different groups and illustrate that there are many similarities between Zambian and Scottish communities,” she added.

The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Rt Rev Colin Sinclair, is visiting Zambia at the same time. The minister of Palmerston Place Church worked there as a training officer for Scripture Union in the 1970s before training as a minister and lived in a car for three years.