Church With a purpose-TEAM Conference
14 March 2007
“The church has the Grassroots reach, and the oral legitimacy to effectively advocate for, and monitor the delivery of the MDGs in Africa”
TEAM conference 2007 has challenged itself to think critically about its role in achieving the MDGs by 2015. Deliberating on what is an Effective Anglican Mission towards the MDGs, the African Monitor (AM) challenged the Anglican Communion to strengthen its role to monitor the delivery of MDG promises internationally, and specifically in Africa. The AM acknowledge the role of the church in implementing programmers at the grassroots level that already contribute significantly to the achievement of the MDGs. However, the AM noted that there was a need to go beyond this, to actually monitor whether or not African governments and donors are delivering on their own promises to achieve the MDGs.
The African Moniotr is an independent African body set up as a catalyst to monitor development funding commitments, delivery and impact on the grassroots, and to bring strong additional African voices to the development agenda. African Monitor’s core mission is to promote the role of the grassroots, especially the faith based community, to monitor the use and effectiveness of development promises on the continent.
In the parallel discussion “MDGs 2015- are we achieving our goals,” the African Monitor introduced a model to increase the capacity of the grassroots to monitor, and strengthen faith-based networks to become partners. This model seeks to generate demand for effective delivery and accountability at the grassroots level, so that decision makers are under pressure from voters to use development resources effectively. The end result will be effective delivery of promises, greater accountability and increased transparency on the continent.
Delegates in this discussion felt strongly that the Anglican Communion needed to endorse the MDGs, and proceed to develop an action plan to expedite delivery. There was recognition that the Anglican Communion is an existing global network that affords the space for shared knowledge, shared resources and joint advocacy and monitoring of delivery. This global network needed to be further strengthened to reach other faiths, thus building solidarity on the delivery of MDGs. Furthermore, the delegates resolved to work with existing civil society coalitions such as the African Monitor, the Global Coalition a\Against Poverty (GCAP) and others to further strengthen the church’s monitoring and advocacy role. Delegates from the north further recommended that their networks can be effectively used to lobby their governments to channel resources to the South for the delivery of MDGs particularly if the networks from the South provided them with the information to determine areas advocated for.
There was general consensus among delegates that more could be done by the Anglican Communion at the grassroots level. Parishes could be encouraged to monitor what is happening with their communities and use that information to identify areas of good practice and areas where there needed to be improved delivery. In this regard, the African Monitor provided a good model that the church can adopt and partner with to increase grassroots capacity.
The session further explored opportunities where the church could participate in global advocacy action on the MDGs. The G8 meeting taking place on the 6-8 June 2007 is such opportunity. One of the themes for the summit led by the German presidency will be ‘growth and responsibility in Africa.’ Next will be the African Union Summit in July. GCAP is also organizing a global campaign on 7 July (07/07/07) to mark the half way point for the delivery of the MDGs. The Anglican Communion was encouraged to link up these international processes to strengthen its role in advocacy. Full version of Newsletter