Orphans and Vulnerable Children - The Church's Response

Moved by our compassion and the example of Christ to care for vulnerable and marginalized people suffering the ravages of disease, our response is often to build a clinic and send doctors and nurses to provide care. However, that assumes that if we build the clinic, people will come and if they come, they and their families will get healthy and stay healthy. Together we will explore the meaning of “health”, what is Community-Based Primary Health Care, and learn about three methodologies for prevention and cure at the community level..

Human trafficking refers to the sale of adults and children in to commercial sexual activity or as bonded laborers. It is often referred to as modern day slavery and viewed as a criminalized industry. However the roots of human trafficking lie in the poverty and marginalization of communities, broken families and the low values placed on children especially girls. Most agencies have approached the problem of human trafficking by advocating for stricter regulation, policing towards rescue among policy makers, law enforcement bodies and civil society. Some focus only on the rehabilitation of those rescued. However if human trafficking has to stop it is equally important to prevent the trafficking by using a preventive community based approach and to work on tackling some of the fundamental problems that undergirds and results in trafficking. In this session we will outline some of the community based initiatives that we have worked on to prevent human trafficking.