Family Capacity Building

1. Training Program Objectives

The Holy Scripture acknowledges family as the first institution. Marriage is constituted by God at the very beginning of creation  (Gen. 2:18). Children are gifts from God and parents are custodians to train them in a godly manner (Psalm 127:3, Deut.6, Eph.6:4).  However, parents in this modern era are busy with different activities and couldn’t work enough for the wellbeing of this institution. Though it is well understood that many urban families in Ethiopia share this global challenge and lack quality time to share among themselves,  there is no adequate study to investigate family time practices and challenges in relation to child faith development.

Our Capacity Building Training Program main objectives:

  1. Raise awareness of parents and child ministries on current challenges in child-rearing and child spiritual development; and encourage them to take responsibility for nurturing children for holistic child development.
  2. Equip parents, family members, child ministries, and concerned institutions to effectively render family ministry services for holistic child development through training, workshops, coaching, mentoring, counseling and enable them to exert coordinated effort in raising children.
  3. Produce up-to-date teaching & training materials and manuals to equip parents, family members, concerned institutions, congregations, and Trainers.

2. Training Methods

i. Training arranged at a local congregation level

ii. Periodical Training and workshops for parents and ministries

iii. Training through main-stream and social media

iv. Individual family members training and counseling

v. Family Library

4. Short term plan and priorities

As YLF is still in the making and its different programs including the Family Capacity Building are yet to commence, an ‘issue-based strategic planning model’ which serves for around a year will be employed. The YLF Capacity Building Team will be performing the following as its prior activities during the implementation stage which lasts for around six to twelve months.

  1. Identify families, congregations, denominations, and ministries to work with and initiate communication with selected partners.
  2. Organize awareness creation meetings and workshops for selected partners on the need for having a strong family ministry at the home level.
  3. Select available training materials, manuals, family bible study materials & guides.
  4. Produce up-to-date teaching and/or training materials and manuals and selection of available material to equip parents and family ministries.
  5. Perform continuous need assessment and organize family capacity-building pieces of training for parents, family members, congregations, and family ministries.