Family Life Education for Church youth leaders

June 25, 2010

Christian Family Life Education (CFLE) Orientation Programme

On 18th June 2010, UMN conducted a half day orientation for Kathmandu church/youth leaders on the Christian Family Life Education (CFLE) programme, at Hotel Greenwich Village. This orientation was especially organised for Kathmandu Church Leaders/Youth Leaders who were interested in conducting a CFLE programme in their respective churches. Altogether there were 56 participants (40 church/youth leaders and 16 UMN staff including interns).

The purpose of this programme was to share the objectives of the CFLE programme and familiarise the participants with the contents of the training manual. As part of this, the processes and outcomes of translating, adapting and piloting of the training manual in Rupandehi and Sunsari districts over the last two years were shared. The CFLE programme enhanced the capacity of young Christians on life skills and various sexual reproductive health issues including HIV/AIDS. The training contents are based on a Christian / Biblical perspective. The manual was originally produced by Family Health International (FHI)/Youth Net in collaboration with the World Council of Churches and Churches in Namibia. UMN translated the manual into Nepali and contextualised it for Nepal in light of feedback collected from church leaders and youth facilitators. UMN is now in the process of publishing the manual.

The orientation programme was very fruitful with 18 churches showing great interest in running CFLE classes in their respective churches. The Churches also provided feedback on ways they believe the programme could be modified to better suit their church communities. UMN is looking forward to working directly with Church communities through this CFLE programme. The next stage is to train CFLE facilitators who will then conduct CFLE sessions in their respective churches. We are hoping to have full support from the Church leaders and full participation of young people in these classes of CFLE at local Churches.