Ecumenical Church Leaders Forum (ECLF)

Deadline: 14 February 2021 (4:30pm)

Project Title: Enhancing the Capacity of Church and Community in Zimbabwe for Peace and Nation Building

Implementing Partner: Ecumenical Church Leaders Forum (ECLF)

Project Funded By: Brot fur die Welt (BftW)

Project Timeframe: June 2018 – June 2021

Introduction

The Ecumenical Church Leaders Forum (ECLF) started in 2008 as a grouping of concerned Christian leaders from the major ecumenical bodies including the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC), Zimbabwe Catholics Bishops’ Conference (ZCBC), Union of the Development of Apostolic Churches in Zimbabwe and Africa (UDACIZA) and the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe (EFZ), who felt the need to meaningfully intervene in contemporary social, economic and political issues affecting the people. Over the years ECLF has chosen to focus its mandate on three main areas which are peace building, healing and reconciliation, good governance and accountability, in line with the practical role of the church in the context of an environment characterised by political and socio-economic conditions that have left many in the nation hurt and traumatized. The Forum is fundamentally premised on engaging a broad spectrum of church leaders, both clergy and lay-persons, community leaders and civil society to equip them to champion a nationwide peace-building program. Through its flagship conflict prevention, management, resolution and transformation (CPMRT) programme ECLF seeks to sensitize church and community on non-violent peaceful conflict management to help promote peace as it is believed that Zimbabwe is sitting on a time bomb which could one day explode because the vast majority of its citizens are angry, hurting, seeking opportunities to revenge and are therefore part of a nation desperately in need of healing and reconciliation as a result of previously unresolved violent conflicts.

Summary of consultancy

Ecumenical Church Leaders Forum (ECLF) is seeking an external consultant to design and conduct an end-of-program evaluation of the Enhancing the Capacity of Church and Community in Zimbabwe for Peace and Nation Building funded by BftW. The focus of the project is to consolidate ECLF’s peace building work in targeted districts and strengthen the capacity of the local peace committees (LPCs) established as a result of the ECLF interventions over the las three years in order to ensure community cohesion leading to people concentrating on development issues. The project is being implemented in 2 new districts, namely, Mutasa district in Manicaland Province in 24 out of the district’s 31 wards, and Uzumba Maramba Pfungwe (UMP) district in Mashonaland East Province in 12 out of the district’s 17 wards. In addition, the project is also maintaining a reduced presence in the three districts covered in the first phase of the project, namely, Mutoko, Zaka and Beitbridge. The two new districts mentioned above (Mutasa and UMP) have been the focus for CPMRT sensitization and local peace committee (LPC) trainings. The LPCs established in the first phase of the program (in Zaka, Mutoko and Beitbridge districts) have been nurtured, accompanied, and encouraged in their continued rollout of the peace building programme. This has been done all the way to the village level through provision of follow up support visits and consolidation of the work done to support responses by the LPCs to emerging issues by strengthening active citizenship in decision making, human security and the democratization processes.