Some of the participants at the launching of the programme with the Anglican Alliance facilitator Mrs Tagolyn Kabekabe (right)

[Anglican Church of Melanesia] The Anglican Alliance’s biggest capacity building program Agents of Change was launched in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, last week.

The Church’s Melanesian Board of Mission’s Secretary, Fr George Elo helped to launch the study program with the Anglican Alliance Pacific Facilitator, Tagolyn Kabekabe.

The course — a distance learning course in community development skills — has been developed especially for the Anglican Alliance by Open University, the world famous distance learning university based in the UK.

A total of 11 participants from the Solomon Islands are undertaking the program which will run for six months. The participants are drawn from all walks of life and are all very enthusiastic about their participation.

The Honiara participants have two mentors: Robert Price and Kayleigh Pickard who are based in London, UK. The mentors are the first point of contact for the participants. They provide feedback on modules as well as guiding them in working on their chosen project.

Mentors normally come from a different country from the participants they are mentoring; are people with higher education qualifications; are often development professionals or academics; and who are committed to providing feedback to participants at five key points of their studies¹.

According to Mrs Kabekabe, the program has been named with the expectation that the participants, upon completion of their study, will work with their communities as Agents of Change and live out the five Marks of Mission: to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom, to teach, baptize and nurture new believers; to respond to human need by loving service; to seek to transform unjust structures of society; to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation; to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.

This latest course is part of the Agents of Change pilot schemes, which have been launched across the four regions of the Anglican Communion: Africa, Asia, Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean.  The pilot schemes are being evaluated at the end of the year and a full roll-out of the program will take place from January 2014.

To read more about the Agents of Change programme visit http://bit.ly/110w0oY.

If you would like to be a mentor on the next Agents of Change programmes please email anglicanalliance@aco.org

The application deadline for programmes in January is Oct. 31, 2013, and interested participants can find more information and apply at http://www.anglicanalliance.org/agentsofchange. Alternatively, please email anglicanalliance@aco.org for more information.