African Church Assets Programme

Training Description

Asset management of the human and material resources of Churches has been identified as a key issue preventing the promotion of all-round financial sustainability and overall development of Churches and Church-related organisations in the spread of the Gospel and the improvement of livelihoods.

This training addresses directly these issues and provides Church leaders and religious organisations administrators the competences and tools necessary to implement on their churches:

Inventory and mapping of Fixed Assets
Improvement Investment of Fixed Assets
Report back home and sensitize those left behind on good stewardship of assets
Develop a theological curriculum

Improving these aspects will not only improve the churches and religious organisations services but will attract future investors.

Syllabus

The duration of the training is one year. Over this period, the course will be divided into three different phases.

Phase I: Strategizing and partnership engagement

In order to have knowledge of the landscape of ethical investments, a desk-research needs to be executed. Current ethical investment portfolios will be assessed, measures shall be studied and the actions plans of participants assessed with regard to their status and needs, noting the percentage of ethical investments out of the total investment portfolio of each Church or religious organisations. They will be stimulated to develop, and/or modify concrete investment projects to be presented at the Ethical Investment Summit in March/April 2019.

Phase II: Ethical Investment Summit

During this event, the attracting of investors, as well as the capacity-building of Churches and Religious Organisations, will come together. Investors and development agencies will be brought together to open up to ethical investments in Churches and Religious Organisations in their countries. This Summit, to be seen as a market and exhibition space will be a place where concrete projects are showcased and pitched to investors and development agencies. The summit will be a place of networking, innovation and negotiation.

Phase III: Follow up and evaluation

The effectiveness of the programme will be measured through several indicators. The number of investments deals made and the proportion of ethical investments in investment portfolios will be compared with the baseline study undertaken at the beginning of the course. An evaluation survey will be distributed after every activity, which will indicate results and means of improvement.

Teaching Methods

The training format will be delivered through off-site interactive workshops. The participants will be divided into small groups, 5-6 persons per group. The expert will drive them through a series of group discussions, group exercises and personal assignments throughout each workshop. The workshop is blended learning, it will combine online educational materials with classroom methods. Globethics will develop the training materials using PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and online support and to the extent possible make use of a minimum amount of paper.