We focus on youths to groom them for leadership…, – Umuahia Stake leaders
From Boniface Okoro, Umuahia
Leaders of Umuahia Nigerian Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have explained that the focus on youth development by the church was to train them to acquire leadership skills and learn how to render selfless service.
They said that the church was providing a platform for all-round leadership training which explains why their youths troop out during activities of the church, particularly during their annual All-Africa Service Project.
The leaders, including the Stake President of Umuahia Nigerian Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, James Chinanu Ogbuisi, his Deputy and First Councillor, President Ikechukwu Orji and the Stake’s Communication Director, Brother Kalu Iche Kalu, spoke in separate interviews with The Oracle Today newspapers against the backdrop of the 2023 All-Africa Service Project held on August 19, 2023, when their members carried out this year’s project at the State Secretariat, Ogurube Layout, Umuahia.
This year, the church carried out the project at the Old State secretariat where enthusiastic hundreds of members who turned up for the four-hour early morning clean-up exercise, cleared the overgrown surroundings of the sprawling secretariat.
Ogbuisi who spoke at the Stake headquarters on Library Avenue on Wednesday, September 6, 2023, explained that members of the Stake went to the secretariat to provide community service.
“We do the All-Africa Service Project annually. On the 19th of August, members of the church from across the 15 units of the Stake gathered at the State Secretariat to contribute in making that place more conducive for those who serve the state. Various offices and departments are there. So, we went there to just provide community service, clean up its surroundings, making it more conducive as a work environment,” he said.
Speaking on the active participation of the youths in the project, the Umuahia Stake President said it was a practical demonstration of the leadership and service-oriented training the church was giving them.
“In the Church of Jesus Christ, the youths are very very dear to our hearts,” he said, adding that that was why the church has created several programmes to enable them to acquire leadership training and other skills that would make them self-reliant.
“We have launched a Gathering Place for the young, single adults in the church between 18 years to 30. This Gathering place is a place designed for them to have the opportunity to gather together and learn the gospel of Jesus Christ and also improve in learning skills and other things that would help them to become more self-reliant in life.
“So, the Gathering Place is like a safe haven for the young people where they gather three times a week in our stake building here and they have institute classes where they learn both gospel principles, as well as other leadership skills that help them to develop themselves.
“They also improve in skills acquisition: tailoring, hair making, driving, carpentry and all other vocational skills that would help them become self-reliant. They learn self-reliant principles as well,” Ogbuisi revealed.
The Umuahia Stake First Councillor, President Ikechukwu Orji, who led members of the church perform the 2023 All-Africa Service Project which has been done for the past 17 years in the continent, described the exercise to keep the secretariat neat as a service to humanity, adding “that is how we want every other persons, their offices and their homes to be.”
He said carrying the youths along in such programmes would help them to imbibe the spirit of offering leadership embedded in selfless service. “This type of exercise will help our youths to know the importance of service to humanity. You know when we teach theoretically and we don’t teach them the practice, they may forget. But if we continue to show them this is how it goes, service, because they left all they were supposed to be doing today just to put in about three or four hours to do this service project that we are teaching them. So when we are no longer there tomorrow, they will continue from where we stopped,” Orji said.
On his own, the Director of Communication, Brother Kalu Iche Kalu, stressed the importance of keeping the environment clean, saying that it was not a task that should be left to the government alone. He therefore encouraged other churches and organisations to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in keeping the state clean.
“We do this project for nothing, as a service to our country, state and community. That is the policy of the church and I also know that the church believes in orderliness, cleanliness; the environment must be friendly. Besides this project, we have built roads, donated machines, hospital equipment, hygiene kits and that’s what the church believes in – rendering service.
“We are also ready to partner with other organizations to make sure that Umuahia, the state capital, is clean. We are expecting that next time, other churches, other organizations will follow suit and say what they can donate to the state. What can we do to make our state clean? It is not only the government that would be doing this but churches, organizations will also render service. When all of us put our hand on the deck, things would be okay,” Kalu said.
