Africa – Ahappy Training Experience At Arrupe Jesuit University, Harare, Zimbabwe
From 9th to 12th January 2023, Jesuits in formation at Arrupe Jesuit University (AJU) had a five-day workshop facilitated by three instructors from the African Jesuits AIDS Network (AJAN), Fr. Matambura Ismael SJ, Ms Sergon Pascalia and Ms Mary Wanjugu Gichuru. Though intense, the workshop was a beautiful experience. We are very grateful to God and the AJAN secretariat staff for spending that precious time with us.
The workshop helped us be part of the AHAPPY GENERATION or people who can transform the society around us in our different future missions by being the voices of AJAN wherever we will be. The workshop's facilitators ran us through five different modules, the modules that every trainee of AJAN is supposed to have gone through at the end of AHAPPY training. These include Awakening to Myself, This World I Live in, Facing A World with HIV and AIDS, Knowing Myself to Grow Myself, and The Foundation on Which I Build My Life.
The AHAPPY training is aimed at imparting knowledge and skills to us. It focuses on integral human development, which targets the human being as a whole person and helps others live the same, especially at the early stages of our lives (from birth to 24 years). As a Jesuit and Church institution, AJAN sides with the teachings of the Church and provides a holistic approach to human development. The workshop helped me to know that AJAN is not merely an organisation trying to fight against HIV and AIDS as other secular organisations do. Instead, it is an organisation which ensures the integral development of young people by helping them to "understand their sexuality at the same time as their spirituality".
Towards the end of the workshop, one of the facilitators suggested a 15-minute daily reflection. She stressed that we should challenge the core negative beliefs, which sometimes push us to believe that we cannot make it in adopting the 'I can' attitude. She said that we have all that is required to succeed. We should be telling ourselves daily that we can abide by the teachings of the Church as we discover and explore our sexuality. We can say no to addictions and other unethical and immoral practices and appreciate the small steps we progressively make daily as part of an AHAPPY GENERATION. She also emphasised that mentoring is not a once-off process. Instead, mentoring is supposed to be a continual process which should take at least three to ten years. Therefore, one should not give up on the mentoring process. We were encouraged to have at least one person to mentor and do it diligently by practising active listening since mentoring benefits both the mentees and the mentors and human society in general.
In a nutshell, the AHAPPY training instilled in us a desire to be attentive to ourselves and others, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible for our choices, and be wise as we navigate and live in this ever-developing and information-driven world.
Report by,
Jean de la Croix Nsabimana, SJ,
Jesuit in formation at Arrupe Jesuit University (AJU)
Source : ajan.africa
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