SIL Tanzania - Scripture Engagement Research and Ministry

At the beginning of February, SIL Tanzania held a week-long forum for SE, arts and literacy staff, to share ideas, spend time in God’s Word, learn and plan together. Fifteen people gathered together from four different Bible translation cluster projects, and we were also joined by two Language Programs Interns. One day was spent exploring Outcome Harvesting. What we looked at: What is Outcome Harvesting? (Discussed the importance of goals and measuring progress and talked about Outcome Statements and how to write them.) What have we done so far in Mbeya? (Discussed the process we have been through.) What have we learnt? (Looked at some of the data.) What implications do these findings have for our work? (General discussion.) How can we continue to use Outcome Harvesting in ongoing monitoring and evaluation? (General discussion.) To help the participants understand how the sense-making process works, I got us all doing some sense-making together, using Outcome Statements fro...

In the Nyakyusa language area, from May to September, we met with eight groups (totaling 70-80 people) to listen to their stories. The majority of those we met with were church leaders or people with specific church responsibilities. Some were former SIL staff, some have attended literacy/Scripture engagement workshops held over the years, others had some connection to SIL through church visits made by SIL staff or through the Nyakyusa Community Based Organisations (CBOs). Sense-making meeting On Thursday 5 th October, we held one final meeting, in Kyela, gathering together representatives from the two Nyakyusa CBOs. About fifteen people came, including four from Malawi (which created an interesting language situation as some of them couldn’t understand Swahili very well, which was our primary language of communication in the meeting). It was very hot, and people struggled to stay awake after lunch! Outline of meeting Welcome and greetings (we invited the Chair of one...

On Thursday, 25 th May, the Malila Outcome Harvesting team (Katherine, Frank and Mwangwale) met with the Malila NGO to discuss findings (Mwangwale is also a member of the NGO). About half of the NGO were able to attend. The NGO is made up of men and women, church leaders and lay people, from different denominations. Many of them were part of the ‘Language Committee’ when the New Testament translation was ongoing and shared our vision for Bible translation. They engaged well in the discussions, though it was harder to draw the women out into sharing their thoughts. Brief outline of what we covered in the meeting Welcome & introductions Short devotional , based on 1 Corinthians 3:6-15 (about someone planting seeds, someone else watering, but God making it grow) What is our goal (as a NGO, but also as SIL)? Wanting to see people know God better through His Word, as well as to preserve and promote local language and culture. The research was directed towards the first part of this ...