My Twenty-Square-Meter Garden of Eden Development Communication Centre of Sagana Youth Dccsy
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Date
2007
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Tangaza University College
Abstract
This thesis is based on a deep personal reflection on the story of creation
found in Genesis 1 one and 2, with particular reference to 2:15-16, where God
settles Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to purposely till and care for it. Starting
with the spiritual dimension, this thesis will be developed to address the social-
economic and cultural challenges of our human society with specific focus on
empowering young people through television, so that they can provide sufficient
food and self-employment in the society.
Hunger is hazardous to everybody's health, while unemployment minimizes
people's opportunities to acquire food, which is very essential for livelihood.
Agriculture is the main occupation through which land as a natural resource is
utilized to produce different foodstuffs, in spite of some unfavorable climatic
conditions such as drought and land infertility. The proposed project is deeply
grounded on the premise that, since within the same society some members are
capable of producing sufficient foodstuff using their intellectual capacity, everybody
else given better relevant and appropriate information, should be able to attain self-
reliance through personal effort.
There are several messages being communicated to us by the above
mentioned scriptural text. But we can intimate that the primary one is our divine
duty to sustain our life through using the land, which is a free gift from our creator.
God empowered us and as his co-creators, we have the ability and duty to make land
produce sufficient wealth. From the same verses, we can deduce that God wishes that human beings be social, responsible and use the land diligently to procure
resources for their own needs.
Our contemporary society experiences an ever-increasing demand for food in
spite of the establishment of the foundation of Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) agency of the United Nations (UN) on 16 October 1945 in Quebec, Canada
meant to ensure food security. The role of FAO is to channel information in view of
facilitating developing countries to address food security for all with the Latin
slogan
"flat panis,"
meaning,"let there be bread." Our society has to respond to
social-economic challenges such as food shortage and the unemployment of young
people. These two issues are inviting us to look deeply into the food shortage crisis
and youth unemployment critically because they pose a great threat to life in our
society. We are not omnipotent as God, but have the ability to use our brain in
technological invention; we can use mass media channels to influence the whole
society through dissemination of the available technology. Mass media can be used
to reach masses of people. The Pastoral Instruction on the Means of Social
Communication,
"Communio et Progressio
published on 29 January 1971, affirms
that advances in the means of social communication have over-powered the barriers
that time and space have created amongst us.
Even though the teaching of the
Church declares the media as a useful gift from God which can be used to educate
and preserve culture, little has been done in implementing the Vatican II
recommendation, leaving the demand for video tapes with such information From social studies, we understand that the role of communication in the
personal and social life of human beings is distinct from psychological and societal
functions of human communication. From the psychological perspective, the person
is more focused because he/she selects what is meaningful and applicable, while in
the societal approach individual's environment, culture and society are considered.
To be effective in persuading the young people to respond to the call to cultivate and
care for the land, this project will use familiar food crops to motivate youth to
change their attitude towards farming. The information will be repeated during some
special seasons such as cultivation period, sowing and harvesting.
Sagana Parish has done a commendable job in helping the youth to grow up
spiritually through socialization. But now the high rate of unemployment is creating
a demand for contextualizing the Biblical teaching. As part of the preparation to face
the future life, young people need to be instructed to do some agriculture, because
this is the only sector which can help many of them. There is need to interiorize the
local Agikuyu saying,
"gutiri utariaga",
which means there is no one who does not
eat.
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Keywords
Garden of Eden, Communication Centre