Faith, empowerment, church and community mobilisation advocacy: insights from Tearfund’s partner in Uganda

Abstract

Tearfund, a Christian faith-based international non-governmental organisation, has for 15 years supported local churches to mobilise communities through a process called Church and Community Mobilisation (CCM). The CCM advocacy pilot project in Uganda led to improvements in service delivery. In this paper, Tearfund and Making All Voices Count staff discuss recent research that examines the role of local churches, CCM and CCM advocacy in fostering transparency, citizen empowerment, inclusion and government responsiveness. The key themes they examine are social capital and the distinctive nature of faith-based mobilisation; faith and empowerment, both individual and collective; community mobilisation, strategic advocacy and shifting the power dynamics between local-level government officials and citizens; and scaling up local-level accountability successes to the national level.