LWPT | In conversation with Amanda Khozi Mukwashi, Chief Executive Officer of Christian Aid UK

ll I love your book! You’re such a great storyteller I even feel like I’ve met your grandparents and they sounded amazing. AM They were, I was deeply attached to my grandparents. ll Is the book a way of saying thank you to them? AM When my grandmother passed, I went home to Zambia and I said to my sister ‘All those opportunities of listening to stories, of confirming different things, it’s all gone’. That’s when it started slowly crystalising that I needed to put something down of the history of our people, for our children. But I talk about many different things in the book too because that’s what human journeys are all about. Sometimes, when we are trying to address the issues that we work with as organisations or governments or agencies, we try to put health in this box, education in a different box, the environment and the climate in different boxes. But as a person you are the totality of them What you see in creation is God putting the human within that context, and then giving that instruction to tend the earth. We have broken the system that’s supposed to be so connected, and I think we’ve broken it spiritually. Instead, we’re consuming and abusing it. Part of the narrative we have with Christian Aid is that we are now on a journey of restoration, of healing, of bringing people together. Showing others our humanity and that sacrificial love of Jesus, not just talking about it but manifesting it with each other. ll There are a lot of people in the wider church who that would resonate with. Was that part of your vision when you became Chief Executive in 2018? AM Yes, to some extent. My journey with Christian Aid has been more spiritual than just thinking ‘this is what I want to do’. Christian Aid is founded on the concept of localisation, that we stand together with other communities, we don’t go there to do things to them or for them. So we work through local partners, through churches and local government in places like Kenya, Ethiopia and Bangladesh. That also includes Muslims, particularly in Nigeria. What really works well is when communities bring their own resources into our work. That story is not told a lot. In Ethiopia, they had to build a water catchment and when the project needed sand, wood and materials it was members of the community themselves who, not being paid, decided to chip in. That contribution is significant. Rowan Williams (Chair of Trustees at Christian Aid) put it very nicely when he said, ‘It’s only when there’s dignity for everybody that we ourselves are dignified’. When I came to Christian Aid, I wanted to keep that embedded deeply, and as something we could talk about proactively to others in the sector, including donors, because it needs long term resources to finance. So we’ve stood by the Zimbabwe Council of Churches during some really difficult times because the disadvantages that some communities have experienced are so deep it takes 15, 20, 30 years to get to a good place. We have stayed when others have left. In South Sudan, Christian Aid has continuously been there working on buildings, on issues of gender-based violence, because the job of restoration is not a one day job. We could use more in terms of donors going beyond the rhetoric and investing more. We have learnt that if we help to strengthen local actors, during times of trial and crisis they will be able to stand and be resilient. The support Christian Aid gets from UK local churches and citizens allows us to go beyond institutional donor money that can be specific. Our unrestricted resources allow us to support the vulnerable, to stand with them until they are strong, and to continue working together. You must encounter political issues through that work as well? AM Sometimes politics can interfere negatively with the work. Two years ago, a whole generation of children were not going to school in Cox’s Bazar (refugee camp, Bangladesh) but because education was a symbol of permanency, you were not allowed to even have the conversation. When I was in Maiduguri in Nigeria, with internally displaced people, there were classrooms but no teachers. You’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people, and you’re thinking to yourself, fast forward ten years, what’s the story like for these young people? All you want to do is to cut through the politics and provide for them. Christian Aid is not a political organisation in that sense, our politics is the politics of social justice. Whenever we can, we exercise our prophetic voice to call out injustices. We flag them up with the responsible governments and other actors, and pray that they take actions. Here in the UK, for example, we have raised the iss

Issue 46 - Exodus

Are you a Preach member?

In conversation with Amanda Khozi Mukwashi, Chief Executive Officer of Christian Aid UK

Help shape UK church leaders