By Sr. Henrietta Adindu, SHCJ
Introduction:
Justice and Peace Initiative of Religious in Nigeria is for both the Women and Men Religious. The motto of JPI of Religious in Nigeria is Love and Compassion this is based on the story of the good Samaritan found in Luke’s gospel 10: 30 -37. Hence JPI activities are generally centred around its motto.
Activities For the Year:
Each year every congregation is expected to carry out JPI activates based on the theme for the year. Reports from the congregations are presented at the Annual General Meeting. The theme for 2021 was Environment Care and Healthy Living. The Question for every Congregation was: “As a Congregation What are we doing Practically to Protect Our Environment and promote Healthy Living?”
Examples were given like educating the youths, women, men and indeed the whole family on environmental care and healthy living. Other examples included tree planting, organic farming, cleaning up our immediate surroundings and so forth. In the SHCJ Province individuals and communities were encouraged to carry out activities and send in their reports, with photos, for compilation in readiness for the JPI meeting. Sr. Chika Eze, SHCJ shared beautifully on how she promotes healthy living through her organic vegetable garden.
The 2022 Theme is: GOVERNANCE IN THE CONTEMPORARY NIGERIAN SOCIETY AND THE WAY FORWARD. Each Congregation is to carry out some activities around the theme and send in their reports to the Annual General Meeting (AGM) coming up in October 2022. A suggestion is to organize, seminars, workshops and so on and perhaps invite someone, preferably a Catholic who is sound in issues bordering governance in Nigeria as guest speaker. Since governance rotate around the three systems of Executive, Legislative and Judiciary, each area would be given attention
Annual General Meeting: The annual general meeting (AGM) comes up usually in October. The meeting is generally in three parts involving the meeting itself, a seminar around the theme and an outreach event. Often for the outreach we visit people at the margins, like the internally displaced persons (IDPs), Prisoners and so on. Each year when we visit the prison we endeavour to obtain release for some who are there for minor offence and could not pay the fine.
