A few words about
What We Do
Our projects
Thematic Areas
We are involved in different aspects of human development, which are categorized under five thematic areas of focus namely:
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Research and Animation
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Social Welfare
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Peace Building and Conflict Transformation
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Good Governance and Human Rights
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Rural/Urban and Water Development
The Department is responsible for establishing JDPC Committees at Parish and Deanery levels. Using these Committees as entry points, the Department researches into the problems faced by local communities; embarks on needs assessment and subsequently build the capacity of community members for collaboration and solidarity in the light of the social teaching of the Catholic Church, for an intervention strategy. The Correctional Centre Apostolate works in collaboration with Catholic Lawyers to handle the spiritual needs and legal concerns of inmates.
This Department is responsible for development programmes in both rural and urban areas to complement Government’s effort in meeting the needs in communities. Its main activities include: Sustainable Agriculture, Water and Sanitation and Climate Change.
The department networks with eleven (11) Organizations balanced by faith and gender, and works in the seventeen (17) Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Plateau State, with the goal of building and promoting sustainable peace resulting in the reduction of emergencies/crisis in the State. It has 255 volunteers known as Local Emergency Preparedness and Response Team (LEPRT) who are saddled with the responsibility of identifying conflict/disaster early warning signs and reporting, need and risk assessment, advocacy and synergy, community mobilization, monitoring, registration of IDPs and Camp management among others.
Overview
Peace Clubs in Secondary and Primary schools across the 17 Local Government Areas (LGA) of Plateau State were established by the Emergency Preparedness Response Team (EPRT) with support from the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) to equip the younger generation with the right attitudes, skills, and values necessary to create durable peace in the State. The most recent are in Bassa, Jos North, Jos South, Jos East, and Barkin Ladi LGAs. These Peace Clubs operate as a co-curriculum program and are composed of groups of young people (Students, Pupils, and Youths) guided by Peace Club coordinators. The club provides young people with an opportunity to learn how to resolve conflicts amicably, exchange experiences with each other, and develop respect for other people irrespective of gender, age, religion, or ethnic affiliation. In this regard, MCC and EPRT believe that many of these common challenges and needs can better be addressed by joining forces to promote love instead of hatred among people.
To achieve this, we must begin with the children for them to generate the culture of peace in their perspective as they develop peace values in their daily lives. Therefore, a three-day Peace Education training was organized for Students and Teachers in five (5) schools spread across five LGAs of the Northern Senatorial zone of Plateau State. A total of 70 females, 64 males, and 10 teachers were trained.
It is expected that the students/Pupils put into practice what they are thought within the three days of training to see a reduction in the cases of bullying, corporal punishment, violent incidence, drug and substance misuse, and also in cases of gender-based violence not just in the school environment but also in their homes, community and while they interact with friends everywhere they go.
Going by the objectives of the Organisation, the Social Justice and Human Development for Peace Initiative Women Empowerment Department (WEP) has as its key objective the empowerment of women to enable them to participate fully in the development of their communities. Most of the programmes implemented under the department are geared towards empowering the less privileged, women who are into petty trading or small-scale businesses. So far, over five thousand eight hundred women have accessed support from the department to boost their businesses. Recently, support from the Catholic Caritas Foundation of Nigeria empowered 25 women who lost their means of livelihood in Kwall, Bassa Local Government Area of Plateau State on July 27, to August 4, 2023, due to violent attacks on the Irigwe Chiefdom.
The WEP team paid an advocacy visit to His Royal Highness Halla Dodo, the District Head of Kwall on the 20th of May 2022 to intimate him of the Livelihood Support Project in partnership with Catholic Caritas Foundation of Nigeria, aimed at providing succour to vulnerable and displaced women in Kwall community. The District Head was quite elated about the development and thanked the Catholic Caritas Foundation for considering his community for the laudable project.
Thereafter, 25 vulnerable women were thereafter selected by the team with the assistance of the community lead, Mr. Daniel Taju. The selected women were trained on how to become successful entrepreneurs, venturing into businesses, advantages, and disadvantages of Micro-business, sources of business funding, savings, simple costing and price determination, business and sales promotion, book-keeping and savings, and internal lending community (SILC). A grant of fifty thousand Naira was subsequently disbursed to each of the women.
The Department carries out programmes aimed at promoting accountability, justice, equity and fairness. To accomplish the above, the department is divided into three sections; Human Rights (Legal Aid Clinic), Good Governance, Election observation and Civic Education.
The goal of the department is to promote durable and sustainable peace and stability in Plateau State, through inter-faith collaboration and strategic non-violent options. It is engaged in Dialogue and Mediation as well as Peace Building processes with Herders/Farmers, Traditional and Religious Leaders and other Community Stakeholders.
In our peacebuilding work, during the course of 2022/2023, The Community Initiatives to Promote Peace (CIPP) project funded by USAID through Mercy Corp is aimed at mitigating violent conflict in at-risk communities in six states of Nigeria’s North West (Kaduna, Kano, and Katsina States) and North Central (Kogi, Benue, and Plateau States) zones through an integrated, multifaceted program that empowers communities to prevent and respond to violence and violent extremism by strengthening key skills and relationships, to fosters an enabling environment for peace through policy advocacy, media outreach, and linkages to development programs. To address local variations in conflict dynamics, targeted activities addressing specific types of violence are being implemented in selected target locations.
CIPP used research to inform programming as a form of adaptation to show how data can inform programming. After the release of research findings on Religion, Identity, and Conflict in Nigeria by the CIPP activity, recommendations in the research were used to design interventions to address key issues. JDPC implemented activities around Freedom of Religion or Belief (FORB) in Kano (Badawa, Gama communities Nassarawa LGA and Tudun Bojuwa, Sabon Gari communities Fagge LGA) and Kaduna (Kajuru, Kasuwan Magani communities Kajuru LGA and Kachia, Gumel communities Kachia LGA).
The Stakeholders Engagement for Conflict Mitigation and Religious Freedom which is a component of the CIPP project is being implemented by JDPC in eight (8) communities of Kaduna and Kano states. The CIPP project is targeted at religious leaders, women, and youths to promote issues of religious freedom, and rights to prevent violent extremism.
To equip the participants with skills to effectively engage with stakeholders to mitigate conflict and promote religious freedom, the participants’ capacities were strengthened through Data Collection on conflict associated with religion. The project instituted a system of data collection that was done, by trained mediators and other actors. The data collected and collated was analyzed and reported to Mercy Corp (MC) every quarter by the community members. There was also TOT training for religious and community leaders on religious sensitivities and freedom of religion and beliefs: The Training on religious sensitivities and freedom of religion and beliefs was conducted for selected community actors to enhance their capacity for conflict mitigation and religious sensitivity.
Training human rights defenders to create linkages was quite impactful as community members in target LGAs were able to establish a platform to interact with government agencies, Security Outfits, and CSOs.
The Training of women and youth on religious rights and freedom using the GEADOR approach (Gender Empowerment and Development Organizing Resource) strengthened the capacity of 32 participants made up of women and young girls including minority groups and PLWD to actively participate in community peace-building and prevention of violent extremism, violation of Religion Freedom rights and mainstreaming gender inclusion in community initiatives.
The Peacebuilding intervention is funded by Tearfund, a Christian organization that partners with Churches in more than fifty (50) of the world’s poorest countries. It tackles poverty through sustainable development, responding to disasters, and challenging injustice. Social Justice for Human Development for peace initiative (JDPC) was identified and selected because of its potential and its vast experience in the thematic area of peacebuilding which is the core foundation of the organization to implement the intervention in collaboration with the Christian Rural and Urban Development Association of Nigeria (CRUDAN) a Christian Inter-denominational, not-for-profit, non-Governmental organization. A membership organization that has its members-churches, Christian organizations, and individuals that are engaged or interested in development work in Nigeria, and the Scripture Union of West Africa (SUWA) an organization that exists to equip individuals, families, communities, and institutions to develop, manage, mitigate, and sustain appropriate responses to bring about healthy life, reconciliation, peaceful co-existence, and transformation in societies.
Conflict Prevention and Responses for Peaceful Co-existence and Sustainable Peace
The intervention seeks to address the root causes, triggers of violent conflict, and substance misuse in the target location.
Rahwol- Kanang (Anguwan-Doki), Jos South LGA, Plateau State.
Promoting Interfaith Response to Religious Extremism (PIRREX)
The project aims at stabilizing a potentially violent conflict before its outbreak by initiating and implementing activities that address the root causes as well as the triggers of a dispute.
Dutse-Uku community Jos North LGA, Plateau State.
- Baseline survey in the project community.
- Advocacy meeting.
- Peacebuilding, Conflict Transformation training, and Dialogue sessions.
- The commemoration of the International Day of Peace.
- Good Governance, Accountability, Civic, and Voter education training.
- Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) training.
- Drug and substance misuse workshop.
- Trauma Awareness and Healing.
- Monitoring visits to the project community.
We are a team that:
- Demonstrates integrity, respect, leadership and excellence.
- Believes in the sanctity and dignity of the human person
- Is full of energy, enthusiasm, and the courage to make a difference
- Demonstrates accountability and transparency
- Builds relationships based on doing the right thing.
- Committed to promoting equal rights and opportunities
- Committed to care for the environment
- Committed to advocating and promoting inclusiveness
- Committed to teamwork/solidarity
- Demonstrates interfaith relations
- Advocates for the poor, vulnerable and marginalized
- Committed to promoting food security
- To be the Policy-making body for the Archdiocese in the area of social development.
- To create awareness of the meaning and application of Catholic Social Teaching among people in the Archdiocese.
- To coordinate all programmes relating to Human Rights/Good Governance, Social Welfare, Rural, Urban and Water Development and Animation for integral human development.
- To recommend programmes, projects and proposals to the Ordinary for funding.
- To promote the dignity of God’s creation.
- To organise the annual Lenten Campaign.
- To set up Committees to pursue the objectives of the JDPC.
- To approve the budgets and plans-of-action of its component committees.
- To organize the annual “JDPC DAY” and “JDPC WEEK” with specific goals.
- To speak out on behalf of the Archdiocese, with the approval of the Ordinary, on issues of Social Justice.
- To ensure that monitoring and evaluation of the work of its Committees are carried out at regular intervals.
- To promote good communication, understanding and collaboration between the JDPC and all other Commissions of the Archdiocese.
- To liaise with the National JDPC Secretariat, Jos Province and other Dioceses on social development issues, on behalf of the Archdiocese of Jos.
- To employ personnel where necessary and feasible, to carry out programmes and approve salaries and conditions-of-service of all employees thus engaged.