On May, the Office of Safeguarding, Catholic Archdiocese of Tamale (OSCAT) had a
virtual face-to-face meeting with the new batch of students enrolled this year for the online
safeguarding certificate course, in partnership with the IADC Blended E-learning program at
the Gregorian University. This batch is the highest number of seventy-eight students to ever
be enrolled. Majority of them are Sunday school animators, teachers, parish and association
leaders. Few are priests, religious sisters and brothers and social workers.
This kind of meeting and presentation is a key component to the course. It brings trainees
together after every so often, to put into perspective the units covered. Worth noting is
that the new IADC Blended E-learning program appeals more to the students for its content
and forms of interactions.
This is the fifth batch since our collaboration with the IADC Blended E-learning certificate
course began in 2022, to train pastoral agents in the archdiocese of Tamale, Ghana.
After two successful batches we opened the training to people from other dioceses mainly
for priests, religious sisters and brothers, catechists and Sunday school animators within the
country.
Currently, our training program has moved beyond Ghana’s shores, enrolling students from
other African countries such as Kenya, Zambia, Rwanda, Cameroon, Liberia and Sierra
Leone. We still target priests, religious men and women, administrators, teachers and other
pastoral agents within parishes.
One of the strengths in the program is that, we have people from different places but
sharing common issues and experiences about safeguarding. The contexts may be different
but similar dynamisms in relation to power and abuse. Hence, creating solidarity and
support within the group becomes an important value.
As a team we acknowledge the complexities and the challenge to really combine face-to-
face and by virtual due to the different locations of our participants. We continue however,
to explore creative ways to provide good and safer platforms for trainees to share and learn
best practices from one another in the light of the E-learning resources.