Atsikana Walani College welcomed its new Information and Communications Technologies teacher on 1 August 2024. Thandieh Bandah will give the young women access to digital education after the summer holidays. PCs and laptops are available in the newly built computer room. After the two existing training programmes in the fields of solar/electronics and tailoring, this is another important building block for a promising future and the chance of a job. Thandieh Bandah is looking forward to the tasks ahead: ‘I started working on 1 August 2024, and with the new semester starting soon, I am looking forward to sharing my knowledge of digital education with the women. My goal is to offer women a more promising future through digital education. Thank you for this opportunity!’.

The topics of environment and sustainability are playing an increasingly important role worldwide and also at the Star Mountain Rehabilitation Centre SMRC near Ramallah (Palestine/West Bank). That is why the people in charge there are now offering a second training workshop on this subject. It will take place from 31 August to 2 September 2024 from 9 am to 12 pm. See here. The workshop is part of a special project (Youth Positive Participation Project) organised by SMRC together with the Empowerment Foundation and with the support of the Mercy Corps Foundation. The workshop is intended for young people between the ages of 18 and 29 who live in the Ramallah/Al-Bira area. The first such workshop took place from 19 to 21 August 2024, also on the Sternberg site. A short video here. Some pictures of the environmental beautification on STMC here.

It has existed since mid-2022 - the Star Mountain Association. People from the Moravian Church, as well as sponsors from the church district of Vlotho in Westphalia, have come together to support the work of the Star Mountain Rehabilitation Centre SMRC. Since 2024, the association has assumed financial responsibility for the special school on the SMRC. Members are invited to the digital general meeting on Wednesday, 18 September 2024 at 6.00 pm. Interested peolple can also attend, as the association still needs more members. Is the SMRC close to your heart? Then take a look at our website www.sternbergverein.de. If you are interested, please contact Niels Gärtner (n.gaertner@herrnhuter-missionhilfe.de). A warm welcome!

Next year, the joint calendar of the missiona organisations is entitled Preserving Creation and features twelve individual motifs that show creation in all its facets. Whether on solid ground, in the glowing fire, the hot desert, on a high mountain or in the intoxicating water - there is beauty and life everywhere. The pictures also show animals, people and plants and thus illustrate how large and diverse our world is. We have tried to make a selection that shows a broad spectrum of what absolutely must be preserved. Creation. For over 20 years, a co-operation of Protestant missionary organisations under the umbrella of Evangelische Mission Weltweit has been publishing a joint picture calendar on various themes. The calendar is available from Moravian Merchandise in the online shop or in the shop in Bad Boll.

General knowledge is a valuable asset that all educational institutions, regardless of specialisation, want to impart in all countries of the world. To test the general knowledge of the students at the Moravian Institute in Rajpur near Dehradun, the school management came up with something special. They had invited students to take part in an internal quiz competition on 24 August 2024. The residents of the three boarding school buildings on the school campus competed against each other. The range of topics from which the hundreds of quiz questions were drawn was extremely broad. And the competition was extremely exciting as it progressed. In the end, Phuntsog House emerged as the winner of the quiz competition, Gergan House came second and Tharchin House third. Eleven photos give an impression of this event. See here.

In the penultimate week of August 2024, the bishops from the North American Northern and Southern Provinces met at Laurel Ridge Camp in the US state of North Carolina. See here. Also present at this meeting was Angelica Regalado Cieza a pastor from Peru, who works on the Board of World Mission BWM of the Moravian Church in North America as Director of Mission Outreach and also leads the work Estamos Unidos (We are all one), the work of the Moravian Church among immigrants, especially from Latin America. Angelica Regalado Cieza had the opportunity to present her work in detail to the bishops. She also conducted the divine service at the bishops' meeting. The BWM wrote with regard to the bishops: "We are indeed blessed to have this group of servant leaders at our side and at the side of all the congregations and ministers of the Moravian Church."

At the recently concluded youth camp of the Moravian Church in Cuba, which took place in the Matanzas district, there was a multi-generational day. On this day, the Cuban young people met experienced Christians from the Moravian Church. Over the course of the day, each young person was assigned a personal mentor from among the experienced Christians. The experienced godparents blessed their young godchildren and gave them a colourful bracelet and a chain with a cross. Pictures of the new sponsorships hier. The young godchildren also prayed for their adult godparents.

The Moravian Messenger (August 2024) provides a detailed account of the life of Robert Pangani, who was ordained a bishop of the Moravian Church on 2 June 2024 in Mbeya (Tanzania Western Province). After a visit to Moravian Church in 2001 for the first Moravian Church World Mission Conference, the bishop, who initially worked in a gold mine in South Africa, was seriously injured in an accident on the way back, then lived from buying, transporting and selling fish and finally attended a Bible school, got to know the Hornsey Moravian Church in London. He later asked the church to make it possible for him to study theology in England, which did not materialise for financial reasons. However, the congregation agreed to send Robert Pangani £9,000 over a number of years, which enabled him to study theology at the Moravian Church's Teofilo Kisanji University TEKU in Mbeya. He was one of the best students in Mbeya until 2006 and made a career in the Moravian Church in Tanzania as a young pastor (first head of the Mbalizi District with 50 congregations; then head of the South West Province). More in English here.