Focus Areas
Medical
The Medical focus group is one of the significant focus areas which the under privileged churches and communities need most in their day to day lives. Zealous will prioritize this focus area since it is a healthy person who will mostly harvest the talents within the Body of Christ. The Zealous Medical Team comprises three projects namely.
- Zealous Health Education and Advocacy
- Zealous Mobile Clinic and Tele-Medicine
- Zealous Joy After sliding
This is to improve the quality, availability, and effectiveness of educational and community-based programs designed to prevent diseases, improve health, and enhance quality of life.
Zealous will assist to:
- catalyze significant advances in strengthening health education by supporting grassroot partnerships with local churches that will implement and lead sustainable health initiatives, preventative health care, promote health, and manage chronic conditions in underserved and rural areas;
- Train locals directly for the delivery of integrated primary healthcare in Africa, by increasing linkages of people to services and resources, that improves population health through the development and support of community actions that address social determinants.
- Replicate, evaluate, and scale up interventions that achieve measurable, health improvements that engage in mental health programs that include the development of prosocial behaviors, stress management skills, and control of stress.
- Improve the quality and safety life-style practices, by engaging in harvesting and disseminating new ideas and the spread of best practices, within Africa.
Zealous Medical team will support community-based partnerships (churches and outreach programs). Mobile healthcare will be brought to the doorsteps of most communities and medical awareness will significantly improve. Through the partnerships it will expand and improve access to preventive services, home and community-based services and social supports. Community support actions will be put in place to address social determinants of health and improve health-related infrastructure.
Zealous Medical will also engage in mental health programs that include the development of prosocial behaviors, stress management skills, and control of stress.
Education, Change Mangement & Youth Empowerment
The Education and Change Management is one of the key focus areas under the vision of Zealous Christian Professionals Forum which is to harvest talents to the Body of Christ in order to create talent bank for the Kingdom of God. The main aim of the focus group is to promote social change in the Body of Christ especially among the youth. The group has membership of experts including Educationists, Counselors, Communicators, and Change Management Experts working to promote three key thematic objectives. These include: Counselling, Youth Empowerment and Behaviour Change.
a) Counselling:
The vision of the counselling group is based on the principle of applying the Love of Christ to promote the mental wellbeing of all as captured in Matthew 22: 37-39. The vision is to strengthen the capacities of Churches and Christian bodies globally through the provision of comprehensive counselling services for all. The overall objective of counseling under the Education and Change Management focus group is to anchor effective counselling as an important/critical service provided in the body of Christ to facilitate the mental and psychosocial wellbeing of all while they serve God.
b) Youth Empowerment:
Investing in the youth is necessary in growing the body of Christ. 1 Timothy 4:12-13 directs that, “Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.” The vision of Youth Empowerment under Education and Change Management, therefore, is to promote in the body of Christ, the mentoring, counselling and provision of the needed guidance that ensures God fearing, skillful and confident young people who are zealous to serve the Lord. The overall objective of Youth Empowerment is to strengthen the capacities of Churches and Christian institutions to support spiritual development, career guidance and social wellbeing of young people.
c) Behaviour Change:
The behavior change component under Education and Change Management is aimed at promoting Christian values and principles among Christians and non-Christians in a global changing world.
All Directors and Officers of Zealous were requested to sign the Conflict of Interest Policy which shows the seriousness it attaches to enforcement of this policy.
Finance and Accounting
The Finance and Administration pillar, a component of the Zealous Christian Professional Forum will contribute to the achievement of the overall goals and objectives of the forum. The focus group’s main mission is to enable finance managers and the general church leadership acquire financial skills for providing data, information, trend analysis, financial Knowledge management and systems for leaders to anticipate and respond effectively to the challenges facing the church today.
The group also identifies the existing opportunity and aims to support the body of Christ position itself for greater impact in honoring the great commission and accelerating the extension of the kingdom of God by ensuring prudence and value for money in church resource management and access to goods and services.
To embark on this mission, members were broken down into three categories namely:
1. Financial literacy and inclusion : It aims at providing the body of Christ with robust financial management knowledge, tools and resources to enable leaders in the church globally be effective finance and risk informed decision makers and actively engaging with stake holders including Governments, Regulators, Educational Institutes, Training Providers, Financial Services and Banks.
2. Financial Management, Risk Management and Quality Assurance
To provide the Body of Christ with robust Financial and Risk Management knowledge coupled with Quality Assurance knowledge, tools, and resources to enable leaders in the church globally be effective financial and risk informed decision makers.
3. Auditing, Investment and Tax Advisory Services:
This team provides the Body of Christ with Auditing services, Financial Investments and Tax Advisory Services, and resources to enable leaders in the church globally make wise investment decisions and access quality advisory services
Leadership & Administration
Leadership and General Administration is one of the five focus areas to which Zealous will be paying attention. It includes Church Administration, Human Resources, Logistics, Catering, General Technicians, ICT, and all other related professions.
Zealous thinks leadership drives the organization, therefore the Management teams that it will be working with will be informed on Zealous vision and objectives. They must be able to accept the concept of talent as a harvest to the Lord.
More work and education are required to change the mindset of leaders who may think they are doing this already, so they need not be bothered.
Zealous will explain to leaders of churches, who may think that Zealous is coming to take away their members, that Zealous is not a church, rather a forum of Christian professionals who are willing to work with them to propagate the gospel through talent harvesting. Zealous believes one idea from any of its members can change the spiritual, physical, financial and investment status of the Body of Christ and its community. Zealous will use networking, collaboration, and change management strategies to win the buy-in of the leaders.
Legal and Engineering
The Legal, Engineering, and Architecture focus area’s activities are very scarce in the rural areas of our churches and communities. Most Church lands and properties are not registered and not legally documented. Zealous will assist those churches and communities to legally document their properties. Engineers, Quantity Surveyors, and Architects play a very significant role in designing appropriate chapels and manses for the rural church communities according to their affordability level. This design could be categorized into various seating capacities and levels of financial capacities.
Zealous will support the standardized and categorized projects to avoid unnecessary lock-up of financial capital and promote investments to finance the projects.
Zealous will have international overview of simple and modern chapels and design them to suit the local environment. The Legal, Engineering and Architectural professionals will provide other technical advice to the churches and communities as and when necessary.