:: Area Committees

Substantive Area Committees: PROCMURA’s work at the grassroots levels is carried out by Area (country) Committees set up by the Churches to take charge of PROCMURA Programmes.

Substantive Area Committee are operative committees of PROCMURA which are members of the Governing Council and have a stake in all that PROCMURA does. Such committees usually have an Area Adviser who sees to the implementation of PROCMURA’s programmes, and serves as the contact point for the churches in their relations with Muslims.

Provisional Area Committees: These are Country Committees that are in the process of consolidating PROCMURA’s work and fully adopting its principles. They are not yet members of the Governing Council as they may have not applied for full membership or their applications are yet to be considered.

Development Stage: Countries which are in the Development Stage are close to forming Provisional Area Committees. These countries are the ones that remain in consultation with the churches to ascertain the number of churches that would be part of PROCMURA's programmes.

Exploratory Stage: A country is categorised as being in the exploratory stage when PROCMURA has organised seminars, workshops, consultations or teaching sessions for Church Leaders and stakeholders to create awareness but is waiting to see whether its principles are acceptable to the leadership. It usually takes some time for both PROCMURA and the Church leadership of a country to assess themselves after PROCMURA is introduced.

Yet to be Explored: PROCMURA, like any other organisation, does not have enough resources to extend its activities to every country of Africa as it would have wished. There are therefore, a number of countries we are yet to establish our presence or give a hint of our existence. It is not that all such countries have not heard of PROCMURA but that their bid to make PROCMURA one of their own has not yet materialised. PROCMURA will continue to explore such countries gradually.

Learning Area: PROCMURA recognises that most of the countries in North Africa (Maghrib) have predominantly Muslim populations and important minority Christian populations. It also recognises that in most, if not all of those countries, Islam is the official (state) religion where change of religious affiliation, other than conversion to Islam, is not permitted. PROCMURA seeks to learn from Christians in those countries how they live their faith and relate with Muslims, and from Muslims in those countries how they relate with the Christian minorities. Lessons learnt from these areas will help PROCMURA to assess its future mandate since its area of work covers mainly countries in Africa which are South of the Sahara.