Aug/Sept 2025 – Our PWP link member, Margaret Allen, shares this update.
Its been quite a steep learning curve for me since St Mary’s were invited to be linked to the Poole Wau Partnership. For one thing, I’ve had to learn a new acronym: PWP – and my brain finds it quite a challenge to remember such things. I have, however, rather enjoyed reading a “historic” document, recounting 10 years of PWP from its birth in 2011 (not long before South Sudan broke away from the rest of Sudan), to 2021.
I discovered that Wau is a diocese in the Episcopal Church 0f South Sudan and that it has had a long connection with our diocese of Salisbury. The town of Wau is S Sudan’s second city, (after the capital Juba), and has a population about the same size as Poole. There the similarity with western towns ends – except for one thing: progress is largely dependent on the vision and energy of its leaders.
After 2 years of peace, tribal enmities started to break out and political leadership has foundered in what is now virtually a state of civil war. Wau diocese has long been blessed
by the larger than life presence of Bishop (later Archbishop) Moses. His vision, laid out in his book, “The role of the Church in nation building”, is to promote greater harmony and well-being in his homeland through the Church’s education programmes and a higher standard of Christian teaching. This inspired some initial meetings with the churches of Poole Deanery and, ultimately, in February 2011, the PWP.
The following year, the flagship St John’s College of Theology and Development opened with just 3 students! Finance for students, staff and facilities was the limiting factor and from the start, PWP were involved in a small way in helping in its growth: to 200 in 2017 and 400 by 2020. Apart from the badly needed training for priests (many of whom had Primary education at best), St John’s has two other Departments: Business Studies and Teacher Training.
These provide valuable opportunities for young people, in particular, to find work rather than being tempted to join armed gangs and are open equally to women and men. They fully justify St John’s claim to be a promoter of development as well as of the vital work of raising the level of Christian education. Its excellence has recently been recognised by its selection as one of the Colleges to make up the new Episcopal University of South Sudan and it is to St John’s College that PWP has decided to concentrate its financial support, increasing annual donations to £17,000.
In August this year, there was a big change in the South Sudan Episcopal Church, when Archbishop Moses stepped down to become the new peace envoy representing South Sudan in the African Council of Churches. His place as Archbishop has been taken by Abraham Yel Nhial, who has personally experienced the horrors of war. At the age of 9, he escaped from government soldiers who massacred his family and most of the village, then fled with other boys to Kenya and later to Ethiopia, where he received Christian teaching and ordination into the Episcopal Church.
*A brief footnote: PWP is correctly described as a partnership. Although finance is flowing only one way, neither partner has a monopoly on the flow of friendship, understanding and prayer.
You can find out more about PWP on their website here