A Premarital Family Life Enrichment Curriculum for Adventist Youth Educators in Kasama Central, Lualuo and New Town Churches of Kasama West Mission District, Zambia

Abstract

A problem and concern within the Seventh-day Adventist Church is that many young people are getting married without having sufficient knowledge about marriage before they get married. This lack of information may lead to problems later in the marriage. Kasama Central, New Town, and Lualuo Churches do not have an intensive preventive premarital family life program, no qualified personnel and inadequate family life materials dedicated to helping young people through the personnel who would be trained to handle issues of marriage. Therefore, there is need to develop a premarital family life curriculum and enrichment seminars for Adventist youths in these targeted churches. The purpose of the dissertation was to develop, then implement and evaluate family enrichment seminar materials and training of premarital Family Life Educators to help youths benefit from preventive premarital family life education. The method used was the closed questionnaire. The approach used was qualitative so that the information helped in achieving workable solutions and helped the researcher to understand the problem from the point of view of the people who responded to the questionnaire. The researcher used the logframe matrix to map out the study aim, goal and objective that verify the key assumptions of the premarital family life education activities. Then the Gantt chart was used to map out the project over time and the project implementation. The results and findings of the research revealed that though there is normalcy in Kasama Central, New Town and Lualuo Church with regard to marriage but the influence of modernity and postmodernity is influencing marriages negatively. Thus, the conclusion show that if there is an emphasis on the family life education, some young people would be reclaimed so that they have better marriages and families other than following the evasion that is not according to God’s will. The programs could act as preventive measures towards the negative vices that affect young people. Therefore, if the unique work of premarital family life education which deals with prevention therapy would be implemented it could reduce the crucible that the youths would get involved if taught before they enter into marriage. It would help those who want to marry to understand the strength and weakness found in each partner. The recommendation is that there be an intense training of trainers who can help train the personnel who, in turn, would train others so that young people can be prepared to meet the challenges found in marriage. Another recommendation is to also provide materials that can be used by marriage educators.