UBS and SGM to be partners in Africa

KEMPTON PARK, South Africa — A pioneering project involving co-operation between UBS and Scripture Gift Mission (SGM) International is to take place in Southern Africa.

Under the terms of a partnership agreement signed in South Africa, SGM recognises the UBS Southern Africa Region and its member Societies as the prime distributors of its material in the region.

It also commits the UBS to actively promoting and distributing SGM products, helping to translate potentially useful SGM titles into local languages and prompting SGM to develop products to meet needs not covered by SGM’s development program.

The partnership agreement was signed in March by Peter Mkolesia, UBS Regional Secretary of Southern Africa, and Hugh Davies, International Director of SGM International, in the offices of the UBS in Kempton Park.

Mr Mkolesia said the agreement was in line with the UBS commitment to form partnerships with other agencies.

Resolutions passed by the UBS Africa Regional Committee over the past eight years have strongly supported the development of ‘human-needs centred’ Portions, he said, and distribution in the Region over the period has taken a lead from this.

Consultation

Mr Mkolesia described SGM as “experts… in researching and producing Scripture Portions”.

The content of future Portions for the Region, however, will be the result of consultation between the two organisations.

“We agreed that when [SGM] are developing new material especially for Africa, we would be put in the picture and be among the reviewers,” said Mr Mkolesia. “More than that, we were asked to initiate some Portions by telling them of a specific need we want addressed, and their team will work on it with us.”

Translation by UBS of some SGM material into local languages has already begun.

Free literature

Since it was founded more than 100 years ago SGM has been well-known for its insistence that its Christian literature be given free to non-Christian people.

Asked how this would square with the UBS policy of distributing Scriptures at ‘an affordable price’, Mr Mkolesia said UBS will distribute the products developed in partnership with SGM “according to our specific projects. Sometimes [they] will be free, if this is what the project intended.