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Abstract
The Afrocentric-Youth Paradigm proposes a research methodology or a model for doing African youth research. Afrocentrism highlights that African research is done by African people through the actual African lens and approached from African cultural perspectives. This means that the lived cultural experiences of the African people are imperative in producing a more reliable and credible research output. On the other hand, it is normal for young people in Africa to experience discrimination and exclusion from major decision making and activities due to age. Most African cultures value the aged above young people with the assumption that they are inexperienced and therefore do not have much to offer. It is in this light that I propose that African cultures need to be interrogated holistically and thoroughly when researching on young people. The Afrocentric-Youth Paradigm is a proposed research methodology that provides specific questions that need to be addressed in the culture while doing African youth research.
Abstract
Children growing up in contexts of toxic stress face a cascade of deleterious realities that impact them at every level of their being. However, when children are securely attached to healthy adults in their lives, those supportive relationships can be both protective and transformative for those young people. Given the power of secure attachment and the New Testament’s frequent use of the metaphor of family to describe the church, this paper proposes that when ecclesial communities operate as real and healthy families in their contexts, those communities can thereby create missiologically significant spaces of healing and transformation for the children in their midst. In an effort to reimagine and reshape our ecclesial communities to function as such reciprocal and mutually supportive families, Child Theology and studies of early Christian community, catechesis, and worship are put into conversation with one another.