The Church's Integral Mission as an Enabler to Community Development: A Case Study of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose: This study seeks to examine the role of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan (ECSS) in the process of community development within the Wau Diocese with a particular regard to the ways in which the church fills the void left by the government in the provision of education, health and social services. Methodology: This study was a mixed-method research study, conducted amongst 435 participants of churches and church leaders using questionnaires and interviews. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse quantitative data, while qualitative data were analysed using thematic analysis. Findings: The research shows that ECSS positively impacts community development by enhancing education and healthcare and advocating for human rights and non-violence. Its main challenges include financial limitations, political interferences, and cultural factors that hamper its work. It also finds that faith-based organisations should involve themselves with government and non-governmental organizations, undertake more outreach, and address structural challenges to service delivery through training and development efforts. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The implications of the study suggest that faith-based organizations like the ECSS can serve as pivotal actors in supplementing state functions in fragile settings, especially when empowered through partnerships, policy support, and community engagement. Therefore, the study concludes that sustainable development requires enhanced resource mobilization, stronger collaborations, and systemic reforms.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.028 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".