Guidelines for Participating Institutions
What is a “Participating or Affiliated Institution”? An institution that participates in the project by contributing biographies is considered a Participating or Affiliated Institution. We consider an institution to be active if one of the faculty members or students has contributed at least one story. The website automatically records the author and affiliated institution when the biography is uploaded.
Affiliated Institutions play a central role in collecting stories. Educational institutions, both those directly connected to the church and those with an academic interest in Christianity in Africa, play a key role in the ongoing success of the DACB project. It is the hope of the DACB that with the support of their affiliated organizations, faculty, students, church leaders, and missionaries will come together to write the stories of the men and women who pioneered the birth and growth of the African church at local, regional, national, and/or continental levels.
- Unique access. African institutions have unique access to local information, oral history, and written sources unavailable to researchers elsewhere. This puts them at the forefront of the DACB endeavor.
- Institutional support. Those who write for the DACB–whether faculty or senior students-need the support of their administration as a whole. For example, church history courses can be re-designed to include the writing of a DACB biography as a course requirement.
Responsibilities of Participating Institutions
1. Selecting a liaison coordinator (LC). Ideally, in each participating institution, a faculty member volunteers to be responsible for organizing the project in his/her institution and for maintaining contact with the Boston University office.
2. Responsibility for accuracy. Each participating institution–through the course supervisor–is expected to verify that stories are as accurate and complete as possible before sending them to the Boston University office.
- Each story accepted for inclusion in the DACB will be identified with the supervisor and the liaison coordinator, the participating institution, and its author in a short paragraph following the story itself.
- Stories submitted must conform to the standards laid out in the Instructional Manual for Researchers and Writers.
3. Forwarding biographies to the DACB office in Boston University. Each DACB liaison coordinator will see that the completed stories are sent to the Boston University office via e-mail (preferred method) or postal mail.
4. Active institutions will be automatically be identified along with their submitted biographies in the register of affiliated institutions on the DACB Web site.
Expectations and Provisions For Liaison Coordinators
Liaison coordinators or course supervisors are expected to:
- Encourage colleagues and students to research and record the stories of Christians (lay and clerical, indigenous and foreign) who have made a significant contribution to the birth, growth, and vitality of a church or churches in your nation.
- Collect all completed stories. Verify that they adhere to the correct DACB format and that the content is accurate.
- Send the collected biographies to the Boston University office.
- Provide DACB information on request to those interested in participating in the project.
- If desired, in cooperation with other local participating institutions, form an association of respective national branches of the DACB for mutual support and sharing of resources. Thus, for example, liaison officers in Kenya would comprise the Kenya Association of African Christian Biography (KAACB), while their counterparts in Ethiopia would comprise the Ethiopian Association of African Christian Biography (EAACB); etc.
- In addition, if possible: Supplement our existing list of potential subjects by providing us with new names, including a few brief facts (as many as are available) such as dates, church affiliation, sources, and region of ministry. Send these names by e-mail or postal mail to the Boston University office.
- Maintain active communication with the Boston University office (once a year at least).
