Golden Jubilee For Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference During the period in review some parishes visited the parliament and sat in the gallery as parliamentarians debated. Although this figure is very small as compared to the number of parishes that we have, the mere fact that the few parishes came is a clear testimony that an interest in the operations of government is filtering in the church. Church members especially the old are still not interested in visiting parliament except for the youths, the fact that some groups from the church are now coming to visit parliament is a big achievement even though more still needs to be done. vi) Election Observation The office is involved in the early preparations of all election observations that were taking place since 2006. As part of the Human Rights Commission the office has been involved in the monitoring of the media and how rallies are being conducted in order to avoid hate speech which is the ethos of the church not to allow hate speech to be used during rallies and campaigns. The training of both national and international observers was always done beginning with training of trainers from our 8 dioceses. Training involves the familiarisation of the observers with the local laws. The training of observers will benefit the church for reports that will be produced will be factual and bishops and other organisations will use these reports for lobby and advocacy. If the observers are not trained the reports will not have the same thrust and can bring the church to disrupt. When the training of trainers was always in progress the office always realised that people needed healing from yester year fear. The fear of the previous violence that took place in 2000, 2001, 2008 was seen to be still live in the people. The office tried and will continue to frantically help people go over the fear that is in their minds. It is hoped that this fear with time is going to disappear from the minds of the people. 3. Implementation of the project and achieving its objectives Misereor has been funding the commission since its inception in 2006. Ever since 2015 a good number of MPs have been joining other MPs in Rome. No financial support has come from funding partners. This is an achievement for the office in the area of self reliance and the local contribution in the running of the project. 50