Virtual International Peacemaker
Presented by the Peacemaking and Global Witness Partnership
PGA 2021 International Peacemaker:
Rev. Helivao Poget of Madagascar
Helivao Poget was ordained as a pastor in the Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar (known by its Malagasy initials, FJKM) in 1989. Early in her career she was assigned to work with the Federation of Protestant Churches in Madagascar (FFPM) where she directed the FFPM social center in Isotry, a poor neighborhood of Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo. She began developing a “street ministry,” living and sharing the gospel with the area’s marginalized people – sex workers, drug addicts, street kids, street families. In 2009, she started a ministry to socially and economically displaced people, known as SAFFIFAA, within the FJKM’s Chaplaincy program. SAFFIFA works in a number of sites across Antananarivo and around the island providing a wide range of services aimed primarily at marginalized communities: youth, women, migrants, and developmentally challenged people. Much of SAFFIFA’s work helps to provide young people alternatives to criminal activity, substance abuse and sex work. In 2010, after one of the women she knew from Isotry died while working as a domestic worker in Lebanon, Pastor Helivao began to learn about and expose human trafficking networks and to help Malagasy women abroad to escape abusive situations. In addition to her ministry at SAFFIFAA, Pastor Helivao has worked to foster national reconciliation and to address the factors that have contributed to the country’s cyclical political instability. She also teaches missiology at the FJKM Theological Faculty in Antananarivo. She has pioneered a field research program for her students that exposes them to the realities of social problems such as poverty, violence and exploitation and equips them to address these challenges more effectively as pastors.
Schedule:
Sunday, October 3
1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. (Eastern US Time)/8:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. (Madagascar Time)
Click here to register for the Sunday October 3rd Peacemaker session that starts at 1:00p
Saturday, October 9
10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. (Eastern US Time)/5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. (Madagascar Time)
Click here to register for the Saturday October 9th Peacemaker session that starts at 10:00am
Saturday, October 16
10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. (Eastern US Time)/5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. (Madagascar Time)
Click here to register for the Saturday October 16th Peacemaker session that starts at 10:000am