| dc.description.abstract | With a total membership of over 874,000 baptized members as at September
2013, the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church in Zambia, generally referred to as
the Zambia Union Conference (ZBUC) was rated the second largest Union worldwide
based on membership. At the same time, records revealed that more than 60% of the
membership were youths. As would be expected, in the Central Zambia Conference
(CZC), located right at the heart of the Union and the focus of this study, the situation
is no different, in both rapid membership growth and high ratio of youth.
Lamentably, CZC quarterly statistical reports indicate that thirty percent of
early-teens who leave the Pathfinder Club and join Senior Youth Club soon drop out
of church membership altogether. Without doubt, the high dropout rate negatively
impacts membership statistics in both the CZC in particular, and the ZBUC generally.
This high dropout rate is suspected to be due to the transitional challenges
teenagers face as they move on to senior youth and adulthood. We could infer from the above that the Pathfinder Club is failing to meet its goal of nurturing the youth for
adulthood. There is need, therefore, to identify the challenges that youth face during
this transitional period. Also, it is necessary to assess the operations of the Pathfinder
Club in CZC in order to ascertain whether there is something missing in its
curriculum that makes youths in the CZC to be inadequately prepared for this
transitional period. The purpose of this study therefore, is to assess the causes that
lead to the failure in operations of the Pathfinder Club in CZC to fulfill its mission of
nurturing early teens for senior youth and adulthood. That is the object of this study.
Using both quantitative and qualitative methods to collect data, the study has
established that there are indeed some very serious challenges youth face during the
critical transition period from Pathfinder Club to the Ambassadors Club. The study
also found out that there is a serious handicap in the way the Pathfinder Club is run,
making youth quite vulnerable as they transition to senior youth. | en_US |
