animator

Stephen Msele was born and brought up on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro near Moshi Town in Tanzania. He is the first born among seven children of Leoni Mituwani Msele and Yohana Mulomi
He did his Secondary and High School at St James Seminary (Kilema) in Moshi after which he did a one year military training and national service as required by the Tanzanian Government by then.

After two years of Philosophical Studies in a Senior Seminary in Moshi, Stephen spent at least two years teaching in a Secondary School before he joined the Society of Jesus commonly known as Congregation of Jesuit Fathers and Brothers. In 1982 Stephen took his first vows (commitment ) as a Jesuit in Lusaka Zambia and was immediately sent to Dublin ( Ireland) to do a master's Degree in Philosophy. Three years later Stephen successfully presented a dissertation on "Imagination and Human Nature in Hiedegger and Sartre" in which he unveiled the central role played by imagination in the event of revealing truth and of molding humanity.

After his studies in Ireland Stephen went back to teaching and animating Youth movements in Tanzania. Two years later he was sent to Nairobi, Kenya to do a Bachelors Degree in Theology. In addition to the degree course which took him three years, Stephen completed also a course in Pastoral theology during which he made a research on "The Phenomenon of being Saved (born again)". In 1991 Stephen was ordained a priest in his home town, Moshi and was immedately sent to Dodoma Tanzania to work as an assistant Parish priest.

Two years later Stephen was sent to the Philippines to do a masters Degree in Pastoral Studies at Ateneo de Manila University. It was during this studies that Stephen got an opportunity to do some summer courses at Boston College in the United States of America. It was during this time that he was also able to a research on "The Spirituality of the Church as a Family of God: A New Paradigm for a New Covenant."
In it he argued that humanity would have already experienced a life of the highest possible quality if only we had learnt to understand ourselves exactly the way Jesus "the Son of God" understood himself.

After his studies in the Philippines, Stephen was sent by his congregation to Mwanza, Tanzania to work as a Parish Priest at St Fransis Xavier Church, Nyakahoja. It was during his time in Mwanza that Stephen Msele came directly in contact with more than 2,000,000 victims of the Genocide in Rwanda. As a result he decided to mobilize his fellow Tanzanians to do everything possible so that the kind of thing that had happened in Rwanda in 1994 would not happen in Tanzania or any where else in the world in any form. It was obvious to him that Tanzanians could never kill each other on the basis of tribal affiliations because of the good work that Mwalimu Julius Nyerere had done in uniting the tribes in the country. However it was also very obvious that Tanzanians could end up slaughtering one another on the basis of their religious affiliations because tensions were already being experienced between Muslims and Christians even there in Mwanza town.

Stephen efforts towards enabling people in Mwanza live as brothers and sisters in one family of God in spite of their different tribal and religious affiliations eventually gave birth to the UNDUGU Family Culture Association (UFCA) in May 1st 1996. Before long there were at least 2000 people evolved in peace seeking activities that included sports, music, dance, drama, training in skills, gardening and other ways of working together as brothers and sisters. Undugu Family at one time became not only the source of the best players in sports and athletics in the Municipality but also a family of which Christians, Muslims, Hindus and many other kinds of people could be proud of.

When Stephen left Mwanza in 1998 to go to Australia for further training as a Jesuit, Undugu Family in Mwanza managed to continue as a result of the efforts of Raymond Manyanga, a Jesuit Scholastic by then but not as vibrantly as it did during the presense of Msele. In 1999 Stephen Msele came back from Australia but instead of going back to Mwanza he was sent to Kampala Uganda as a missionary. Before long Stephen was able to introduce the idea of Undugu Family to the Ugandans he met a vibrant branch of Undugu family was born In Kampala. The first group included mostly Youth and children who were later joined by a group of women. Today we have about sixty such groups in different parts of Kampala, Jinja, Masaka, Mbarara, Kasese and Soroti towns.

For at least three times, Undugu family has managed to organize peace rallies in which both the UNDUGU Family branches in Tanzania and Uganda were able to join hands together and participate. Two of the rallies took place in Uganda and one took place in Mwanza Tanzania.

Mwanza Undugu Family eventually decided and managed throuth the efforts of Timothy Ibutu, A Jesuit Brother, to get registered as an NGO by the name of Mwanza UNDUGU Family Development Association (MUFDA) with its own central office at Mkanyenye, Rufiji Street, Mwanza. Today Mwanza Undugu Family is composed of about ten groups or branches that are mostly of Adults including a group of teachers.

In addition to the Mwanza branches Undugu Family has spread to other areas of Tanzania including Kilimanjaro, Arusha and Dar-es- Salaam. The Kilimanjaro branches are based in the rural area (Mkomongo Village, Umbwe, Kibosho) on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro and are very much involved in agricultural and small business activities geared towards unity and peace.

Next year 2006 Undugu family will be marking 10 years since she was born officially in Mwanza but the festivities and activities that are to come to their climax in may next year have already began. The goal of these activities is to consolidate what Undugu Family has achieved since her birth and to prepare the family to face but effectively the new challenges for peace in the Great Lakes Region.

Stephen Msele is at the moment in Kampala at Nsambya Hill in Xavier House. He is the General Animator of the Undugu Family. His ambition is to see that Undugu Family spreads through out the Great Lakes Region and eventually throughout Africa and the world as a whole. He would like to see the Family become an effective and strongly felt gift of life, joy and peace to all the sons and daughters if God wherever they may be in whatever religion, tribe or race they may be affiliated in.