Since 2017, the Imago Relational Method has been winning the hearts of Africans. Today, more than a hundred multi-denominational Christians and Muslims from Benin, Togo and Burkina Faso have participated in Imago courses. These courses have been redesigned to accommodate couples and single people (pastoral workers, religious, priests, pastors, lay people).
The goal: to pacify and strengthen family relationships, in a couple, in a charitable work, in the governance of an associative or corporate structure.
It all started in August 2017 with a vision between Antoine D'Audiffret and Vincent Heulin that they shared with Fondacio and Fondacio Benin. This vision, worked on for a long time that year, gave birth to an exploration and presentation mission of Imago in Benin led by Vincent Heulin, head of the Couples and Families mission at Fondacio France at the time, and with a volunteer friend, Chantal Lepeigneux. Both are certified Imago therapists and practitioners. This exploration mission took place in several cities in Benin between Cotonou and Parakou. It was coordinated by Fondacio in Benin, Fondacio, and Love-Power, then gradually connected to the Imago France association. Together, they studied the context, the needs, the material and financial constraints to arrive at a credible and stable project spanning 6 years with the main aim of promoting women in French-speaking Africa from Benin using Imago tools.
The Imago Relational Method was created by Dr. Harville Hendrix and his wife Helen LaKelly Hunt in the 1980s in the United States. It offers couples the opportunity to welcome conflicts and frustrations as opportunities for growth. It also equips many professionals in the helping relationship to help with a new awareness, inner disarmament and pacification through individual or group interviews. Dialogues and highly structured practical exercises help to rebuild a secure relational space, where everyone listens, understands and respects the personal world of the other. The heart of the work is to dissolve tensions (and not to resolve) in order to get out of a power struggle to "team up" and rehumanize the relationship(s). For more information: www.imago-france.fr
It was in August 2018 that the associations and movements Fondacio, Love-Power and Imago France officially organized four couples and solo courses. Since then, these courses have continued and are led voluntarily by certified French and Swiss professionals. They brought together at the Cardinal Gantin Pastoral Center in Bamè (about 200 km north of Cotonou, the economic capital of the country), around sixty participants from Benin, Togo and Burkina Faso.
All the internships also aim to detect people who potentially have the skills to become future professionals in marital assistance. But also individual and team assistance within companies and associations. The hope is to be able to send to Benin in the near future a supervisor and then an instructor who would train these future professionals. The latter will practice and give their skills to the service of different religions, Christian, Muslim, endogenous and civil society, in each of their French-speaking African countries.
This mission, supported by proven and effective tools for fifty years, offers a deeply secure framework as well as a real renewal in marital intimacy, and more broadly in relationships, the cradle of socialization for the younger generations, particularly the place of women. It opens our eyes to how to LISTEN to others more consciously in order to dialogue in love and truth in a non-violent energy. It calls for opening up to the world differently, to be in solidarity with our brothers and sisters, to become artisans of peace.
The first fruits are of course individual and couple transformations, but the most important being the training and certification of Beninese in order to root and perpetuate the project for French-speaking Africa. This becomes possible thanks to the commitment of Cyro and Cyra SEKE, leading couple of the NGO Love-Power, hosts of the TV show "Unis pour toujours", and having been received by Pope Francis, who followed the entire training in connection with Imago France. More recently Jérôme TOZE, one of the managers of Fondacio West Africa, committed to the training in order to be certified as a Facilitator. Gradually they will receive interviews with people from Benin and will be able to co-host various workshops and later internships.
For summer 2021 the following are planned:
- A solo internship from August 25-28
- A couple's course from August 26-29
- So-called in-depth days for former participants on August 21-22
Testimonials from participating couples and solos:
Several videos are available at https://cutt.ly/lkjm8Oc
- We were overflowing with joy and vigor (Omer & Immaculée TOSSOU)
We were encouraged by one of our children to experience the four days of Imago training, which were new for our couple. We did not regret at all having left everything to go together. We were over the moon, overflowing with joy and vigor. Thank you for teaching us how to dialogue and listen to each other deeply. You have just saved our relationship.
- We left this Imago training course even more in love (Fabrice & Eméra LANHA).
We came out of this course even more in love, better equipped to better manage our life as a couple. Fabrice: "This course marks for me a new perspective on the conflicts encountered." Eméra: "I learned to abandon the power struggle and accusation in favor of a partnership to better manage my childhood wounds." What we learned again is that the other is not responsible for our annoyances, our disappointments and our bitterness. He is simply the revealer. The dimension of the conflict is turned upside down and becomes incredibly rich: It becomes an opportunity to grow.... Fabrice: Sigh.... It's crazy to understand it like that. I leave with the word dialogue, dialogue and dialogue.
- Rediscover the joy of loving yourself thanks to Imago (Elisabeth & Jérôme)
What really moved Elisabeth and me was the "positive flood dialogue." I was able to realize and feel my qualities by listening to Elisabeth, and when she shouted to everyone in the room "Jerome I love you" it made me even more crazy with love. Elisabeth: "And for me, it is a unique experience never lived and very strong when Jerome was nestled like a baby in my arms during the embrace, I was able to listen to his story in depth, his fragilities, his needs. It transformed me and reborn me with love."
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