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21 - Regina Pacis and SPH
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A growing partnership during Covid: Regina Pacis and SPH
COVID-19 has reached every corner of the globe; the community and Catholic parish attached to Regina Pacis School in Virunga Valley, Rwanda has been no exception. St Philip Howard School, Barham has an ongoing partnership with Regina Pacis enabled by the British Council’s Connecting Classrooms initiative.
Here Kevin Finniear, former Head of English at St Philip Howard Catholic School, provides an insight into the impact of Covid on our link diocese and partner school in Musanze, Rwanda.
Nestled in the Virunga Valley in Rwanda, Regina Pacis is a Catholic school in the city of Musanze. You may be familiar with the area from images of David Attenborough rolling around with mountain gorillas in Life on Earth. The Virunga National Park, in pre-Covid times, certainly attracted its fair share of tourists with visitor numbers rising sharply to over 10,000 per year in 2017.
Musanze is overlooked by five dormant volcanoes and a 1,600-seat Catholic Cathedral, one of the most peaceful places in what is otherwise a bustling town. Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa and Musanze is its third biggest city with around 60,000 people.
I spent a year in Musanze with my family from 2016-17, working in three schools during a sabbatical. It’s an incredible place: welcoming people, enthralling markets, vibrant churches and hills… lots of hills. In fact, Rwanda itself has the nickname The Land of the Thousand Hills and as you drive the three-hour journey from the capital Kigali to Musanze, you’ll see why.
For several years, St Philip Howard has participated in the British Council’s Connecting Classrooms initiative, enabling SPH and other West Sussex teachers to work in partnership with their Rwandan colleagues on projects ranging from musical productions to “The Forgiveness Project”, exploring forgiveness across cultural contexts. SPH sixth formers have also benefitted from yearly visits to our link schools, most recently in November 2018. A planned trip in 2020 was, of course, cancelled along with just about everything else in our diaries last year.
The Covid stats suggest that Rwanda has not suffered from Covid on the same scale in terms of numbers of cases or deaths, and swift responses from the government have indeed enabled the country to keep the outbreak largely under control but lockdowns have been required to keep the virus at bay.
As in so many other countries, the lockdown has also hit education in Rwanda. All schools were closed nationally for around eight months from March until November 2020. Evariste Musirikare, Head teacher of Regina Pacis, says, “The school tried its level best to teach the children remotely through Google Classroom but very few could access it due to lack of digital devices or Internet connection. From that point on, all parents stopped paying the school fees for their children because they were not studying. As the school’s only source of funding, this resulted in the school being unable to pay the wages of its staff.”
And that’s where Evariste stepped in. Working with others in Musanze and with links at SPH’s local parishes and beyond, he was able to provide vital supplies of beans, rice, flour and sugar. Not just those who work at the school but hundreds of other families in the local community were provided with food to help them to cope during the months when they had suddenly been stripped of their monthly income.
“Last year SPH and the parishes of Bognor & Slindon, Arundel and Chichester collectively donated over £2,000 in response to the needs of the Regina Pacis community during lockdown. You made a big difference to families when they needed it most. Thank you!”
Regina Pacis School, at nursery, primary and secondary levels, provides education to hundreds of Catholic families in the area. Opening its doors in November 2006, the school was established in response to the wishes of parents whose children had previously had to walk many miles to get to school.
The classrooms are full of hardworking children keen to learn whatever it takes to bring success to their families and their country. One thing that struck me when I worked in Rwanda was that when you spoke to students about the future, their ambitions would never centre around themselves but always focused on what they could do for others. They wanted to contribute to the economy, help their siblings to an education or sustain a stable future for their nation. If their work ethic is anything to go by, Rwanda’s future leaders could well come from Regina Pacis. Academically, the school is also one of the highest achieving in the country. SPH sixth formers were impressed by the students’ ability to sing with considerable musical prowess in four languages – Kinyarwanda, English, French and Swahili – at a mass on our arrival on our last visit! (Our rendition of Matt Redman’s “10,000 Reasons” was heartfelt, certainly, but perhaps not quite so aesthetically impressive.)
Last year SPH and the parishes of Bognor & Slindon, Arundel and Chichester collectively donated over £,2000 in response to the needs of the Regina Pacis community during lockdown. You made a big difference to families when they needed it most and your ongoing support through prayer, giving, and maybe even visits when Covid allows, would be fantastic.
Evariste’s vision for Regina Pacis is for the school and the students to excel in “contributing to regional, national and international development through an education based on spiritual and human values”. It’s certainly in safe hands.
So please join me in praying for Evariste, Principal Fr Jean and all the teachers and pupils at the school. Over the coming year they are hoping to equip the new science laboratory, increase the number of computers and provide psychotherapy to some of the children and teachers suffering from mental health issues as a result of the prolonged lockdown. In the longer term, the dream is for a school chapel.
Kevin Finniear
