Mission Today issue 17

A CATHOLIC MISSION NEWSLETTER ISSUE 17

Keeping hope alive in the Amazon

Fighting to

survive on the streets

The floods have returned

In this issue...

THE FLOODS HAVE RETURNED 3

FIGHTING TO SURVIVE ON THE STREETS

4

KEEPING HOPE ALIVE IN THE AMAZON

6

Sister Maureen Cejas, restoring hope to children like Jervin Aliling in the Ph

PARISHIONERS GET INVOLVED WITH CROSSCULTURAL IMMERSIONS

8

SUDAN STORY

9

FUNDRAISE FOR CATHOLIC MISSION

11

MISSION: ONE HEART MANY VOICES

11

WHY REGULAR GIVING?

12

The new multipurpose chapel at the heart of the relocation project.

hilippines.

Faith Inspires Our Work

“The floods have returned. The people still in the old village are in danger again.“ Sister Maureen Cejas had this news for us as we were preparing for World Mission Day to be held in October this year. Learning about the severe and vast devastation of the relentless floods and the many lives and livelihoods which it has destroyed across the Philippines, my heart instantly went out to these people that have lost everything.

Fortunately the work you have supported through Catholic Mission has helped the people of Canossa Galaville in the Philippines to escape the worst of this latest flooding. You are already making a difference.

Our major focus for World Mission Sunday is restoring hope to the people of Sitio Ronggot, who lost their homes and source of income following the catastrophic floods. A relocation project has commenced; moving the families to higher ground, from Sitio Ronggot to Canossa Galvaville. The central work of Catholic Mission has been to build a multi-purpose chapel in the middle of the new village. As Sister Maureen says, “It’s such a beautiful chapel and it’s so important for the community to come together and have a place to pray.” New housing has also been constructed.

through Catholic Mission, has been able to share grace and provide support to so many families.

So why support Catholic Mission? Our work is done by missionaries, who only receive their keep, not a salary. All projects are proposed by the local people and overseen by the local bishop. Our workers are there long term so they know the people. Faith inspires our work and brings a resilience during the toughest times.

Faith also requires the whole Catholic community to reach out to others in need.

Thank you for your life-changing donations and prayers.

Martin Teulan National Director

Before Caritas and other aid agencies organise their resources on a large scale, our missionaries, like Sister Maureen, are able to provide immediate spiritual, pastoral and practical care including prayer, food, clothing, emergency shelter and medicines to communities during every time of crisis.

A couple of months ago, I had the opportunity to personally visit the villages of Sitio Ronggot and Canossa Galvaville. I was deeply touched by meeting Sister Maureen and seeing how she, with the support of people like you

Faith inspires our work and brings a resilience during the toughest times.

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PHILIPPINES

Street educator and social worker, Jorge Villegas, and the children who are benefitting from his influence.

Fighting to survive on the streets Under one of the large freeway bridges in Manila, Philippines, away from the hectic streets and the crowded neighbourhoods, countless families and children are struggling for survival.

Sleeping on cardboard boxes and washing themselves in filthy waste water from a nearby factory, this is the place they call ‘home’.

Some of the children living on the street have been forced to leave their homes because of poverty, others have run away after being physically, emotionally and sexually abused by their families. They do not have any relatives or parents on the street to help look after them and rely on other street children to help keep them safe.

These children miss out on the things we take for granted in Australia, like education, food, shelter and someone to love and care for them, and keep them safe. With no dreams for the PAGE 4

future, many are feeling desperately hopeless. Imagine living on the streets—the dangers, the loneliness and the fight for survival.

Jorge Villegas, a street educator and social worker from the Kuya Centre for street children in Manila, visits these families and children several times each week.

By talking to them about important issues such as education, child rights, health risks and substance abuse, he is making them aware of

the consequences and dangers of living on the streets, and alternatives to this lifestyle.

Connecting with the children through street education, counselling sessions and activities like sports and games, Jorge is building relationships and trust whilst also encouraging vulnerable street children to change their ways of life and access services like the halfway home at the Kuya Centre.

With 80% of street children being boys, the Kuya Centre caters for boys MISSION TODAY A Catholic Mission Newsletter

PHILIPPINES The Kuya Centre provides shelter, food, clothing, education and job training for the boys.

The biggest challenge at the centre is to rehabilitate and re-socialise the children.

between the ages of seven and 15.

Girls are accepted in emergency situations and transferred to appropriate facilities for girls within a few days.

The Kuya Centre provides shelter, food, clothing, education and job training for the boys. The biggest challenge at the centre is to rehabilitate and re-socialise the children.

The centre is set up to simulate a family environment, with house parents caring for the children as if they were their own, helping them reintegrate to a normal routine. The boys are also required to do chores around the centre.

The average stay is between eight months to one year, with the main objective being to reconcile the boys with their families. The social workers are responsible for locating the boy’s family, building relationships with them and assessing the condition of the family to see if it is viable to reunite them.

The boys who are reconciled with their families are given ongoing counselling and educational assistance to ensure they can continue with their education and do not return to the streets.

As Brother Luc Boudreault, the director at the Kuya Centre explains, even the smallest amount of money helps provide essentials like education for the boys. “It is only $20 that they need for one month.

It goes a long way. They can send one child to school for one month. The child receives instructions and it means a very big difference to receive knowledge, to receive education. Without education they can do almost nothing.”

In situations where the staff at the Kuya centre are unable to locate the boy’s family or it is not safe for them to return to their family, the boys are referred to a permanent shelter where they can continue with their schooling.

Celebrating its 21st anniversary this year, the Kuya centre, which was established as an initiative of an association of religious brothers from various congregations, has helped hundreds of street children change their way of life and restore their hope in the future.

A special someone needs you now.

After having lived on the streets for a number of years, many of the children have forgotten the very basic habits that we take for granted including how to wash themselves, how to live in a society or group and how to interact with other people in a socially acceptable and respectful way.

Imagine living on the streets—the dangers, the loneliness and the fight for survival.

MISSION TODAY A Catholic Mission Newsletter

PAGE 5

PERU

Alejandro, Herman and Werly

Keeping hope alive in the Amazon

Brothers Alejandro, Werly and Herman were left terrified, confused and uncertain about their future after their mother died when they were very young. With their father working 12 hour days in construction on a non-permanent basis, and being unable to care for them properly, the brothers were forced to move to Las Malvinas in Iquitos, north eastern Peru, to live with their grandmother so they could receive the stability and attention they desperately needed.

However, their fear of being alone returned shortly after, when their grandmother fell ill with tuberculosis and they were at risk of becoming orphaned.

Thankfully, this story had a happy ending after the family became beneficiaries of ‘Gabriela’s Kitchen’, receiving food and spiritual support every day for six months so that their grandmother could recover. She is now in good health and happily continuing to care for the boys.

It has now been three years since Catholic Mission funded the opening of ‘El Comedor Santa Rita de Casa’, also known as ‘Gabriela’s Kitchen’, a communal kitchen and dining room in Iquitos, on the left bank of the Amazon River.

PAGE 6

Polish lay missionary, Gabriela Filonowicz, assists in the day-to-day running of El Comedor, which provides one nutritious meal a day to 60 children, between the ages of three and 16, who live in desperate poverty in the urban ‘slum’ area of Las Malvinas on the outskirts of Iquitos. This is often their only meal of the day.

The children and their families flock to Iquitos from rural areas around the Amazon in search of a better future where they believe there are more opportunities for work and schooling.

However, in Las Malvinas, their situation unfortunately becomes more dire. With no income, they are often forced to squat in precarious scanty wooden houses, built on stilts over

unsafe and unhealthy flood plains, lacking any type of security and the ability to fulfill even their basic needs.

These flood plains rise with the Amazon River for at least six to seven months of the year, and are filled with the raw sewerage from a city of 500,000 people. There is a continual stench in the air, vultures feed off the sewerage creeks, and malaria is very common during the wet months.

El Comedor has been a Godsend for these families. Thanks to the generous support of Catholic Mission donors, El Comedor has been able to expand over the years from originally a feeding program, to now cater to the holistic development of the children. The children now receive training in basic MISSION TODAY A Catholic Mission Newsletter

PERU care for those children who require emotional support.

Thanks to the generous support of Catholic Mission donors, El Comedor has been able to expand over the years from originally a feeding program, to now cater to the holistic development of the children.

Gabriela has a simple dream—that the children continue with secondary education and acquire professional qualifications that can lead them out of the poverty that they experience with their families and into a professional workplace.

Gabriela helping with homework.

health and hygiene (cleaning their teeth and washing their hands), spiritual formation, and socio-emotional development, including excursions and confidence-building activities.

Furthermore, after discovering that most of the children were illiterate, Gabriela has introduced an emphasis on improving the educational development of the children.

Although schooling is theoretically free in Peru, most of the children in Las Malvinas were unable to attend because they could not afford the compulsory uniform, or schools books and supplies. El Comedor provides the children with whatever they require to be able to attend school. They can also receive additional support with their homework and tutoring when they come to El Comedor. Educational development for these children is essential so that they can break the cycle of poverty which plagued their parents and generations before them.

impossible for them to learn in these conditions without some form of help”, says Gabriela.

Through the funding received from Catholic Mission, El Comedor has been able to make many improvements since its opening, such as the supply of more furniture, and educational materials such as books and games.

The roof of the dining room has also been repaired and insulated to create the most comfortable environment possible, away from the noise of the city and the extreme heat which often reaches temperatures in excess of 40 degrees Celsius.

However with more children in the surrounding community desperately needing assistance, El Comedor urgently needs further support so they can hire a permanent, full-time teacher that specialises in primary schooling, as well as a social worker and psychologist to provide specialised

Gabriela explains: “I tell the children, ‘You now have a great opportunity… do your work well, apply yourself, finish primary school and then secondary, and you can even consider entering university and have a profession. Then with your dedication and will power you’ll be able to do so much better in the future. You’ll be able to provide a better future for your own children and help your parents with better conditions than what you grew up in. You need to make the effort now to improve your circumstances. Study is the key.’”

“But a child who does not eat cannot develop and learn.”

“Many things we teach them are simple things that a child must learn.

Though they appear small, these ‘little things’ are going to improve the child’s life in a big way, and this is the most important thing we can give a child. As grownups, we are already fixed in our ways, but children can always improve”, says Gabriela.

By becoming a Catholic Mission Friends in Faith partner from just $18 per month you can help more and more children receive the benefits from El Comedor.

“When I first came to Iquitos from Poland, I was shocked by the conditions these people lived in—the cars in our garages in Poland lived in better conditions than the people here.

In the colder season the families suffer from wind and rain, with some homes having no roofs and possibly only two or three walls made of planks and boards. The children don’t have beds to sleep in—they sleep on the floor.”

“The conditions are so bad that it’s not right for a human being to suffer in them day in and day out. It is MISSION TODAY A Catholic Mission Newsletter

PAGE 7

Parishioners get involved with cross-cultural immersions This was an amazing, inspiring and very humbling experience…

An elderly Timorese gentleman with Luke Keighery.

GIG (Getting Involved Globally) is an initiative of Catholic Mission using a network of experienced mission personnel. GIG is a cross-cultural immersion and mission exposure program that provides a unique opportunity of experiential learning for participants. This program challenges people of all ages to see, feel and act in a new way.

Luke Keighery has a long involvement with the Church and not-for-profit organisations, and since retiring, Luke has been working as a volunteer with Catholic Mission’s GIG program. In 2010, Luke joined a Catholic Mission immersion to Timor-Leste (East Timor) —a poor half-island nation one hour by air from Darwin. Motivated by the desire to support the Timorese, the following year Luke asked Catholic Mission to organise a GIG immersion for members of his parish social justice group—a journey that has become an annual event in his parish’s social justice calendar. Through these immersions and in partnership with PAGE 8

Noel Braun and Brendan O’Connell with Timorese children dressed for the St Anthony’s day procession.

MISSION TODAY A Catholic Mission Newsletter

Through these immersions and in partnership with Catholic Mission, parishioners have provided extensive spiritual, physical and financial support to needy Timorese Catholic Mission, parishioners have provided extensive spiritual, physical and financial support to needy Timorese. Luke has formed a close relationship with various communities there and was recently appointed a volunteer intra-country facilitator for Catholic Mission’s immersion program in Timor-Leste.

Luke will lead five immersions for school groups and for parishes throughout 2012. In June, Luke took six parishioners, mainly from his own Corpus Christi Parish in St Ives Sydney, to Timor-Leste for a ten day immersion. The group travelled in an 11-seater 4WD vehicle and visited communities in Dili, Baucau, Ossu, Maubara and Balibo.

Parishioners with the Carmelite Sisters at their Maubara house.

Accommodation was basic—staying in orphanages and church-related houses—they lived with the people, sharing their food and their life. They spent time in schools, villages and clinics, and gave of themselves as much as they could.

On return to Australia, Luke commented: “This was an amazing, inspiring and very humbling experience for all participants as we immersed ourselves into the lives of the Timorese people and witnessed the work of the Church as it ministers to their needs. We had an opportunity to see a different world and we were challenged by what we saw and what

we experienced. We have returned home with deepened spirituality, a stronger commitment to our faith, and a desire to build a more just world.”

Catholic Mission offers to partner with your community or organisation to develop a GIG immersion program to an agreed destination. Immersion destinations include the Philippines, India, Ethiopia, Kiribati, Cambodia, Indigenous Australian communities, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and more.

For more information or to book to go on a Catholic Mission GIG immersion, contact Frances Kelly at Catholic Mission on 1800 257 296 or fkelly@catholicmission.org.au

SUDAN A LETTER FROM THE FIELD: CATHY SOLANO RSM

I hate talking with Sr Rocio...

She tells me about the children she is nursing in the paediatric ward at the Mother of Mercy Hospital in Gidel, Sudan. Last week was about Kuku, the six year-old boy who fell from a tree and landed awkwardly. Blood was flowing from his ears and nose and, as Sr Rocio explained “that wasn’t a good sign.” After a few days it was obvious there was brain damage but at least he could respond to simple questions; staff are clinging to the hope that he will get better.

Sr Rocio then told me about Leyla—an eight year-old girl who also fell out of a tree and wasn’t as badly hurt as Kuku because she ‘only’ broke both bones in her left arm. Her parents didn’t bring her to the hospital because it’s far from their home and they tried to treat the MISSION TODAY A Catholic Mission Newsletter

fracture at home using the traditional method. But an infection set in and after five days they walked the 35 km, all the way to the hospital. The doctor had to remove the whole arm from inside her shoulder because the infection had spread upwards and she

Leyla fell out of a tree and "only" broke her left arm.

PAGE 9

would surely have died of septicaemia.

“Leyla is in shock”, says Sr Rocio, “and can barely respond when we try to talk with her to tell her she will be okay.”

Then there’s Amira, who is so thin that Sr Rocio marvels how she has managed to cling to life for the past two weeks.

“A healthy five year-old should weigh at least 20 kg but Amira weighs only 10 kg—the weight of a two year-old! We have a feeding tube in her but can only give her small amounts. It will take a long time before she gets better—if she makes it at all.”

She explains that a small donation of about $15 to buy fresh meat for Amira from the nearby local market was so gratefully received by her mother that she didn’t have the words to say thank you. “Her face said it all though,” reflected Sr Rocio, “and her mother hasn’t left Amira’s side. I know it is her love that keeps that little girl fighting for life.”

Why aren’t children like Leyla and Kuku prevented from climbing trees, you may ask? Why don’t their parents do more to ensure that these sorts of accidents are prevented? And why isn’t Amira’s mother making sure that she gets enough food each day to stay healthy and strong?

The answers are simple, really. Leyla and Kuku, and too many children like them, are climbing trees because they are hungry. There is widespread hunger in the Nuba Mountains as a direct result of the almost daily bombing raids that came from Khartoum during last year’s cultivation period.

Hence the majority of Nuba people were not able to grow and store enough food to survive for the year, as they have usually done year after year for centuries. In this season now, several weeks after the end of the mango season, there is only one tree that bears a hard and almost tasteless red fruit. Children gnaw on this fruit and it helps them feel less hungry.

Little Amira

Children gnaw on this fruit and it helps them feel less hungry.

Other children and adults are picking the edible leaves that are beginning to sprout on the spiky bushes and eating them raw.

Today when I met Sr Rocio I asked after Kalo, who has been her special patient for two months. She had been giving me almost weekly updates about his condition since he arrived with an older woman. They were both victims of an Antonov bomb but instead of the usual injury of having shrapnel tearing parts of their body to shreds they were severely burnt by the radiant heat when it landed near them.

Kalo was the worst off and arrived with third-degree burns to 40% of his body.

Instead of the beautiful black skin characteristic of the Nuba, Kalo’s skin was a melted mess of white/ red and black/green colours—the latter because the tissue was gangrenous.

Sr Rocio once tried to describe the

stench she and the staff endured each day for the two hours it took to remove the bandages, cut away the dead tissue and re-bandage his wounds and said he was one of the most stoic children she had ever nursed. “He rarely cries but sometimes it is too much even for him and when we dress him and then we also cry with him.”

Rocio’s face registered the shock of a painful memory with my asking after Kalo. “Oh, of course, you weren’t here on Wednesday.” Her voice softens and immediately tears fill her eyes. “Kalo died. He went into shock and we tried to keep him alive and urged him not to give up but he couldn’t hang on.”

Once again the thought of ‘this is why I hate talking to Sr Rocio’ crossed my mind but as I responded to her sad news I also knew deep down how blessed Kalo was to have had her looking after him. He had had two months of the most amazing love and care from her and he was totally loved into death. I don’t really hate talking to Sr Rocio… I just wish that she ‘only’ had cases of malaria and measles and diarrhoea—at least they are more (but not totally) excusable diseases that children usually get in Sudan.

Originally from Melbourne, Cathy Solano is a Sister of Mercy currently living and working in Sudan. She spent a number of years as a member of the Catholic Mission National Council; providing her invaluable wisdom, insight and guidance.

As ‘Mission Today’ was being finalised, she sent a message telling us that Amira had passed away as a result of the conflict and hardship that so many in this area are experiencing. Amira was loved and cherished by all of those who knew her.

By sharing her story with you, we hope that you will be inspired to reach out with prayers and financial contributions to our brothers and sisters around the world.

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MISSION TODAY A Catholic Mission Newsletter

Fundraise For Catholic Mission

Start your fundraising journey today!

You can ‘Reach Out and Give Life’ to people living in desperate conditions all around the world by fundraising for Catholic Mission.

Simply create your own fundraising event online, join an event that has been set up by others online, or sponsor individuals and teams via a donation on their fundraising page.

Fundraising for Catholic Mission is a fantastic way to support our work and have fun whilst doing it! How you fundraise is limited only by your imagination—from a big sports event or BBQ with your schoolmates, to an afternoon tea with your colleagues or a cake competition with your friends. If you want to do something special for a momentous occasion, donations can also be made in lieu of gifts.

Get Started!

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Click on the button and follow the prompts

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Invite all of your friends, colleagues and family to support you with a secure donation online

By participating in a special fundraising event you and your friends can become real agents of change and take an active part in the work of Catholic Mission in over 160 countries around the world!

Need help?

If you need any assistance, we are here to help! Please feel free to contact us by sending us an email at fundraise@ catholicmission.org.au

So whether you are fundraising on your own, or in a team, school, workplace or a club, get involved and make a difference today!

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