Healing & Hope IMPACT REPORT 2023
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ounded nearly a century ago, Catholic Near East Welfare Association provides humanitarian assistance and pastoral care in the Middle East, Northeast Africa, India and Eastern Europe. From being on the ground distributing food and water to those in the greatest need, to the formation of new Catholic and Orthodox priests, sisters and lay staff, to caring for the sick and injured in hospitals and medical clinics, bestowing psychosocial care and community support.
Our mission is simple: as an agency of healing and hope, we help those affected by darkness, violence, illness and poverty. In 2023, through the generosity of our donors and our local partnerships, we were able to have a direct and immediate impact on thousands of individuals throughout the world. This report highlights CNEWA’s three main program areas: Accompanying the Church, Emergency Relief and Responding to Human Needs, and the crucial work being done within these programs in India, Syria and Ethiopia.
INDIA
Accompanying the Church Through CNEWA’s longstanding person-to-person sponsorship programs, thousands of priests and sisters of India’s Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara Catholic churches have received support for decades during their years of formation. Their education and formation as women in service to the Gospel prepare them to administer schools, hospitals and social service programs as well as lead parish catechetical and adult formation activities. One of the people who has benefitted from the sponsorship programs that CNEWA helps fund in India is Sister Tresa Peter Paramben. She first felt the call of Jesus in high school. “Two sisters from my parish worked as missionaries in North India. When they came home to Angamaly, they’d tell us stories of how they served Christ,” she says. “That’s when I knew I wanted to be like them and be a missionary.” Sister Tresa’s family, especially her father and two brothers, were reluctant about her becoming a sister. But she persisted in her quest to pursue religious life. It has been 40 years since Sister Tresa entered the Congregation of the Daughters of Mary. After time spent teaching at Asia’s largest Catholic school, she is now the assistant superior general for her order, serving at the generalate in Kerala’s capital city. When you support CNEWA’s sponsorship programs, you help women like Sister Tresa heed the call to serve God and the most vulnerable people around the world.
SYRIA
Emergency Relief “Whatever words I may say would not be enough to describe that moment,” says Abir Ahmar Dakno about the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit southern Turkey and northern Syria in the early morning of 6 February. It was 4:17 a.m., three hours before sunrise, and the earth trembled for 45 seconds. Enveloped within the rumbling of shifting earth and crumbling concrete, children could be heard crying and families praying. Overall, the 7.8-magnitude earthquake — centered 98 miles north of Aleppo in Gaziantep, Turkey — stands as the deadliest natural disaster of modern times in present-day Turkey and the largest earthquake to impact Syria in two centuries, killing more than 53,000 people and internally displacing about 6 million in both countries combined. About 8,000 quake-related deaths were reported in Syria alone. CNEWA was among the church agencies to respond immediately, focusing relief efforts in Syria, providing shelter, food, medicine, blankets, clothing and other essentials for up to 3,000 people through its partners on the ground. The situation remained tenuous for weeks, as hundreds of daily aftershocks — as well as larger quakes — kept locals on high alert. Mrs. Dakno heads the youth section of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Syria, which has been assisting Aleppines with their needs since the first quake hit. “From Day 1, we realized the shelters were in need of everything,” she recalls. “Some were hosting 1,800 to 1,900 persons. Our work on the ground started immediately. Many women were in a state of shock and were not able to breastfeed anymore. We were in great need of baby formula or else we would face a disaster.” Immediately, Mrs. Dakno and her colleagues contacted CNEWA’s Beirut office, whose “response was very prompt,” she says. “They provided us with funds, and we were able to help many shelters with food, blankets, baby formula, medication. We provided diapers for babies and for the elderly.” In addition to the first wave of aid, the Beirut office funded psychosocial programs, rental assistance and the relocation of families, repairs of homes and furniture supply.
ETHIOPIA
Responding to Human Needs CNEWA works in partnership with local parishes, schools and hospitals to ensure there are programs to protect and support the most vulnerable children whose lives have been uprooted due to conflict, economics or violence in the region. One example is the Kidane Meheret Children’s Home located within the compound of a Catholic parish of the same name in Kebena, a suburb south of Addis Ababa. It currently houses 86 children, some with serious health conditions, including H.I.V./AIDS, autism and a variety of special needs. Sister Camilla Lutgarda, who moved from Malta to Ethiopia in 1969 to work at Kidane Meheret Catholic School, now serves as the director. Her community administers four other childcare programs in the country. “We come from different backgrounds, but we come for the same reason,” says Wondemagegn Breen, 29, who lived at the orphanage until his adoption by an American family in 2006. “The fact that most of us lose our family at a young age and we come to a place where everybody has the same story… you don’t feel alone or left out,” he says. “When children would arrive at the orphanage, nobody would tell us, ‘This person has H.I.V./AIDS.’ We just had pure love [for each other].” CNEWA works every day to help those who are the most vulnerable and our collaboration with Kidane Meheret Children’s Home is offering necessary medical care, love and emotional support to those who would otherwise be left aside.
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