News from the Kibera slum, Nairobi - 11/03/2010 22:56:47
St Monica Academy, Kibera, Niarobi
Po box 15778 – 00100
Motto: Together we can
Speech given by Madam Margaret Atieno ( Manager of St Monica’s nursery academy ) on the occasion of a visit by Fr Philip Marsh C.S.Sp. with Fr Eamonn Mulcahy C.S.Sp. and Constantine, (Holy Cross student) on 3rd Feb 2010.
“Rev. Fr Provincial, Fr Eamonn and our visitors. We take this golden opportunity to welcome you to Kenya and more so to Kibera.
It is our pleasure to be with you here today at St Monica Academy. St Monica started in January 2007 in a small tinned building. We began the centre for educating children living with HIV/AIDS and orphans. However, they were later joined by children from very poor families.
The population at the beginning was 30 children but with time this number has grown to 90 children. Because of this rise in the population we approached Fr Eamonn and explain to him about St Monica and the challenges we were encountering today. Through tireless efforts and prayers of Fr Eamonn, the children are today in a three room permanent building.
St Monica is a unique institution in the community in that we have integrated children from all background i.e. those living with HIV/AIDS, orphans, and poor without discrimination. Children interact and play together and through this they learn to appreciate one another regardless of their status.
In St Monica we don’t only offer intellectual development but also spiritual development. We have a specific day of pastoral programmes and through this the children realise the love of God for them. St Monica has a staff of six teachers, a manager, a cook and a security guard.
CHALLENGES
Feeding/Nutrition
This is a great challenge we are encountering. Because of the poverty in the slum feeding the children is very challenging. Some children leave their homes without any prior meal hence totally depending on the meal provided in school yet parent are not even able to pay school fees. For the vulnerable we are not able to provide a balanced diet because we don’t have any financial source but depend on the little fees paid.
Teaching and learning materials
We are not able to purchase enough teaching and learning materials due to lack of finance. We do not have any physical outdoor playing materials.
Health
Health facilities in the slum are scarce so accessing them for the sick ones becomes a challenge at times.
Remunerations
Because of financial constraints, meeting remunerations for the staff is a big challenge. Because of this they have resorted to arts and crafts as an income generating project to enable them to meet their needs as they are also residents of the poverty stricken slum.
Sanitation
Because of migration from the former site to the present site, the institution has no access to nearby sanitation facilities so the teachers have a hard task to escort the children to the former site which is quite a distance.
Drug and substance abuse
In Kibera slum, the majority of the poor parents take to drug and substance abuse after which they neglect their children. We don’t have any boarding facility, we cannot accommodate them in the school, so they just have to bear with a pitiful life.
CONCLUSION
With these few remarks, Rev Fr provincial, we once more take this opportunity to thank you in a special way for sending Fr Eamonn to Kenya and more so to Kibera to come and work and live with the marginalized people in Kibera slum. Through working hand in hand with Fr Eamonn the children of St Monica, even though they live in the second largest slum in Africa, they have realized great changes in their lives and have potential to learn and excel in education like any other children in the world. Fr Eamonn does not work with St Monica alone but with the entire community. He has reached the physically challenged children and adults in the slum. Where rich and able people run away from Fr Eamonn treads on with the love of God as his spotlight. Even us teachers we know that Fr Eamonn is not sleeping but on bent knees praying for us to God to bless us as we struggle to create change in these little children, intellectually, socially, emotionally and spiritually.
So still our prayers to God that Fr Eamonn continues to live and work with us here in Kibera for the needy and marginalized
Thank you and may the good Lord bless you.
Asante sana ”
Margaret Atieno ( manager); Rosemary Juma (head teacher)
Catholic Church Statistics 2010 - 23/02/2010 14:48:36
According to the Pontifical Yearbook 2010 the Catholic Church has increased since last year in all areas, Laity, Priests and Seminarians, especially in Asia and Africa.
Baptised Catholics increased by 19 million to 1.17 Billion among 6.7 billion people, so the percentage rose from 17.33% to 17.4%.
Priests, both diocesan and Religious, increased by 1% over the past 10 years from 405,178 to 409,166, while Bishops were up 1.13% from 4946 to 5002. However women religious decreased drastically over the ten years from 801,185 to 739,67, a drop of almost 8%.
Regional differences show greatest variations. Europe had 52% of all priests but this is now down to 47%, but Bishops are up 1%. Sisters are down from 59% to 41% and seminarians down 4%
In the Americas we see no change in the number of priests with 30% of the world’s priests in the Americas, north and south. The Americas have seen a 2% increase in Bishops and the seminarian numbers are stable but sisters are down 13%.
Africa has 9% of the world’s priests. There has been an increase of 2% in Bishops; 21% increase in Sisters and 4% increase in Seminarians.
In Asia there are 13% of the world’s priests while Bishops have increased by 1% and sisters have increased by 17% and seminarians BY 5%.
Finally, in Oceania there are 1% of priests. However the percentage of bishops has dropped by 3%, while sisters are stable and seminarians have increased by 7%.
SPIRITAN Brother Clement and the Clementine - 08/11/2009 12:16:12
Clément Rodier was born in the village of Mabeille, in the diocese of Clermont-Ferrant, on May 25th, 1839. At the age of 13, he followed one of his uncles to the Charterhouse at Vallebonne, but his health was not good enough to support the rigours of the life of a hermit. So he joined another uncle, who was a professed religious in the Institute of the Annunciation at Misserghin, Algeria. This house was an orphanage in the middle of a large estate of some 1,000 hectares. Later, this religious family became part of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit (Holy Ghost Fathers). Clément was put in charge of the huge garden, where he planted 35 hectares of grapes which were still producing fruit up until 1960. He also established a tree nursery of some 20 hectares and imported seeds from different countries and continents. He sold many fruit trees to the French colonialists in the region of Oran. He was particularly proud of his rose garden, even though he had had no formal training in the cultivation of trees. He then moved into grafting, experimenting with different combinations of trees and he kept meticulous notes of all his experiments and the results, which unfortunately have since been lost. It is said that the children from the village used to creep in and steal some mandarins he had produced without pips in a corner of the garden that he had almost forgotten about. Finally, he decided to try them himself and found that they were delicious! According to Doctor Louis Trabut, a medical professor in Algiers who often came to inspect these experiments, Brother Clément accidentally created a hybrid by grafting a mandarin tree onto a bigaroon cherry tree. This took place in 1900 and at first, it was known as the “mandarinette”. When the botanists got to know about this new type of citrus fruit, the original tree was taken away so it is no longer possible to trace the details of its development. Brother Clément died in 1904, having received the gold medal from the Agricultural Society of Algeria for his discovery. Twenty years after his death, this same society baptised the fruit the “Clémetine” in his honour. For more than 40 years, Brother Rodier kept readings of the temperature and rainfall at Misserghin, but it was above all the Clementine that brought him a degree of fame. Fr. Roger Tabard, Assistant General Spiritan Archivist300 Years since Founder's Death. October 2009 - 25/09/2009 16:48:56
Claude Poullart des Places On October 2nd 2009 we celebrate the 300th anniversary of the death of the founder of the Spiritans, Claude-François Poullart des Places.He was born in 1679 into a well-off family at Rennes in Brittany and was given a good religious and secular education by the Jesuits At the age of 20, with glowing prospects for a career in law and a good marriage lined up for him by his family, he suddenly left all this security to follow the uncertain search for God. He felt called to the priesthood.
He started his studies in the College of Louis le Grand in the Latin Quarter of Paris. While he himself had no shortage of funds, he soon discovered that some of the students were living in crushing poverty. He decided to help one of them, then one thing led to another and he left his comfortable situation to live with ten of these destitute scholars. He shared their extreme poverty to the extent of begging on their behalf for the leftovers from the kitchen of his old college.
Aged 23, he founded the Community of the Holy Spirit so that he give these penniless future priests a training that was better and longer than most of their contemporaries.
By the time he was 29, his identification with the poor reached its completion. During the exceptionally hard winter of 1709, he gave everything he had to the others and succumbed to the epidemic that hit Paris and was buried in a pauper's grave. In serving the poor, he became the poorest of all, giving himself totally, not just for humanitarian reasons but above all, in imitation of Jesus.
Shortly after his death, his small congregation was given the task of training and supplying priests for the French colonies in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, and steadily grew in reputation until the French Revolution.
In 1848, a new missionary congregation founded by François Libermann, a convert Jew, united with the foundation of Poullart des Places to form The Congregation of the Holy Ghost. While continuing with the training of priests for overseas, this new religious family concentrated on sharing the message of Jesus with those who had not yet heard it, above all, the people of Africa. Today we number around 3,000 members, half of whom are from Africa and elsewhere in the southern hemisphere working in 58 different countries.
We ask you to join us in thanking God for the countless blessings he has given to our family over the last 300 years. Nobody would be more surprised to see how we have grown and expanded throughout the world than Claude Poullart des Places, the poor rich man who gave himself so completely to the sharing of the Good News.
KIBANDA: Lending a helping hand - 01/06/2009 18:02:41
Spiritans in Africa, Asia and South America live and work with the poorest people of our planet. They live and work among the people they serve, not only in the overcrowded slums of great cities such as Nairobi in Kenya, Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, but also in the most isolated towns and villages, where basic services such as health and education are all too often absent, or very poorly established.
This is why the Spiritan Congregation in Europe has established KIBANDA. The name of the centre was chosen specially. KIBANDA is a word in Swahili, one of the most widely spoken languages of Africa. KIBANDA is the name given to a grass-roofed, open-walled hut, usually situated at the centre of the african village. It is in a kibanda that the elders come together to discuss practical issues and resolve disputes. There they plan ahead for the life and welfare of the whole village.
