Rebecca’s
Children
We
are now entering the 10th year
of our funding the education of Rebecca’s orphaned children
in Uganda.
The children have sent messages
to all parishioners thanking us for our support over the last nine
years and we have received news of their plans for
the future from our contact at MS-Denmark.The two big boys hope to complete their courses at Training College this summer. Ivan will be qualified in vehicle maintenace and welding while his brother David will complete the first accountancy course. They hope to find jobs and continue further training whilst working. We won't be supporting them anymore but will keep you posted on their progress. Sarah enters Sixth Form this term to study A-levels in preparation for entering Nursing School and Eriya enters Senior School in Division 1. This means he will go to an academically better school than his brothers and sister although it won't be more expensive. We still have several more years to provide for them and are grateful for the generosity of all parishioners. This project has taught us much about the education problems in Uganda and the lack of job opportunities for young people. We hope that with our support these children will all grow up with a sound education and manage to find secure jobs in Kampala. Third
World Debt
We are highlighting the continuing efforts by the Jubilee Debt Campaign to push the wealthy countries to release Third World countries from the unjust debt under which they labour today.. |
Refugees
& Asylum Seekers
A
small number of refugees and asylum seekers are directed to this county
every year and the GARAS
(Gloucestershire Action for Refugees & Asylum Seekers)
is a local charity providing a much needed support service for these
people. We
learned how the Home Office directs people to Gloucestershire and how
the law constrains the options they have. GARAS works to help these
people through these troubling times – with advice on living
in the UK (a bit like a Citizen’s Advice Bureau), with help
in surviving on the meagre allowances they get, and with counselling.
Failed
asylum seekers suffer very badly with the regulations of today. The Living
Ghosts campaign by Church Action on
Poverty is trying hard to bring this to the attention to the
attention of the public and of the politicians who can change the rules.
Bees
Abroad
Since 2001, we have provided funding for activities managed by Bees Abroad in Africa, primarily in the Cameroons. As well as supporting education of the locals on techniques for building bee hives and keeping bees, we have provided funding for a school in Kom for Blind & Deaf children (ALMBDC), and for a Corn Mill which pays the teachers wages. Read also about the Kom Bee Project. A new Bees project is starting in N Nigeria early 2008 and need funds! |
Ad
Orientem
Sacred Hearts’ parish has been supporting the building of a community hall in Mkongo in Tanzania. The community there is led by Fr Ntara. The building itself started construction in Jan04. In recognition of the way we have collected spare coins in film cans, a 5p piece is being buried in the foundations along with a medal of Our Lady!The hall has was completed in 2007 and has been renamed to "Lumen Christi Hall"; its entrance houses a sign declaring its purpose as "Education and Recreation". We have photographs of it (but not here on the web).Burmese
Children
On
travels in Burma, the daughter of two parishioners had lived there with
various hill tribes, who suffer from poverty but also from atrocities
and extortion by the Burmese Army. Various health care workers and
others are battling to improve this. Arrangements had been made to get
some money through and sponsors were found for 11 of the 22
children there, but this no longer works so well - and we have had to
pull back.
Zimbabwe
Orphans
Sister Frances Kobets works in training of children and youth in Zimbabwe - she keeps us informed about the situation out there and distributes our donations to the orphans who need it most. She has sent us pictures of them at various times. |
There
has been an active Justice & Peace Group at Sacred Hearts'
since the early
1990s. Over the years they have been involved in a variety of fund
raising and
awareness raising activities on issues affecting both the UK and
overseas. The
activities have included
In 2007 : the group focused on fund raising for the Medaille Trust who look after those escaping from Sex Trafficking, and promoted Environmetal Issues as our awareness campaign (with a feed of information/ideas from the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network). We have provided notice boards to raise awareness within the parish of the issues of Homelessness Sunday (in January) and of Poverty Sunday (in February) and Racial Justice Sunday (in September). We organised a signing of Trade Justice Movement cards during May, sending our message of concern to Angela Merkel in advance of the G8 summit in Germany in June. We had a visit from Philip Mills (of Winchcombe) to tell us about his work in setting up arrangements for helping Kibera. The parish has been kept aware of the crisis situation in Zimbabwe and we have sent prayers and donations out over the year. We did a food collection for GARAS in September, added a donation, and the Parish Quiz Night chose GARAS as its charity this year. We did letters for Prisoners of Conscience, using ACAT as our source of contacts this year. We are looking at CAFOD's Live Simply campaign but haven't worked out yet how to participate.
In 2006 : our fund raising will focused on the education needs of Rebecca’s children – full story above. We also worked on Environmental issues, and on how to keep in everyone’s mind the fact that loving our neighbour includes neighbours of the next generation, and we must preserve the planet for them! We are watching CAFOD's Live Simply campaign too. We are concerned also to see the full benefits of the recent campaigns for Trade Justice. We built a gold chain along the lines suggested in CAFOD's Unearth Justice campaign and it joined others and was presented to the Diocese in December. We had a talk on Thursday 26th October by Roger James from Oxfam, about recent progress on the Trade Justice question. We collected signed postcards for the Living Ghosts campaign in the spring and sent them off. We finished with a Christmas collection for a group of children in Zimbabwe, whose training and development is looked after by Sister Frances Kobets and a few others there. Sister Frances has visited us twice during the year and provided updates on conditions and progress there.
In 2005 :
Our fund raising effort in 2005
was geared toward the
need for support to those suffering from HIV / AIDS in the UK.
Although
there is more medical care available here than to sufferers in much of
the
Third World, people who suffer – and it happens for all sorts
of reasons – from
HIV have a hard time, and we want to do what we can to help.
Organisations involved in active support include the Terrence Higgins Trust ,
the Gloucestershire
Aids Trust, and the National
Aids Trust. Our awareness
campaigning in 2005 focused around the campaign to Make Poverty
History, which was
orchestrated by a number of NGOs. We helped St
Nichols’ parish set up a
J&P group, and hosted a visit from Sister Frances Kobets from
Zimbabwe, who
described for us her wonderful work with teenagers there.
In 2004 : (see above too) we distributed information about some prisoners in Zambia, who were asking for Christian pen-pals. Our fund raising focus was the Hope Clinic We have started up activities in support of the Hope Clinic - a maternity and child healthcare centre located at Lukuli near Kampala in Uganda, East Africa. Its focus is to provide basic medical care to the population living in the local area especially for mothers, children and those unable to afford the high medical treatment costs arising from living near the nation’s capital. The organisers came to the UK in July and gave a talk to the parish. The clinic offers a few free services and other services at a much more affordable rate than that of the local hospitals. The project now has Christy status in the UK. We used the 2004 resource pack from Housing Justice to remind people of the parish that not everyone is comfortably off. See the Housing Justice web site for more.
In
2003 : we held a
peace vigil (overnight) on the Friday 7th March,
with readings every
half hour – to ask for God’s help to avoid a war in
Iraq. We distributed
prayer cards (for Peace in Iraq & the Middle East) and cards
addressed to
Chirac about the European Common Agricultural Policy. We
arranged a talk
by Sister Marian Bell about the work in the hospital in Mulanga, when
she was
visiting this country. Over the year, we collected over
£2900 towards the
costs of medical supplies for the hospital run in Mulanga by the
Sisters of
Charity. The hospital was abandoned some years ago and the Sisters of
Charity
found it dirty and neglected. They are installing electricity
and a water
supply as well as repairing the building to provide hygienic
conditions. We
wrote down a set of “Operating Instructions” for
our group – to make it clear
to everyone what the J&P Organisers did, and how (see below)
In
2002 : Our key
fund raising was the Ad Orientem hall in Mkongo. We publicised
CAFOD’s “Save
our Maize” campaign; we provided speakers at each mass one
Sunday in May to
explain the need to change the World Trade Organisation position, and
got 275
cards signed and sent off. We established our position with
respect to
Gift Aid, working through Clifton Diocese to allow donations to be
supplemented
this way. We arranged a talk by a parishioner who had spent
time with VSO
in Guyana, and raised £100 to send out there with
her. We prepared
awareness material for Racial Justice Sunday and Homelessness
Sunday (in
Jan 03
In
2001 : Our main
fund raising was for the creation of a corn mill at Kom in the
Cameroons. The
site for the corn mill is within the Blind & Deaf School and
the proceeds
from the mill will pay the salaries of the teachers at the school. We
raised
£1500 and sent it off in September. At the
end
of the year we collected for
the people of Afghanistan. We have forwarded £400 via CAFOD
for use with their
local partner Islamic Relief. We collected over 6 Kg of
foreign coins,
prompted primarily by the replacement of many currencies by the Euro;
these
have been passed on to Help The Aged. We researched and advertised the
work of
the Refugee Council and the National Catholic Refugee Forum. We found
and
became members of the local group tackling refugee issues - GARAS
Scope: The scope of Justice and Peace
is to give effect to
Catholic Social Teaching as arising from the Gospel, and especially
defined by
the Popes since 1894 and emphasised again by Pope John Paul II in his
insistence on the Church’s “preferential option for
the poor”.
Elements of Activity: The three elements of Justice
and Peace activity are
prayer, awareness and action. The dedicated J&P
initiative in the
parish exists to help parishioners to live out Catholic Social
Teaching, and it
does this by identifying and organising action within these three
elements. Everyone
in the parish is always invited to take part.
Working Group: A working group is set up to
take the lead. It
meets monthly as advertised in the weekly parish bulletin and is open
for
anyone to attend. Three or more attendees at a meeting
constitutes a
quorum. The Working Group’s role is to plan J&P
activity. The Parish
Priest is an ex officio member of the working group.
Administration: The working group
shall operate within the
administrative framework set by the Clifton Diocese, in particular
regarding
finance, and remains under the authority of the Parish Priest.
Officers:
There shall be a Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer, chosen from the
Working
Group. Two or more offices may if necessary be held by the same
individual.
Finance: Three separate members of the
Working Group shall be
signatories of cheques. Disbursements of less than
£500 shall require one
signature: disbursements of £500 or more shall require two
signatures.
AGM: The January meeting shall be
the AGM.
Termination: Subject to item 4, in
the event of the Group’s
activities being wound up any money remaining in the account and not
earmarked
for some specific purpose shall be donated to CAFOD.