Page
last updated: 31st January 2010 by Patrick Shields
Fund Raising Projects – Rebecca’s Children, Bees Abroad, Ad Orientem, Burmese Children, Hope Clinic
Rebecca’s Children
We have paid
the fees of the four orphaned children of Rebecca Nanfuka
since January 1999. We did not imagine when we started all those years
ago that Rebecca would die at such an early age (38) and leave us to make all
the decisions about their schooling. We can report
that the two eldest boys have completed their college courses in July
2008. The eldest is trained as a car mechanic and now has a job in a
garage in Kampala. His younger brother has a UNEB Advanced Certificate in
Business Studies; he continues to study accountancy and has a part time job.
[His funding now comes from a Danish friend]
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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!
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.
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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.
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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
2009 : our attention has moved to WATER AID for whom
we are both fund raising and awareness raising. We are also engaged
in awareness raising on Poverty in the UK, and are looking at how the
ideas of Church Action on Poverty can
help us there. We did our part in advertising and explaining the G20 Mass
Mobilisation in March and other environment related issues through to the Wave
in December before the Copenhagen summi; and
investigated use of solar panels around the church but backed off this idea
(because of other priorities). We also
did a campaign based on the “Stand Up To Poverty” initiative. We contributed to
the parish groups survey and have prepared material explaining J&P and our
approach, for the new Welcome Pack. We continue to interact with a number of
earlier projects (see above) - Rebecca’s Children, Ad Orientem, and the Zimbabwe orphans.
In 2008 : our fund raising focus was a bid for Solar Panels and associated eqiupment for the parish in which Fr Kifle (who lived in our parish in 2006) is now working in Eritrea. We raised enough funds for the installation, managed locally, of a full set of equipment there and sourced it from a company in Germany. It is now installed and working, and we have funds left over for a similar but smaller installaiton which is still being arranged. We continued in support of many other ventures, notably The Zimbabwe orphans, Rebecca's Children in Uganada, and the Lumen Christi venture in Tanzania. Awareness of Environmental Issues remains another focus.
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.