Shelter and care for the very young − in our orphanage Pouponnière in Bamako, the capital of Mali.
The new vocational training centre in Hogar Amanecer in Montevideo/Uruguay helps young people to take responsibility for their own lives.
Care Projects
Childhood as a protected environment for body and soul where young people can develop their character, is a luxury available only in developed industrial nations. In the developing world, even healthy children integrated in a family hardly get the chance to live an emotionally secure life. The situation is even worse for young people who are perceived as a burden by their families due to their disability, or who have lost parents and siblings through disease and war, and for children who have to leave their families when they have barely reached the age of ten because there is not enough money for them.
With our care projects, we can to some extent alleviate the hardships of these children – even if we are fully aware that we cannot replace their families. Four institutions (out of a total of seven in Africa, Asia and South America) may serve as examples to demonstrate the extent of support that is required by young people:
Almost 60 disabled children and adolescents between the ages of twelve and seventeen live in the centre for disabled persons in Santhigiri (South India). Our donors enabled us to build a disability-friendly dining room and to install a well with drinking water. For the graduates, we opened a training workshop for electronic repairs and a training centre for office workers.
Since 1999, we have supported a home in Musasa Ruli (Rwanda) for children whose parents died in the civil war or have been reported missing there, under the sensitive care of Dominican sisters, even deeply traumatised orphans find secure shelter and affection. Once a child has recovered physically and mentally, a search is undertaken throughout the country for their relatives or for suitable foster families.
Originally, the Educandario in Cruzeiro do Sul (Brazil) was a home for children whose leprous parents had been evicted from their village communities. Nowadays, it offers welfare, medical care and a safe life for more than one hundred orphans and street kids between two and six. Franciscan sisters ensure that the children go to nursery school and school. Since 1988, we have supported the Educandario with furniture, clothes and school supplies.
At the orphanage Pouponnière in Bamako (Mali), more than one hundred infants – many of them babies abandoned by desperate mothers – have found a new home. In the child-friendly building ten very committed female educators look after the physical and mental well-being of the children. We support this work with regular donations in kind, deliveries of medicine and powdered milk. We also pay the monthly salaries for six of the ten educators.