Comboni Lay Missionaries

Campaign on the harmful effects of mining activity on health and the environment

Piquia
Piquia

Today, October 29, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), together with Justiça nos Trilhos (Justice on the Rails), launched a campaign to alert the world’s citizens who unconsciously consume the products of mining and steel companies that for more than three decades have been deteriorating the health and polluting the environment of the community of Piquiá de Baixo, in the Brazilian Amazon.

The campaign marks the 30th anniversary of Grupo Ferroeste in the municipality of Açailândia and invites everyone to support the struggle for the rights of this community, to which the companies and the State have closed their eyes for so long.

To know more: https://bit.ly/3kFKur8

Central Africa Republic – Help for “DA TI NDOYE” Medical Center

RCA
RCA

Central Africa Republic – Help for “DA TI NDOYE” Medical Center

Comboni Lay Missionaries, serving on the mission in Mongoumba, are young people who want to dedicate part of their lives to work among the poorest and most abandoned of this world. However, it is not always as easy as it sounds. We create an international community here and participate in the life of the parish in collaboration with the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus (MCCJ).

RCA

Our mission in Mongoumba in the Central African Republic is situated right on the border with Congo-Brazzaville and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Our service is primarily to integrate people living in the depths of the forest – Pygmies with the people of the village. We go to small villages situated in the forest to provide at least basic medical help to these people, together with our local health center employee, we conduct short lectures on diseases occurring here, personal hygiene, we introduce simple catecheses that can be applied to their lives, as well as we give moments of carefree childhood to the youngest through games and fun.

RCA

Pygmies are a tribe that the local people of the village consider cheap or free labor, they are pushed to the margins of society, but unfortunately that’s the reality here. Integration is the most important task for us, but it is hard to talk about integration, when it often happens that Pygmies are not willingly admitted to the hospital to dress wounds, test for malaria, or even show the slightest interest in their health. They are sent home or to our mission.

On our mission, we have a small health center that is not in the best condition and a rehabilitation center called “Da ti Ndoye”, which means “House of Love”.

RCA

The project aims to modernize this rehabilitation center that has existed since 1985. We would like to combine it with our health center to create one complex offering many possibilities. It is one of the few rehabilitation centers to which patients come from the entire area of ​​the M`Baiki diocese. In addition to restoring the physical building, we would also like to renew our missionary animation through physical work for the benefit of the local people by giving the most precious gift – health.

RCA

Depending on the financial possibilities, we would like to:

  • replace the water sewage system; clean and disinfect the water tank or replace it with a new one; clean the well; purchase a generator for pumping water, replace water supply pipes;
  • install solar panels and batteries
  • purchase a power generator
  • renovate the kitchen (replacing worktops, installing tiles)
  • renovate the toilets (cleaning the walls, installing tiles, replacing doors, purchasing equipment)
  • make a ramp for wheelchairs and install railings on the porch
  • replace the ceiling throughout the building, clean and renew the walls
  • equip the offices with the necessary equipment
  • purchase the most necessary drugs
RCA

BUDGET

Drugs and dressing materials: EUR 4,000

Equipment for physiotherapy: EUR 2,000

Construction materials:  EUR 12,000

Equipment for health center: EUR 5,000

Solar panels and batteries: EUR 5,000

Water pump and generator: EUR 4,000

Employees: EUR 3,000

Transport of materials: EUR 1,000

Sewage: EUR 2,000

TOTAL 39,000 EURO

RCA

If we manage to receive an extra money, we will use it for medicines and the health care and development programs for the pygmies’ population.

RCA

Donations can be done to MCCJ account in your country with annotation: Medical Aid Center “DA TI NDOYE” in CAR. CLM Mongoumba.

CLM in Central Africa Republic

Rural Family House of Açailândia: a history of struggles

CFR Brasil

By Zé Luís Costa. From the MST website. (Edited by Fernanda Alcântara)

CFR Brasil

The Rural Family House [Casa Familiar Rural (CFR)] of Açailândia, in the state of Maranhão, was constituted as an association in 2001 after a small group of social activists met and began to discuss ways to improve the issue of rural education for the local reality.

From the beginning, the entities that started the proposal of the family house entered the debate of this political and social project, such as the MST, which had just settled in the city, the institute of the Comboni Missionaries, the Center for the Defense of Life and Human Rights and the Union of Workers and Rural Workers of the city.

The experience of this type of school is already old in the world and in the state of Maranhão they are present in several different cities. In other parts of the world this type of school is known as “Family Agricultural School”.

From the first discussions, the interested organizations held several meetings, even in cities on the outskirts, as Xoan Carlos (CLM) reminds us. “We held a series of meetings in the communities. There were another 60 meetings in the municipalities of Açailândia, São Francisco do Brejão, Itinga, Bom Jesus das Selvas. And finally the association was formed”.

He continues: “From there we obtained a piece of land, given by the Catholic Church. But we could not afford to build the building or pay the employees. So it was a few more years of struggle and articulation in the search for projects, and where we got some international support”.

CFR Brasil

Later, in 2003, the organizations involved in the idea managed to start what they dreamed of for the city and its surroundings, in view of the large number of settlements and rural communities they had in the vicinity of the city, now with 110,000 inhabitants. It was a dream for the distant future.

The pioneers of the idea achieved, with much struggle, agreements with the city council, as Xoan Carlos states. “In 2005 we started the first activities of the CFR. We started with an elementary school course, we had managed to structure several productive units in agriculture, beekeeping, cattle raising, pigs… Governor Jackson Lago had the intention of doing a high school course integrated to professional education, and a new moment started for the CFR”, he concludes.

With these articulations, in 2006 the high school course started, which was better adapted to the needs of the youth in the countryside. Mainly because, in 2001, many communities only had young people with the fourth grade at most. This was the need they have: a school with different characteristics from the conventional ones, for the countryside.

Jarbe Firmino was a student in the first class of the Açailândia Rural Family House, and later entered the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA). He graduated in Education in countryside and returned to CFR, now as a monitor/teacher, and then took a position in the institution as general coordinator.

He tells about his experience criticizing the position of the public power: “This experience, to which I refer, of coordinator, as well as in other moments, was of great difficulty in terms of support from the public power. These were periods in which contracts were not honored by the State, which weakened the movement of which the CFR is a part,” he concludes.

After all this struggle, came the recognition and the conquests. The main one was the training of young people as agricultural technicians to work in the settlements with their families and in some state agencies. The Regional Council of Engineering and Agronomy, CREA, recognized them so that they could work officially providing technical assistance to the projects.

However, the desire of the coordination and the group that organizes the association and the CFR is that the students, trained, work with their families developing what they have learned, in family farms, as most of the settlements of the agrarian reform.

CFR Brasil

The CFR is managed by an association, and the president is currently Xoan Carlos. The coordination is chosen by the association and has ten teachers who are hired by the Maranhão State Education Secretariat.

History of the rural family houses

The Rural Family Houses originated in France in 1935, in a situation of strong rural exodus, when a group of families, with the support of the Catholic Church, met to rethink this situation. They called it “House” to differentiate it from the conventional school and because it began in the home of a family; “Family” because it was an organization of families and not of the government; and “Rural” because the object of the experience was in the rural environment as a whole: technical, human, cultural, etc.

Today, in France, there are 450 CFRs. Since the 1960s, the experience has spread to Spain and Italy under the name “Family Farm School”. There are about 1,000 CFRs in the five continents, in thirty countries.

In Brazil, the CFRs began to appear at the end of the 1960s, and today there are about 150 rural educational centers that operate with the “Pedagogy of Alternance”. In Maranhão there are approximately 27 schools with these formative principles. The pedagogy of alternation developed within the methods of Paulo Freire, in a construction of technical training, is united with training for life, in the case of Açailândia, expanded with the commitment to the struggles for a differentiated model of agriculture.

CFR Brasil

Book: We are mission

Libros

“Creation itself awaits with eager expectation the Revelation of the Children of God” (Rom 8, 19).

Libros

Dear members of the comboni family in the name of our Lord Jesus, we greet you warmly!

As you remember well, about two years ago, the first volume was published, entitled: “Be the change you want to see in the world“, where were collected the ideas which animate us and guide us in a particular way within the paths inherent to JPIC. These paths, in turn, were also made possible by the meetings of the World Social Forums (FSM) and the Forums organized as Comboni Family in conjunction with the FSM. In 150 years of History and Life, our Institutes have been enriched by a great ministerial experience thanks mainly to the dedication of many missionaries of our comboni family who have interpreted with creativity and apostolic passion the specificity of our Charism.

This second volume entitled: “We are mission: witnesses of social ministry in the Comboni family“, presents a significant range of concrete ministerial experiences, chosen among many others. Our desire is that sharing them will help us to value what we already do, thanks to the Gift of the Holy Spirit and our personal and community responses. In addition, this plurality of shared experiences helps us to appreciate the different Comboni ministerial actions that complement and enrich each other, revealing the richness of the Charism in a growing dynamism.

We ask our Provincial Superiors to take care in distributing printed copies to all communities and also the digital copy translated in four languages, so that all and everyone can enjoy the work done together and in collaboration with more than 40 Comboni missionaries.

We thank the members of the Commission on Social Ministry of the Comboni Family who worked with passion and expertise for the publication of this second volume and also facilitated the work of mapping of our Comboni initiatives on social ministry around the world. In December 2020, Covid-19 permitting, will be held the Forum on Social Ministeriality in Rome.

These initiatives and activities are part of a great journey of synergy and collaboration of the members of the Commission and of many confreres and sisters, who will surely bring enthusiasm and openness to newness to which the Lord is guiding us. All this requires, however, on the part of the whole Comboni Family a great opening of heart, mind, creativity, and commitment that we entrust to the intercession of our great founder San Daniele Comboni.

Mary, Woman of the Gospel teach us to announce your Son Jesus in our ministerial commitment!

Sr. Luigia Coccia, smc                        Fr. Tesfaye Tadesse, mccj

You can download the book following this link

Cultivate a dream

Ezequiel

We finish this series of videos with which we have accompanied the 35 years of the martyrdom of Father Ezequiel Ramin. On this occasion, the Comboni Lay Missionaries of Brazil encourage us to cultivate and follow a dream in life as Fr Ezequiel encouraged.

Let us remain faithful to our vocation and be brave. May the example of Fr Ezequiel and other martyrs in Latin America give us strength and courage to change the injustices of the world by walking together with the peoples who suffer it.

Let us receive the candle in our hands and let it give us light in our path.

Comboni Family in Mission