17 January 2012
Youth from all religious communities participate in an urban dance workshop in Beirut.
(photo: Spencer Osberg)
In the July 2010 issue of ONE, Spencer Osberg photographed and wrote about life for youth living in Beirut, Lebanon:
Mr. [Muhammad] Ayoub belongs to a declining but active group of Lebanese youth committed to remaining in and improving their country. He and two friends founded Nahnoo as college students, organizing small outreach projects that brought together youth from Beirut’s disadvantaged neighborhoods.
“Even with the divisions, you have the same problems; you share the same goals and dreams. So why don’t you work together?” he says about the organization’s mission.
Today, Nahnoo coordinates some 60 volunteers, who tutor and mentor youth across the city. It also holds workshops for young people, aimed at teaching them the importance of tolerance and how to express themselves and solve their problems without violence. The workshops often include activities involving critical thinking, which, Mr. Ayoub says, help youngsters to better understand the complexity of the situations they encounter and that people may have different perspectives.
For more, read Lebanon’s Urban Youth.
Tags: Lebanon Children Beirut
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13 January 2012
A Sudanese girl walks with her Egyptian friend, left, at the private school, Yed el Hesshan, in Alexandria, Egypt. (photo: Sean Sprague)
In the September 2009 issue of ONE, Liam Stack wrote about life for Sudanese refugees in Alexandria, Egypt. While Alexandria provides a better life for many, these refugees still face some challenges:
Sudanese families must also meet the additional expense of enrolling their children in private schools. Under Egyptian law, non- Egyptian students do not have guaranteed access to public schools.
Fortunately, the vicariate goes to great lengths to fill the gap, locating and paying for suitable private school programs for Sudanese children in Alexandria. Last year, it put 113 Sudanese children through school, from kindergarten through the last year of high school, at a cost of $25,626.
Father Jal keeps a record of every student supported by the vicariate — as well as his or her school registration and receipts — in a crisp manila folder in his desk. It bulges with slips of paper.
“The public schools are cheap, but they are for Egyptian children,” explained the priest. “[The vicariate] has some places in those schools, but only a few.”
Among the private schools where children are placed is Yed el Hesshan, located near the seashore in downtown Alexandria. A high wall encloses an adjacent schoolyard where children play games, sing songs and talk about the popular American show “Hannah Montana.” It could be anywhere in the world.
To learn more, read Alexandria’s Struggling Sudanese.
Tags: Egypt Refugees Africa Sudan
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12 January 2012
Useyin Karimov, born in 1921, shows his Soviet army medals. (photo: Petro Didula)
This photo was originally published in the March 2009 issue of ONE in a story that described the painful history of Crimea in the 20th century:
“Soviet soldiers came and forced five or six families, each with lots of kids, onto a truck,” recalled Khatidzhe Zhurayeva, a Crimean Tatar. “At first, we didn’t believe they were really sending us away for good. But when we finally reached the border, one old man pulled himself up so he could see where we were. When he saw, he started to cry. And then all of us began crying.“
The beauty of the sun-drenched Crimean peninsula belies its recent gloomy history. Connected to the European mainland by tiny strips of land, the Crimea juts into the Black Sea from its northern coast and is home to a bewildering number of ethnic groups, including Armenians, Greeks, Karaim, Tatars, Russians and Ukrainians...
...By the dawn of the 20th century, the Crimea’s Tatar community consisted of some 250,000 people. Numbers vary for the Crimea’s Karaim, who forbade intermarriage and refused converts, but probably they did not include more than 15,000 people.
While most Karaim and Tatar men of fighting age served the Soviet Union as members of the Red Army or as anti-Nazi partisans, a minority aided the Nazis. As punishment for this collaboration, Stalin in 1944 deported to Soviet Uzbekistan all the peninsula’s Tatars — regardless of age or state of health. Nearly half of those deported died of exposure, malnutrition and disease. The Karaim, who after World War II numbered just 6,357 souls, eventually assimilated with the Slav population or immigrated to Israel or elsewhere.
For more, read An Ethnic & Religious Patchwork.
Tags: Ukraine Crimea
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9 January 2012
Mr. and Mrs. Mathew prepare dinner while Jiya plays with her grandmother.
(photo: Peter Lemieux)
Emigration occurs in many of the countries CNEWA serves. Families generally choose to migrate from their country of origin in order to make a better life for themselves. In Kerala, it is common for a family member to migrate to another country and send home money or ”remittances.“ But those not benefitting from emigration face the harsh realities of poverty and lack of opportunity in Kerala:
About a mile or so from the Peters family’s new home — in a neighborhood where residents claim ”Gulf money“ has built 90 percent of all the houses — huddles the rundown shack that Jeji and Priya Mathew and their 1-year-old daughter, Jiya, call home. A ratty, blue plastic tarp tacked crudely over the entrance collects leaves. Water stains splotch the interior walls of this cramped, makeshift dwelling. Toothbrushes and other toiletries fill the shallow crevices of an exterior brick wall around back. With no running water, the dirt landing adjoining the shack’s rear is where Mr. Mathew shaves, his wife brushes her hair and Jiya plays — mud puddles at their feet.
Unlike the Peters family, the Mathews do not receive any remittances from overseas. The family struggles just to secure the basics.
For more, read Kerala’s Bittersweet Phenomenon from the September 2008 issue. Also, take a look at the accompanying multimedia feature, Meaning and Measure of Kerala Emigration.
Tags: India Kerala Poor/Poverty Emigration Employment
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5 January 2012
In this photo from 2003, Sister Nahla tends to a patient at the Al Jamh-Al Zahrawi Hospital in Mosul, Iraq, where she has been working since May. (photo: Philip Toscano-Heighton)
Today, the Washington Post reported that a suicide bomber targeting Shiites killed at least 72 people in Baghdad — the highest one-day death toll since U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq in December. This bombing is one in a series of recent attacks resulting in many causalities. In the midst of so much turmoil and suffering, the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena have been a safety net for Iraqis affected by war for many years. In the January 2004 issue of the magazine, Jill Carroll wrote about their work with the wounded and sick:
Others, like Sister Nahla Francis, work outside the convent. Sister Nahla started working as a nurse six months ago at the nearby Al Jamh-Al Zahrawi Hospital in Mosul. She monitors life-support machines, feeds patients and changes bed linens. Many patients are recovering from gunshot wounds and other life-threatening injuries.
She is the only sister in the hospital and often has to explain to Muslim patients what a sister is.
“I saw a lot of different cases here. One patient came who had lost her legs and her family,” said Sister Nahla, who has been a member of the community for six years. “She told me, ‘I want to die because I have nothing to live for.’”
In such cases, “I can only pray for the patient,” said Sister Nahla.
Equally trying was the death of many children brought to the hospital during the war, she said. “The community gave me spiritual support and encouragement to continue my work here.”
Since that report, Sister Nahla has left Iraq; she now works at the Mother of Mercy Clinic in Zerqa, Jordan, which is also supported by CNEWA.
Meantime, the author of the story, Jill Carroll, came to know all-too-well the nightmare of Iraq. In 2006, she was kidnapped by Sunni Muslim insurgents and spent nearly three months in captivity before finally being released. You can read more about her story in The Christian Science Monitor.
For more, read In the Shadow of War. To learn how you can help support the sisters and hospitals in Iraq, visit our website.
Tags: Health Care Iraq War Dominican Sisters
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4 January 2012
Sister Lucy Maule of the Ephpheta Institute in Bethlehem, holds four-year-old Abdil-Karim Yosef Allush. This photo was featured on the cover of the Jan/Feb 1996 issue of the magazine.
(photo: Miriam Sushman)
In this photo from our archives, Miriam Sushman documented the work of the Sisters of Saint Dorothy at Ephpheta Institute, a school for hearing-impaired children in Bethlehem that CNEWA has supported for many years. George Martin wrote about his experience at the school for our magazine back in 1996:
Ephpheta was founded at the Pope’s request after his visit to the Holy Land in 1964. Supported almost entirely by CNEWA-PMP, Ephpheta admits children on the basis of need, not their parents’ ability to pay.
Ephpheta is run by the Sisters of Saint Dorothy, a largely Italian community dedicated to spreading the love of Christ through fostering human and Christian development. Although engaged in many types of educational and social work, the sisters have specialized in educating the deaf.
How does one go about teaching a child born deaf to speak? It is a slow and exceedingly painstaking process. The more I witnessed it, the more I marveled.
For more, read The Miracle of Ephpheta. To learn how you can help support the children of Ephpheta Institute today, visit our website.
Tags: Children Palestine Disabilities Bethlehem
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30 December 2011
A woman prays in a church in Deir Azra, a Christian village in Upper Egypt. This is an unpublished photo from the September 2011 story Spotlight: Coptic Women. (photo: Holly Pickett)
2011 was a year of change throughout the world. Many countries in the Middle East underwent political upheavals — the repercussions of which will surely unfold for years to come. The people and churches we serve in the region — from Iraq to Egypt to Syria — were undoubtedly affected. Through it all, and with your generosity, CNEWA has assisted Christians throughout the Middle East.
This year has been one of change for our agency, too. In September, we welcomed a new president, Msgr. John E. Kozar.
With your continued support, CNEWA will remain a lifeline to those in need in the Middle East, Northeast Africa, India and Eastern Europe in 2012! May your New Year be a blessed and prosperous one!
Tags: Egypt Africa Coptic Christians Coptic Church
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29 December 2011
Sister Leema Rose and volunteer Jancy Kuthoor visit the homes of needy residents in Dharavi, Mumbai’s most infamous slum. (photo:Peter Lemieux)
In the July issue of ONE, Peter Lemieux reported on the work of the Nirmala Dasi Sisters with Mumbai’s poor. Many of the people the sisters serve live in Dharavi, Mumbai’s most infamous slum. Today’s front page of The New York Times featured an article on Dharavi and it’s residents’ unwavering hope in spite of the many odds they face.
The computer sits on a small table beside the bed, protected, purchased for $354 from savings, even though the family has no Internet connection. The oldest son stores his work on a pen drive and prints it somewhere else. Ms. Baskar, a seamstress, spends five months’ worth of her income, almost $400, to send three of her children to private schools. Her daughter wants to be a flight attendant. Her youngest son, a mechanical engineer.
“My daughter is getting a better education, and she will get a better job,” Ms. Baskar said. “The children’s lives should be better. Whatever hardships we face are fine.”
Education is hope in Dharavi. On a recent afternoon outside St. Anthony’s, a parochial school in the slum, Hindu mothers in saris waited for their children beside Muslim mothers in burqas. The parents were not concerned about the crucifix on the wall; they wanted their children to learn English, the language considered to be a ticket out of the slums in India.
For more, read In One Slum, Misery, Work, Politics and Hope.
Tags: India Sisters Poor/Poverty
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28 December 2011
Founded by the Good Shepherd Sisters in 1987, the Bethlehem Day Care Center serves the families of Cherkos, an impoverished neighborhood in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
(photo: Sean Sprague)
A Catholic school education opens the door to a new world and better life for many of the families CNEWA serves. Its value is priceless, as Sean Sprague reported in this story from the March 2006 issue of ONE.
Paul Wachter reported on the social implications of providing children with a Catholic school education in Ethiopia in the March 2007 issue of ONE:
While much progress is being made at relatively prosperous schools like Bisrate Gabriel (which CNEWA supported in the past), the greatest challenges lie with Ethiopia’s underserved poor.
“It helps if we reach the kids early,” said Genet Assefa, principal of the Bethlehem Day Care Center. The center, founded by the Good Shepherd Sisters in 1987, caters to the children of Cherkos, a slum in Addis Ababa that takes its name from the neighborhood church. (The sisters run a second day care facility in Addis Ababa, the Good Shepherd Sisters’ Center.)
On a recent visit to the Bethlehem center, more than 150 children, all under 7, were fully engaged in their classes. Some recited the English alphabet: “C! C is for cat.” Others practiced Amharic, their national language.
“The center serves two purposes,” said Mrs. Assefa. “It gives these children access to an early education that they wouldn’t ordinarily have, which will encourage them to go on to primary school and beyond. And it also frees up the parents, many of whom are single mothers, so that they can try to earn a living and improve their lives.”
For more see, Making the Grade in Ethiopia and Breaking Barriers. To learn how you can help educate a child in Ethiopia, visit our website.
Tags: Ethiopia Children Africa Catholic Schools
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23 December 2011
In Ukraine, a boy stands before a tetrapod (icon stand) and a Nativity scene.
(photo: Ihor Tabin’sky)
We’ll be celebrating the holiday this weekend and returning to the office on Wednesday.
In the meantime, from our family to yours: have a safe, blessed and happy Christmas!
Tags: Ukraine Church Christian
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