COLLABORATION IN ESTABLISHING A PROJECT

TO FURTHER EDUCATION AND MEDICAL CARE

IN SOUTHERN SUDAN

       How did it all begin? 

The Bishops of southern Sudan in January of 2005, wrote a letter of invitation to the Superiors General in Rome to come and visit Southern Sudan and see the reality after twenty-one years of civil war.  The letter included the challenge of returning to Rome and reporting on what was seen and heard.  

         Initial Response

The  Superiors General responded by sending a 6 member delegation to the dioceses of Southern Sudan in March of 2006.  The delegates visited the dioceses of Juba , Yei, Yambio, Rumbek, Torit and the Nuba Mountains .  They talked with bishops, clergy, religious, lay people, government officials and UN agencies.  The members of the delegation collected factual and photographic information and listed needs as expressed by the bishops.  

Report: When the delegation returned to Rome it prepared a report of all that it had seen and heard: destruction, poverty, lack of infrastructure, scarcity of food, lack of education and health care.  They presented the following statistics:

Ø  Southern Sudan has the lowest education rates in the world today.  Illiteracy rate in Southern Sudan is almost 85% and only 25% of children are enrolled in primary school.  

Ø  Besides the shortage of basic infrastructure and materials, the number one need cited repeatedly is for more trained teachers. Only 6% of teachers have been formally trained.

Ø  Southern Sudan lacks infrastructure and has some of the worst indices in the world for nutrition, access to water, mother/child health, and outbreaks of common preventable diseases.

Ø  Less than 25% of the population has access to safe water.

Ø  The mortality rate for children under the age of 5 years is almost 25%. 

Ø  Only 30-40% of the population live within one day’s walk of a basic health facility.

      It is clear that while the Comprehensive Peace Agreement officially ended the civil war between North and South, thousands continue to die unnecessarily and suffer immeasurably.  The local church now needs the solidarity of the universal church in order to heal past wounds, reconcile division and build a new future. The delegation met people whose faith has not only survived the war and poverty but whose faith has been deepened and whose hope is alive.  There is hope that the fragile peace agreement will hold and that peace will ultimately bring changes.

     At the end of the report an invitation was made to respond in some way as religious to the bishops request for help.

Response from congregations

Many congregations responded with either pledges of money or personnel.  Congregations expressed interest in a collaborative effort in mission; a gesture of solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Southern Sudan .  Perhaps some of the enthusiasm was generated by the Congress on Religious Life in 2004 which called for “new paradigms for mission, new ways of organizing ourselves and new structures to meet the needs of our globalized world”.

Development of Education and Health Care Proposal

Members of the delegation and others met and discussed concrete ways of responding, asking how religious institutes might respond together, in solidarity to what was seen and heard during the visit to Southern Sudan .  Based on what was seen and heard a concept paper was developed to create a Teacher Training College and a Health Training Institute.  The concept paper was shared at the November 2006 meeting of the USG /UISG special meeting on collaboration in mission and once again congregations were invited to participate either with a financial donation or a commitment of personnel. 

Bishop Mazzolari and Archbishop Paolino from Southern Sudan were in Rome in October of 2006 and expressed their enthusiasm for both the Teacher Training College and the Health Training Institute.

Click on the film for photos