“Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the lord, and he will repay him for his deed.”
Proverbs 19:17
The effect of HIV in Tanzania has led to a great number of orphans and homeless children within the country. As part of relief services, the Daughters of Mary established an elementary school and dispensary in the remote rural areas. The education related to psychological, intellectual, physical, spiritual therapy, and healthcare, is offered to the orphan and homeless children, and other people in the areas we minister. The orphans need not only attention in areas of food, shelter, clothing, and teaching facilities, but also more classrooms as a result of an increase of orphans.
Education and healthcare services are particularly directed to rural areas where we serve poor nomadic people and orphans in the rural areas of Tanzania. For example, our community has clinics among those most in need in rural Mission areas. Due to the high concentration of poor people in those areas, the clinics are not meeting the needs of the people. Patients must walk a distance between 20-30 miles to reach the clinics. Expectant mothers often deliver their babies on the way to the clinic, and some patients lose their lives before arriving at the clinics because of the lack of transportation. Even after arriving, patients are forced to share one bed, and some sleep on the floor due to the shortage of beds. We have an urgent need for medical equipment and an ambulance.
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Agriculture / Husbandry
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Healthcare
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Sparse supplies and medicines plague this and other dispensaries. As one visitor from the United States said, “We have more medicines in our medicine cabinets at home than the sisters have in their dispensaries.”
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A child came into one dispensary who was dehydrated and throwing up. The sisters had no way to give him IV hydration. They could only coax him to drink a little water at a time.
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Some dispensaries can only test for Malaria. To test for Typhoid, they must send the patient to a hospital. There is no easy transportation. It could take days for a patient to travel from a rural area to a hospital – sick people, possibly contagious – traveling by bus or a little cab.
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Education
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Michaud Girls Secondary School – The school has a great need for a copy machine, a printer and computers for the teachers; school bus so students can go on field trips; school supplies, a library, books and workbooks; overhead projector in each classroom; computers for a computer lab. Many of these students have never seen a computer.
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Frederick Van Vlijmen Primary School – Most schools have simple wood desks and a blackboard. There are a very limited number of books. Mostly teachers try to give handouts, but rarely do the students have textbooks or workbooks.
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Growing and Sustaining our Congregation
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There is a great need of financial support for our Congregation, especially in the field of education and healthcare. Any donations will enable us to meet the daily basic needs of these poor people we minster in our missions.
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Evangelization
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Catechists in parishes
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