Tents 2001

This year the funds collected will go to support educational projects, since education is the prime emergency. From December to February, in the town squares of Italy and the world, encounters and testimony.

“Sharing needs in order to share the meaning of life”

NIGERIA
Lagos
“St Peter and Paul’s” School
Lagos is a metropolis of more than ten million inhabitants, with a highly polarized society: there are few very wealthy people, there are a majority living on low income, and finally, there are people who survive by picking through trash. Civilian life is made difficult by corruption, widespread criminality, and violent conflict in the predominantly Muslim north. The school system is a disaster.
Responding to a suggestion from the Apostolic Nuncio in 1988, AVSI became involved in a project to build two primary health care clinics and in numerous cultural initiatives. It also started two schools (kindergarten and primary) on the outskirts of Lagos, in a village of fishermen.
About three years ago, The Seed Remedial School was set up to offer remedial lessons and special tutoring, on the outskirts of Lagos. The new AVSI project is the creation of a permanent educational center to give the children a suitable building and to enable the “Seed” students to experience and propose to their peers of different religions and ethnic groups a place of growth and peaceful coexistence, by sharing school work and other activities.

ROMANIA
Chiajna–Bucharest
“Casa Emilia”
Romania holds an unhappy record in Europe: concentrated here are half the children who are HIV-positive or suffering from AIDS. Many of them used to live in orphanages. From there they were transferred to specialized centers . Others lived with their families until their illnesses were discovered. Then they were put into medical centers and forgotten.
AVSI has tried first of all to locate the children’s original families, in order to attempt to reinsert them into the family or at least to re-establish relationships with their birth parents, but the results have not been up to expectations. Thus, the project of a house to take in sick and abandoned children was born. The house in Chiajna bears the name of Emilia Vergani. About two miles from Bucharest, it is built to house up to ten children. At Casa Emilia, the children have parents, persons who have decided to welcome them as their own children. Besides the parents, other people in turn take care of the children and the house. In the afternoon, two tutors help the children with their homework. This is an ambitious work, proposed as a pilot project and an example to Romanian society.

KENYA
Nairobi
a. St Joseph’s parish school and kindergarten
In Kahawa Sukari, a neighborhood on the northern edge of Nairobi, work Fr Alfonso, Fr Roberto, and Fr Valerio, missionaries of the San Carlo Fraternity. Fr Roberto is in charge of the social project set up in August 2000 by the Archdiocese of Nairobi to deal with some of the neighborhood’s needs through the involvement of the parish community. The activities, held in the parish buildings, which currently are being expanded, address four problem areas: unemployment, which affects mainly the youth; unwed mothers who are on their own and unable to support themselves; AIDS; and abandoned (and non-abandoned) children.

b. St Kizito Vocational School
The St Kizito Vocational Training Institute was set up in 1991 in response to a request from the Cardinal of Nairobi. From 1994 to now, more than 1,300 young people have been trained and started in a job. In the past year, more than 400 students from the ages of fourteen to twenty-five have been served by the Institute. It currently offers eight training courses.
The students come from various parts of Kenya and neighboring countries, and can afford only a modest contribution toward the school’s functioning. Funds are needed for the equipment, updating, and normal administration of the Institute. In order to help the youths who finish their courses get a start in the work world, a not-for-profit organization called the Companionship of Works Association (COWA) has been set up, offering job placement services and support to young entrepreneurs.

BRAZIL
Manaus
“Rainha dos Apóstolos” Agricultural School
In 1974, in the heart of the Amazon Forest, about twenty miles from Manaus, the PIME Missionary Fathers founded an agricultural school for the human and professional training of young Indios. Since 1990, the school has been run by the St Joseph Cooperative, a not-for-profit organization established by some people from Manaus. The school currently employs forty people and has about three hundred Indios attending it, who follow a complete course of training. For the final five years of the course, students live at the school, which offers them room and board, teaching materials, and, in some cases, even clothing.
Most of the students who were trained in the school are now working in their home communities, where they act as a propelling force and incentive for local agricultural development.
Three goals can be achieved: to repair infrastructures which have deteriorated or were damaged; to enhance the technical instrumentation and experimental laboratories; and to give the technicians who oversee the work on the farm the opportunity to retrain through refresher courses.

LEBANON
Salima
“Notre Dame des Apôtres” School
Before its long and bloody civil war (1975-1991), Lebanon was a flourishing region where the Drusian and Christian communities lived peacefully side by side. Violence and destruction have deprived the country of many of the structures necessary for the community, including hospitals, clinics, and schools. Reconstruction is slow and expensive. In this context, AVSI wants to contribute to the recovery of this land through the rebuilding of a school that for almost a century has provided a fundamental social and educational service to all the inhabitants of the area.
Founded in 1840 by Italian Capuchin friars, it became a public school in 1892. In 1933, it was taken over by the Sisters of the Order of Notre Dame des Apôtres, who are still the owners of the building, which was abandoned when war broke out.
The contribution from the Christmas Tents will make it possible to re-establish an efficiently functioning school. Besides reconstruction of the school, AVSI hopes that this will constitute a step forward and an example for a reintegration of the Drusian and Christian communities.

ITALY
Carate Brianza
“In-presa di Emilia Vergani” Association
The “In-presa di Emilia Vergani” Association in Carate Brianza is an educational project assisting students in difficult social, scholastic, or employment situations through hospitality, training, and insertion into the work world.
The origins of the association date back to 1994, when Emilia Vergani began involving others in the construction of a place where the young people she had met in the course of her activity as a social worker could experience a positive way of facing reality. The Center was created in 1997, and in 1999 became a not-for-profit organization called “In-presa.” In 2001, after the untimely death of its foundress, it was renamed “In-presa di Emilia Vergani.”
Over the years, the thrust of Emilia’s ideals has swept along educators and tutors, who have assisted the young people with projects of orientation and individual formation, as well as entrepreneurs and professionals who have offered the youths the opportunity to be inserted into the workplace. Currently, all the youths at the Center are gainfully employed.
A program of support for the young people who are having difficulty with school work has been set up as well, in cooperation with the high schools of the area.
Currently, the Center is serving forty youths. This has made it necessary to buy a new building, which is currently under renovation. The contributions collected will serve to build two training classrooms, bring in two new professional figures (an educator and a psychologist), and buy a minibus for the transportation of the young people.