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On Thursday 29 January the Trustees and benefactors of the TERRA SANCTA EDUCATION TRUST came together for the Trust’s annual fundraising dinner at Fairuz Lebanese Restaurant, in the Marylebone district of London. It was particularly heartening to be back at Fairuz’s, where the Trust had started its fundraising at Easter 2007, to celebrate the successes of our first year helping others. This year, the TERRA SANCTA EDUCATION TRUST fundraiser event was dedicated to supporting the girls at the orphanage at the shrine of Our Lady of the Mountains in Anjara, Jordan.
Dr Jordan Lancaster, founder of the TERRA SANCTA EDUCATION
TRUST, We were very privileged to have Father Vincent Nagle as guest speaker at the 2009 event, and to hear him tell us about the life of the Christian communities in the Palestinian Territories. Abuna Vincent is a Priest of the Confraternity of San Charles Borromeo. He is based in the Holy Land, where he is Pastor to the Catholic Parish of Nablus and Special Assistant to the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. We were also privileged to have, among the dinner guests, Christopher Bunting, CEO of the Awareness Foundation, and the Reverend Nadim Nassr, its Director. Abuna Vincent and Father Nadim Nassr reminded us of why the work of the TERRA SANCTA EDUCATION TRUST is important: To help Christian families and Christian children who are caught up in the terrible events in the Middle East, and who feel otherwise abandoned and forgotten as a dwindling minority in the Holy Land. For more information on the project supported by this fundraiser event, here is an extract from our Christmas 2008 Newsletter: Having spent much of our fundraising energies on the Bethlehem schools in 2008, we hope in 2009 to be able to offer more support to our second Holy Land project, the Girls’ Home in Anjara, northern Jordan. The Religious Family of the Incarnate Word is a Religious Institute under Diocesan Law, established in Mendoza, Argentina in 1984. The Institute has been working in various ways in the Middle East since 1994, particularly in works of charity and promotion of ecumenical and interfaith dialogue. In 2003, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, His Beatitude Michael Sabbah, invited the Institute of the Incarnate Word to take over pastoral work in the parish of Our Lady of the Visitation in the town of Anjara, located in the north of Jordan (Ajloun province). The parish looks after the sanctuary of Our Lady of the Mountain, which is a site of pilgrimage and veneration for Jordanian Christians; among their various apostolic works, the missionaries are responsible for the parish and the shrine as well as assistance with groups of children, youth and adults, assistance to the sick and the Parish School. The Girls’ Home is managed by five nuns, with the constant assistance of the missionary priests. The little parochial school belongs to the Latin Patriarchate and is called “Our Lady of the Mountain School”. There are 200 students, 37% of whom are Muslim. The school is of paramount importance to concrete work in ecumenism and interfaith dialogue. In recent years, the Latin Patriarchate schools have been running with an annual deficit of EUR 2 million per annum. The Anjara school has one of the largest deficits of all the Patriarchate schools in Jordan. Parish priest Abuna Hugo tells us: “We are now building a library which will be used by our students as well as being available to students at the local state school, another way to welcome our Muslim neighbours and promote interfaith dialogue. There are several other projects we would like to undertake, such as the installation of bathrooms, opening of the final three years of studies, a kindergarten programme ... Given the urgency of the difficult social (and moral) situation of some of the families which God places in our path, it became necessary to provide a home for local girls. The Home is free and the maintenance of the girls (education, meals, clothing, cultural activities, etc.) is completely supported by donations ... Many girls who find themselves in situations similar to those of girls living in the Home are married off by the age of 16 (as they are considered a burden on their families), our objective is to provide them with a compete education: from a human, intellectual and cultural perspective and we would like to encourage them to undertake university studies or at least provide them with education to allow them in future to find employment.” There are currently seven girls living in the Home: Cristina (6), Mariana and Olivia (9), Mandy (12), Diala (13), Nariman (14) and Christine (16). The only income on which the Home can rely is the salary received by three of the nuns for their work in the school and the parish (USD 635 in total). With this amount they have to meet the monthly costs for food, hygiene, bills (electricity, telephone, gas, heating), education (school fees, tutors, books and stationary), extra activities (birthdays, excursions, concerts), medical attention, etc. Despite limited resources, the sisters are able to make the Home as comfortable an environment as possible through the generous assistance of our benefactors who assist us more and more, however they can, with money, clothing, toys, etc. Currently, the Trust is assisting with contributions to repair the bathroom. You can read the full text of our Christmas 2008 Newsletter here. |
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2009 Fundraiser
