Thank You from Our Partners in South Sudan

It’s all because of you.

We can’t thank you enough. You truly are heroes and angels to the people we serve. You made our ongoing lifesaving work possible through 2020, a challenging year for everyone. We served in hospitals, orphanages, refugee camps, and a host of critical locations where literally, lives depend on it.

It’s because of you that progress is made every year in spite of the overwhelming challenges the people of this region face.

To show our appreciation, we asked many of our partners on the ground to share with you their gratitude in this video.

Our 2020 annual report will be released a little later this year, but in the meantime, we wanted to highlight some of the programs you helped to support this past year.

Nurse Noeleen Loughran
Bidi Bidi Refugee Camp

You provided food, medication, and healthcare supplies to continue treating the medical needs of refugees and orphans at one of the most populated and sprawling refugee camps in the world. In one zone of the camp, 62 children live in a makeshift orphanage, where missionary nurse Noeleen watches over them. In addition to those duties, she administers medicine to the sick in the refugee camps, sometimes up to 400 people in one day. The majority of the refugees arrive ill and in pain, having no means to purchase medicine or treatment. Without the medical aid provided by you, Noeleen says that literally thousands of these people would die each year.

Learn more about how your gifts are transforming lives in Bidi Bidi.

Father Federico
St. Clare’s Home for Children

St. Clare’s provides food, shelter, trauma support and medicine to orphans, most of whose parents died in the conflict during the civil war. In a challenging part of the world where intense heat, war, poverty, and hunger take a mental and emotional toll on aid workers, Franciscan Father Federico remains committed to serving God and saving the lives of these children. The home currently cares for the needs of 50 children, and the number is growing. Your gift of support has sustained these young lives with the most basic and needed necessities of food, clothing, and medical care.

Learn more about how your support helps Father Federico and St. Clare’s Home for Children.

Sister Bianca Bii
St. Bakhita Orphanage

These children are displaced, homeless, orphaned, and would have nowhere to go but the streets if it weren’t for the crucial place of refuge of St. Bakhita Orphanage. The children often arrive traumatized from witnessing the deaths of their parents and family members, and are in need of emotional treatment as well as physical help. At age 73, Sister Bianca Bii currently oversees the care of over 60 children. She expects more desperate children to continue arriving, as word has spread that there’s a safe haven there for children. Your gifts this year have made possible the provision of food, clothing, clean water, shelter, medicine for the ones who are sick, bedding with mosquito nets for protection from malaria, and protective fencing around the home. Sister Bianca thanks you for your generous and lifesaving relief given to the children of St. Bakhita in 2020. As you may know, the home relies solely upon these donated funds for their operation.

Learn how you are helping Sister Bianca Bii and saving the lives of children at St. Bakhita’s Orphanage.

Sister Orla Treacy, Principal
Loreto School for Girls

Sister of Loreto Orla Treacy from Ireland is the principal of the Loreto School for Girls. In South Sudan, girls face extreme adversity in pursuit of education, and Loreto provides them with a safe place and an encouraging environment for them to learn. Surrounded by a region typically characterized by conflict and chaos, Loreto School for Girls provides hope and ongoing support in both primary and secondary school levels. The school is making strides in helping to combat one of the biggest barriers to education for teenage girls, that of forced early marriage. In South Sudan a 15 year-old girl is seven times more likely to die in childbirth than to finish secondary school. Loreto is taking steps to change that. Your donations are also the sole funding for the school food program, which provides students with daily meals so they can receive proper nutrition. Your gifts also enable the school to provide protection, clothing, healthcare, and social and spiritual formation for these young girls.

Learn more about the work your donations are making possible at Loreto School for Girls.

Coffee Plantation in Yambio

You provided all the supplies to help start a coffee plantation run by the Tombura/Yambio diocese, which is being used as a way to produce income to sustain the relief efforts of the diocese throughout the region. Coffee is the world’s most traded tropical agricultural commodity and this initiative aims to provide work and support for struggling farmers, in addition to making the diocese less reliant on outside donations. Since coffee plants take three to four years to mature, the operation should be fully operational by 2023.

Learn how you are helping fight poverty by establishing these coffee plantations.

Father William Deng
Bishop Abangite School of Science and Technology

You ensured renovations were completed to construct an entire new classroom block to the School of Science and Technology, which will create space for four additional classes to expand the current curriculum. Over a thousand students attend this diocesan school and the renovation will have a huge impact on the overall education of students in Yambio. In spite of a challenging year with the COVID pandemic, the malaria season, and the unstable political environment of the region, the school construction projects are moving forward successfully to continue improving the quality of education for these students both in 2020 and in the years ahead.

Learn more about the educational projects your gifts are making possible.

Blue Sisters Women’s Center

Your gifts to the Blue Sisters Women’s Center provide assistance to women, including young girls and teenagers, who have been raped, abused or abandoned amid the violent conflicts that have plagued the region for years. Known as the Blue Sisters for their bright-colored habits, these sisters serve those women who were victims of violent civil war. Thanks to our donors, the Blue Sisters Women’s Center is close to completing the construction of a facility that will house, rehabilitate, and integrate these women back into society with a renewed sense of stability and hope.

Learn more about the Blue Sisters’ work that your gifts are supporting.

Sister Laura Gemignani
St. Theresa’s Hospital in Nzara

Your heartfelt donations provided new equipment and physical onsite improvements to this vital hospital. St. Theresa’s Hospital holds 158 beds and serves the 250,000 citizens of Nzara. While the small staff is skilled and dedicated, they often struggle to meet demands. Your donations this year made it possible to construct several new additions to the facility, including a maternity ward, operating theater, and blood bank. These additions alone have helped reduce infant mortality and increased the quality of medical care for patients.

Learn more about the work you make possible at St. Theresa’s Hospital.

Dr. Tom Catena
Mother of Mercy Hospital

At this remote 400-bed hospital in the Nuba Mountains, you provided vital drugs, lab equipment, an X-ray machine, and funding for staff members to meet ever burgeoning demands on the facility. As the only trauma center in a 300-mile radius, patients sometimes walk for days to reach the hospital. Missionary doctor Tom Catena performs over 1,000 operations in a year and is on call 24/7 to help with emergencies. The Nuba region is one of the few areas that has fortunately remained unaffected so far from the onset of COVID, but thanks to you the hospital has prepared an isolation unit and expects a shipment of PPE in order to be ready. Relying on the sustaining donations from supporters like you, Dr. Tom thanks you for saving the lives of people in Nuba in 2020.

Learn more about Dr. Tom and his work at Mother of Mercy Hospital.

Bishop Eduardo Kussala
Diocese of Tombura in Yambio

Your support has enabled thousands of children to go to school, provided clean drinking water, assisted women to be able to take care of their children, and launched training and leadership programs for young men and women to serve in future religious capacities. The local government provides no support for social programs or aid relief. This heavy burden falls solely upon churches and humanitarian organizations to fill the expansive gap.

Learn more about Bishop Kussala and the work in his diocese.

You made all these programs, and more, possible in 2020. We appreciate that Bishop Kussala calls our donors angels because of the many lives they help save in his country. We are most grateful to you all.

Sincerely,

Neil A. Corkery
President

Special Message from Our Partners in South Sudan

Over the past year, your generous donations have allowed us to help countless people in war-torn South Sudan. Some of the goals you’ve helped us achieve include the following:

1. We’ve supplied Nurse Noleen Loughran with medicine and health supplies so that she can continue treating refugees and orphans at Bidi Bidi, one of the largest refugee camps in the world
2. We’ve assisted Dr. Tom Catena and Mother of Mercy Hospital with medical supplies to continue helping the sick living in the remote Nuba Mountains
3. We’ve supported Father Avelino with rebuilding schools to help promote education and self-sustainability in villages
4. We’ve provided food, clothes, and clean water to orphanages throughout the country such as Saint Clare’s Home for Children and the Saint Bakhita Orphanage

… and much more. All this is only possible because of generous supporters like you.

Donate Now

Fr Federico

I wanted to introduce you to one of our partners who is currently on the ground in South Sudan, making a difference. His name is Father Federico Loro Gatluak, a Franciscan missionary who’s been working with the Sudan Relief Fund since 2015. Below is a letter he recently sent to us that I wanted to share with you.

– Neil Corkery, President

—

Hello,

My name is Father Federico Loro Gatluak, and I am a missionary who has been working South Sudan for the past 5 years. When I was called by the grace of God to help these people back in 2015, I wasn’t aware of just how bad it was in this region of the world. The constant warring, the death, the destruction, the strife – and the overall hopelessness. The people of South Sudan have so little, and that is being taken away from them with each passing day.

One major issue that we see on a day to day basis is the orphan situation. The ongoing civil war has left countless children without parents or a home, and when I first arrived, it was not uncommon to see children wandering the streets in desperate search of food and shelter.

Several years ago, my fellow missionaries and I built St. Clare’s Home for Children in Juba to take in the orphans and provide them with the basic necessities of life. Currently, we are housing about 50 orphans, but unfortunately, we do not have enough funding to provide them with the care they need and deserve.

That is why we need the help of our generous donors to make a difference.

For as little as $3 dollars a day – a little more than the price of a cup of coffee – you can support one of our orphans at St. Clare’s Home. These 3 dollars may not seem like much to you, but they can provide a child with food, clothing, medicine, and much more. And if you can be generous enough, for $90, you can ensure their care for an entire month.

Please look into your hearts and help these children today.

Sincerely,
Fr. Federico Loro Gatluak

Dr. Tom Catena Q&A October 2020

As you may know, Dr. Tom Catena has spent the past several years offering his medical expertise and knowledge to the people of the Nuba Mountains. We keep in regular contact with Dr. Tom to learn of any crucial updates and needs. Recently, we provided an update we wanted to share with you about his recent experiences.

Are there any daily rituals that bring you peace and help you manage the chaos?
I’ve found that it’s very important for me to start the day by attending morning Mass at our small church here in Nuba. To hear His word and receive His body is essential in order to face the inevitable challenges and difficulties of the day ahead. 

In the evening, I try to reserve some good time to play with my son, Francis. He’s always in a good mood and ready to show his affection regardless of my frame of mind. I also try to do some non-medical reading in the evenings – usually spiritual reading or contemporary issues.

Is there always a sense of emergency and urgency for you at work?
I would say that the sense of chaos is less now that the fighting has stopped, but there is still always a sense of urgency and time pressure just to get through the large workload. Since we are the only referral hospital for such a large area, we always have to expect the unexpected and be ready for any disaster to come our way. There are no days off and there is no one else that I can pass off the responsibility of the most difficult cases.

What has it been like in Nuba? Are you experiencing the effects of COVID?
We are perhaps one of the few areas in the world that are still untouched by COVID. However, we are preparing an isolation unit and expecting a shipment of PPE from AMH’s office in Kenya as we’re trying to get ready in case those patients start to show up. The past few months have been relatively calm as we just grapple with the usual diseases and surgical problems.

Are there any specific prayer requests we can be praying over for you and your team?
Yes, we would love your prayers. If you could pray for our health and strength that we may continue with our work here. I’ve been sick on and off for this past month and it’s made me realize how fragile we are. I would also ask people to pray that we also have unity among our staff and team.

What makes you hopeful right now?
There’s been quite a big political change this past week. The Sudanese prime minister and the leader of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army-North opposition (who controls the large swath of territory where we live and work) have agreed to a ‘Declaration of Principles’. This means they have agreed on some basic principles to be discussed at the upcoming peace talks. One of the principles is freedom of religion.

It may not seem like much, but it is the first time that the Khartoum government is willing to discuss the issue of freedom of religion in Sudan, and this issue is one of the main points preventing peace in the Nuba Mountains. This is really the first real step toward peace that we’ve seen after years of civil war, and it is giving me hope for the future.

As always, I am so grateful for your help. We completely rely on the generosity and compassion of donors like you in order to continue saving lives here in Nuba, and I am constantly amazed by your thoughtful support.