AFRICA/MADAGASCAR – Father Erminio De Santis: “We provide all-round care for hundreds of street children, orphans and young people in need”
Friday, 21 June 2024
Ivato (Agenzia Fides) – On June 24, two days before the Malagasy National Day, the school year ends for the students of the “Notre Dame de Clairvaux” center of the Salesian missionaries (SDB). Agenzia Fides spoke to the Director of the school, Father Erminio De Santis, who has been in Madagascar since 1983 and arrived at the center in 1984. In these weeks, in addition to his normal activities, Father Erminio is particularly busy meeting the many families who come to the center to enroll their children for the next school year.
“I have started to accept registrations for next year, which I will do throughout June,” said Father Erminio. “As early as six in the morning, there is a queue in front of the entrance gate, between those who have already completed their documents and have come with their children, and the many who are still waiting for documents to prepare their registration. We send the invitation to register on Radio Don Bosco and those who do not know us yet come, curious, and want to find out about this wonderful opportunity for their children.” “We accept students aged 15-17 and only ask that they have a primary school certificate,” continues the priest. “Many of them stopped going to school after the CEPE (= primary school certificate) because they had no means, and some were living on the streets! Others do not even have the CEPE: we accept these students for a one-year bricklayer course; but the youngest we send to the special school of our center, where about 180 girls and boys are preparing to obtain the primary school certificate.” The Salesian missionary recalls the beginning of his work in Madagascar, when he came to Clairvaux at the invitation of the French missionary Father François Bernard, the founder of the center. “That was on August 2, 1984, and since then until today we, Salesians, have gradually transformed the center, maintaining the original spirit of Father Bernard’s work: to welcome street children, in serious economic and family difficulties, free of charge, to give them back life and hope for a better future.”
“Our center is located on the central plateau of the island, near Ivato International Airport, about 15 kilometers from the capital Tananarive,” says the missionary. “It has a boarding school that currently accommodates 150 students aged 14 to 18; it offers them the necessary health, development and school education for the first cycle, and then transfers them to the vocational training center created for this purpose. The boys who knock on the door of the center, both internal and external, are also over a hundred, very often having not completed their primary education and sometimes not even started.” “The big problem we still have to solve is the daily care of the children we take in,” he says. “Every day we prepare about 1,100 meals that are distributed free of charge. For the boarding school students, we have to provide everything they need: food, clothing, doctors, dentists, medicines and operations, organization of extracurricular educational activities, educators, kitchen staff and wardrobe. For external students, we provide breakfast, the daily meal and medical, dental and school care; for primary school children, we provide breakfast, the daily meal, teachers and medical care. In recent years, marked by the global Covid-19 pandemic, we have supported the young people and their families at home by regularly distributing food to them every two weeks.” Father Erminio points to the serious inflation in Madagascar, whose economy is one of the poorest in the world and where 50% of the population lives below the poverty line. “The rise in prices is impressive,” reports the missionary, “especially the general sharp increase in the cost of living caused by the difficulties of the pandemic that has isolated Madagascar and the Russian-Ukrainian war that has deprived the country of tourism, the country’s main source of income, and has put a heavy burden on the national currency,” he stresses. No less important is the attention that the Salesian missionaries pay to the spiritual growth of young people. “For all young Catholics, we manage to complete the path of initiation to the faith up to the sacrament of confirmation,” affirms Father Erminio. “The results are encouraging, also because the Malagasy population is very religious by nature. But in the religious lessons for the elderly, we also begin a human and Christian preparationon marriage and on their involvement in the social and ecclesial life of their respective parishes”. (AP) (Agenzia Fides, 21/6/2024)
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Publish date : 2024-06-21 11:38:44
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