Mags GarganMags Gargan meets the new head of Misean Cara
Usually when I finish an interview with a missionary, I walk away feeling a bit inadequate after hearing how much they have achieved and made a difference in people’s lives. I had this same feeling after meeting the new CEO of Misean Cara, Heydi Foster.
Misean Cara is an umbrella group representing 89 religious and lay missionary organisations to fund and support missionary development work overseas. Heydi became the new CEO almost five months ago, continuing a career dedicated to working in the non-profit sector, supporting the most marginalised people in the world.
Originally from Guatemala in Central America, Heydi says she grew up in a “typical Catholic family”. Her parents were educated by the Mercy Sisters and the Jesuits, and her mother in particular was very proud to hear the news that her daughter would be supporting the work of the Irish missionaries that had such a huge impact on her life.
“She’s always been incredibly supportive of me but when I met her and told her who I was working with, I got the biggest hug and she said, ‘I’m so proud of you’. And, I was like, ‘I’ve done other nice things before you know!’ But this felt different somehow, and I was proud that she was proud,” Heydi says.
Human rights
Growing up in Guatemala during a horrific civil war, Heydi originally studied accounting and economics but found that she preferred to work with people, and began to work in the area of human rights while at university.
“It always appealed to me working with human rights, justice, peace and fairness. And I suppose very early on I developed a passion for working with the poor. And I think perhaps I didn’t choose human rights or social work, because Guatamala was in an internal civil war and it wasn’t something that my parents would have encouraged, but somehow I ended up gravitating towards it,” she says.
“Guatemala was pretty unstable and unsafe for a lot of people. Somehow they managed to kill half a million people in 36 years. It affected everybody – every sector, every class, every group. I don’t think there were many people who weren’t touched by the violent struggle that was going on in the country.”
Leaving Guatemala for Mexico Heydi saw an urgent need to care for Guatemalan refugees orphaned by the civil war, and co-founded an orphanage. Over the following years she established a number of organisations to help the marginalised such as the homeless, sex workers, asylum seekers and poor immigrant families in Mexico, Brazil and the United States.
But it was love that brought her to Ireland in 2005 when she met an Irishman who was to become her husband, while they were both studying in Harvard. Arriving in Ireland during the Celtic Tiger, Heydi found a different country than what her mother had described from her experience of Irish missionaries, but she found the Irish to be “warm, kind and generous”.
Traveller community
True to form, Heydi’s first job in Ireland was as CEO of Exchange House National Travellers Service in Dublin, which offers family support, mental health and education services to the Traveller community.
Heydi says before taking the job she heard from different people that “Travellers are not an easy group, they don’t like to work, they’re lazy – all these stereotypes that you hear. And, while I was making my decision to take the job I removed ‘Traveller’ and I put Latino or Asian, and I didn’t like what I was hearing.”
Heydi found the work very rewarding and “found Travellers – particularly my colleagues and some of the families that welcomed me into their homes – kind, caring, honest and generous people. They just need to be given an opportunity and a chance to prove that they are normal people. Just because one individual does something bad doesn’t mean that they’re all the same, but somehow they’re always judged by what one person or a small group of people does. So I found that very difficult but I loved working there.”
After seven and a half years Heydi decided it was time for a change for both herself and Exchange House, and she was attracted to Misean Cara by both the reputation of Irish missionaries in terms of integrity and relentless dedication, but also the organisation’s values which she says are “second to none in terms of commitment, service, hope, transparency and accountability”.
Slowly meeting the different orders and congregations over recent months, Heydi says she always leaves the room feeling inspired. “It’s where I get my inspiration from, when I hear about the amazing work that they are doing on the ground.”
Reflecting the changing reality of mission, at the moment Misean Cara is focusing on working with members to establish a hand-over process to local communities as Irish missionaries reduce in numbers and older members return home. However, Heydi does not see this as any kind of ending for Irish mission and says “the faces and the colour, might be slightly different, but the work and the service will be the same”, and young Irish lay missionaries are continuing the tradition of development work.
Missionary work
“There will still be a need for missionary work and the work of Irish missionaries is second to none. It would be hard to replace that. During some of the recent emergencies our members were the first people there and in fact many of them have remained during the long road to recovery.
“We continue to support the congregations through this transition, mostly right now by providing support to the local missionaries,” she says. “Although I need to add that many of those local missionaries are highly skilled, so it’s creating that partnership, and some of the Irish missionaries already have the partnerships in the local countries. We are right in the middle of exploring what exactly is it going to look like, but we are extremely hopeful.
“Missionaries were there before the Millennium Development Goals and they will be there after too,” she says.