Frontline Report from the Missions – Misean Cara’s 20th Anniversary trip to Kenya

World Mission Sunday

A Day of Celebration and Renewed Support for Missions Worldwide

In September this year, Misean Cara CEO, John Moffett, journeyed to Kenya for a week, accompanied by the Board Vice-Chair Sr. Josephine McCarthy (Presentation Sisters) as part of a year-long celebration of Misean Cara’s 20th anniversary.

They were joined on this special trip by leadership representatives from the three churches in Ireland, all of whom have overseas development projects that are supported by Misean Cara: Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan, Diocese of Waterford and Lismore; Reverend Uel Marrs, Global Mission Secretary of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland; and Jenny Smyth (Mission Director of Church Mission Society Ireland (CMS Ireland).

“I am constantly amazed while travelling, by the commitment of our members and their teams to patiently and diligently chip away at the systemic causes of poverty while providing much needed services,” comments Mr. Moffett. “Nothing replaces being on the ground at the projects we fund, meeting the missionaries (our members) and the people whose lives they are helping through their holistic, long-term projects.”

“By talking with people living in poverty and struggling every day with hardships few of us can imagine, we truly come to understand the incredible value of long-term missionary development work. Our members work tirelessly and with awe-inspiring commitment to help lift lives out of poverty every day and year after year,” continues Moffett.

“As part of how we’re marking our 20th anniversary this year, we are putting a special focus on telling the story of the Irish missionary tradition as exemplified by the work our missionaries are actively doing at the moment.”

While in Nairobi, the group visited a project of the Franciscan Missionary Sisters for Africa, the Hands of Care and Hope in the very poor, informal Huruma settlement (slum) community. Hands of Care and Hope offers a holistic programme including two primary schools, a secondary school, an out-of-school youth training programme and other services aimed at addressing the great needs of families and children living in situations of extreme urban poverty.

“Pictures don’t do justice to what life is really like for people there (in Huruma),” observes Moffett. “You never get the full sense of the over-crowded, unsanitary and precarious conditions in which people, even children, have to live their lives.”

“The FMSA Sisters took our group to visit a site where they had previously constructed a primary school, for children living on the inner edge of the slum next to a river. Earlier this year, after flooding devastated the area, the government decided to create a flood plain by the river and with only two-days’ notice they razed the school to the ground, providing no alternative accommodation. Just like that, the school, a safe educational haven for some of the poorest, most vulnerable children in the community, was gone.”

“The Sisters and the teachers converted the only building left, the kitchen, into temporary classrooms and they continue to turn up every day to provide an education to those children in exceptionally difficult circumstances. The Sisters are working to secure a piece of land to rebuild the school and continue to offer hope of a better way of life and a path out of poverty. It’s a level of commitment and compassion that is hard to do justice to in words, but which we saw at work in all of the missionary-led projects that welcomed us in Kenya,” Moffett continues.

“You have to admire their resilience, determination and ability to rebound from challenges.”

While in Kenya, the group travelled to four projects:

Samburu Awareness & Action Programme (SAAP): Situated in a vast, remote and sparsely populated area 350km north of Nairobi, SAAP serves a population of mostly pastoralist herder communities. SAAP is a partnership project of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, present in Samburu County since 1989 under the direction of lay missionaries Stephen and Angelina Cowan. The project, which receives Misean Cara funding, takes a holistic approach to its mission and ministry and is committed to community empowerment through training in sustainable livelihoods, promoting girls’ rights and access to education, land rights advocacy, and climate change adaptation.

The Tujisaidie Community School, first set up in 2003 serves 350 children aged three to fifteen in the impoverished, informal settlement of Soweto, in Nairobi. The school is a vital part of the local community, which formed in 1992 when 350 families were internally displaced from their homes in the Muorto and Kibagare areas of the city after the then government seized the land and demolished all buildings there. Since 1992, the Church Mission Society Ireland has been linked with the Tujisaidie Self-Help Group, attaching lay missionaries in partnership with the Anglican Church of Kenya.

Misean Cara funding for the construction of four new classrooms is helping to reduce class sizes.

The Daughters of Charity Services in Thigio (40km northwest of Nairobi) has served the residents of the mostly rural and impoverished local community for over 20 years. Through a multi-faceted approach, the project is catering for a diverse range of needs, including special education, medical and hospice care services, social programmes for the elderly, and a women’s development project that provides small grants for micro-enterprises.

The specific range of services has evolved over the years, in close consultation and collaboration with the community itself, reflecting a relationship of listening and trust that has continued to grow from the start, and with an enduring objective of affirming the dignity of the people they serve. Misean Cara has supported the Sisters in Thigio since 2012.

Hands of Care and Hope (HCH), a project of the Franciscan Missionary Sisters for Africa (FMSA), set up in 2007 to serve the needs of the people in the Huruma settlement, one of the poorest areas of Nairobi, where need levels are chronically high and government-provided resources few. HCH has set up two primary schools and a secondary school, to provide affordable education for more than 1,000 young learners annually. Parents of students can also participate in life-skills classes and an income-generating training programme.

Unemployment in the community runs around 75%, and Misean Cara is currently providing funding to the HCH Out-of-School Youth programme, which engages local youth in personal development courses and vocational training courses to build skills for a secure future. Last year, 220 young people took part in the course, with a long waiting list in place for new participants.

Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan, Diocese of Waterford & Lismore

I was privileged to have been invited to join a small team going to Kenya to see projects which are sponsored by Misean Cara, which is celebrating 20 years of its existence.

Leaving behind many preoccupations in the Diocese I entered into a very different world in Kenya. It was my second time in the country but the contrast with home was still very stark.

After our first night in Nairobi, we travelled by small plane to Samburu to see a mission under the direction of Stephen Cowan, a lay Presbyterian missionary from Co. Down who has been there for 30 years. He knows the people and their language and is bringing the Gospel to life in such practical ways. He and his wife, Angelina (who was away) and those he has gathered around him have improved life greatly for the native people of the area.

Back in Nairobi we went to visit a wonderful education mission and school run by an Anglican community in a quarter of the city where the local city authorities decided some years ago to clear a part of a slum area of the enormous capital, displacing many families who were given small plots to resettle on. The people built as best they could and have together formed a strong community and are gradually building up lives filled with hope and vision through education and enterprise.

Just an hour outside the city we travelled to a haven of peace in Thigio where the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul run a school for special needs children, a hospice, a clinic and day care centre. I remember the love with which the children were treated. The clinic runs on a shoestring and sheer grace of God. We were again blessed to witness the Gospel in action.

My last day in Nairobi was spent in one of the slum areas of which there are several in the city. The Franciscan Missionaries of Africa (founded by the extraordinary Mother Kevin Kearney of Co. Wicklow) showed us some of the schools they run.

It is hard to believe the utterly basic nature of the resources available to the staff and students. We heard testimonies of people who were themselves brought up in the nearby slums and who were won over by the love of the Sisters and lay staff and the education they were offering. One ‘star’ student is now on the staff with the FMSA and is himself a Muslim. Such is the peaceful co-existence which is possible when love is genuine.

The work of Misean Cara goes on. My visit to Kenya was a reminder of the great efforts of countless people of faith to make a difference and, urged on by the will of God, to help those less fortunate and to do what they can to relieve the human suffering which is in the world and indeed always has been. By God’s grace a great deal of loving work is being done through people working together, supported by the generosity of Misean Cara.

Sr. Josephine McCarthy (Presentation Sisters), Vice-Chair of Misean Cara Board of Directors and former missionary to Peru 1990 – 1993

I was really impressed by the strong representation of women we met in the different Misean Cara-supported projects in Kenya. These are women who are capable, articulate and providing strong leadership in their communities. One such woman we met in Samburu, Faith, had herself been supported by the SAAP project as a young girl, when she was banished by her family for not submitting to an arranged marriage at 12 years of age. She is now dedicated to promoting Children’s Rights in the rural villages and especially the right to education for young girls and their protection from cultural practices like early marriage and FGM. Faith is now considering a possible involvement in local politics in order to share her skills and talents.

In Thigio, we met carers who have an extraordinary dedication to the special needs children they care for. One young woman on staff at the centre told me she feels she was born for this work.

In Harumu, we saw the fruits of a group of women who have been active in the community for over thirty years.  Everywhere we went, there was evidence that the missionaries are passing on their passion and commitment to their partners and collaborators in the community and are actively planning for a transfer to local leadership. The FMSA and Daughters of Charity Sisters spoke of their training programmes for their local Sisters, what they call their ‘succession plan’,  ensuring proper governance and oversight as the work continues into the future.

Finally, I was inspired by the courage and resilience of all the missionaries we met in the face of the many challenges, dilemmas and paradoxes that face those working with the poorest, those furthest behind and most difficult to reach.  The services they provide are non-denominational but the faith dimension of their lives and work was evident and sustains their courage and resilience and commitment, whether in the rural areas of Samburu County with non-existent road infrastructure or in the urban slums of Nairobi, where the waste water is flowing in open drains outside houses and there is a  total lack of government support for communities living in such poverty.

To read the full reflections by Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan and Sr. Jo McCarthy, please visit the Misean Cara website https://www.miseancara.ie/2024/10/kenya-reflections/

Learn more about Misean Cara, celebrating its 20th anniversary of support to Ireland’s missionary organisations: www.miseancara.ie

“Since 2019, very crucial input from Misean Cara to SAAP has helped the project reach out to the most vulnerable of girls in the area with opportunity for education, and is also helping with farm skills training for the local pastoralist people. So the support of Irish Aid and the significant input of Misean Cara over the past five years have really enhanced and strengthened the work and enabled much progress in a broad range of development initiatives.” – Reverend Uel Marrs, Global Mission Secretary, Presbyterian Church in Ireland

“The most striking impression from all of the locations visited was the dedication and servant-hearted nature of those involved in delivering the projects. The quality of care and commitment to the communities where they were living, pride in their work and the clear difference being made in peoples’ lives, was remarkable. Long term sustainable change has been enabled through long term commitment by Irish mission personnel and the funding availed through Misean Cara.”  – Jenny Smyth, Mission Director CMSI