Sisters’ mission to help those in need

If the success or otherwise of missionary activity can be judged by whether missionaries are able to raise up people to take their place, Ireland’s Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles, generally known as the OLA Sisters, can be very proud of what they have done.

Sr Janet Nutakor OLA, currently working with the African community in Ireland, was inspired to join the OLA sisters after being taught in a school run by the sisters in her native Ghana, where she and her sister and brothers grew up in the Volta region near the border with Togo.

“My secondary school was a school run by the OLA sisters,” she says, with some of the sisters being Irish missionaries. “My assistant headmistress is still in Ireland, Sr Maura Cranny. She’s in Ardfoyle in Cork. And then we had the late Sr Maura Sidney, she was also in the school when I was there. And then two other Ghanaian sisters.”

Profession

Inspired by her education with the sisters, Sr Janet joined them and has been a professed sister for 20 years, educated at Ghana’s University of Cape Coast and becoming a teacher, having taught English, religious education and social studies.

“As a sister I have taught in the Brong-Ahafo region of Ghana,” she says, explaining how she spent four years teaching in a private OLA school there before teaching for a further four in Elmina on Ghana’s south coast, spending 2011 and 2012 doing secretarial and accounting work for the sisters across Ghana as provincial secretary and bursar.

“And then in 2012 I went to teach in a tertiary institution, Archbishop Porter Girls’ Polytechnic at Vroomdorp in Elmina. It’s a special polytechnic that was founded by the OLA sisters to kind of help young women that have completed secondary education and then needed some sort of skill,” she says.

“So these girls – let me put it in context – they didn’t have very good results and so couldn’t continue, so the sisters founded a school that helped give young women skills and they worked in various institutions as secretaries.”

In 2015, then, she moved to Ireland where she did an MA in development studies at the Spiritan-founded Kimmage Development Studies Centre, and now works in a ministry called Outreach to Africans living in Ireland.

“The provincial superior at the last provincial chapter found that there was a need to kind of be with the African community in Ireland,” she explains.

“There are a lot of Nigerians in Ireland, and a lot of them also from our schools back in Africa, like in Nigeria. Past pupils of our schools, they had the contacts of some of the sisters and often came in to visit the sisters and to visit the final resting places of the sisters that have passed away – their former principals and headmistresses.

“We felt it would be a good idea to have a ministry of presence and keep up the communication with our past pupils, which makes our family a big missionary family, and as well offering our support as much as we can.”

It might seem odd that a sister from a missionary order might have spent most of her professed life in her home country, but Sr Janet explains that this is quite normal.

“A good number of the sisters are on missions but for some of us it happens that you have to stay at home. As missionary sisters we go on mission ad extra or mission ad gentes, you know, mission in your home,” she says,

“For us, for our institute, mission continues, mission is ongoing, and mission is everywhere. And now, you know, mission to Africa has become – Africa is not a geographical location anymore. There are Africans in Ireland, so how can we reach out to them? That is where I come in now,” she says.

The Irish sisters are involved in both material and spiritual support for their sisters abroad, she explains, not least “the support of empowering sisters through education”. Pointing out that she is a beneficiary of this, she says:  “I came to Ireland to study through the benevolence of the Irish sisters, or the Irish province.”

“The other part of the story is that sisters continue to support Africa through their prayers. We have elderly sisters, and one of our strongholds as an Irish province is prayer ministry. They always pray for the continent of Africa and for troubled areas in the world,” she says.

Financial support through various projects and especially through Misean Cara, the Irish-based missionary partner organisation that works with 91 organisations in 50 countries, is vital too, she says.

“Through Misean Cara we’ve been able to build schools in Ghana and Benin,” she says, adding that it has also supported training in child safeguarding, for instance.

“In Tanzania Misean Cara has funded a good number of our projects, and then as a province the Irish province supports the mission in Tanzania. It also helps by sending out students or other people, lay missionaries who are interested in going out there to help the local people for a time, probably two months, three months, or six months, and then in hospitals in Ghana like in Nkwanta, we have doctors who volunteer to go and help as well as student doctors.“

Hospitals and clinic tend to be essential to the sisters’ ministry, Sr Janet explains. “In Tanzania we have a clinic that is supported by the sisters and run by the sisters. In Ghana we have St Joseph’s hospital in Hwidiem and in Nkwanta.”

Founder

Schools are key to their work too, she points out, mentioning schools in Benin and Ghana, both named after the order’s founder Fr Augustin Planque, and in Togo. With the order now spread across 19 countries over three continents, it’s come a long way since its humble beginnings in Lyon in 1876 when Fr Planque decided to found an order of missionary sisters to accompany his own SMA Fathers in their evangelistic efforts.

Claiming that “our priorities as a congregation are for women and children especially the holistic education of young girls”, Sr Janet says the order tends to focus its resources where need is greatest, noting that “most of our hospitals are in rural areas, very poor areas, places where people or other congregations would not go to”.

In this, the African sisters are following in the footsteps of Irish and other forebears.

“So, learning from the Irish sisters, any mission they had if the mission is well picked up, it’s handed over and then we move to another poor area,” she says. “And the new missions we are looking at is in Central Africa, in Sierra Leone, very poor, poor, poor areas without electricity, which is a big challenge.”

It’s the challenge the sisters are clearly up to.