2700 N. Military Trail, Suite 240 PO Box 273908 Boca Raton, FL, 33427-3908 1-800-391-8545 Our Lady of the Stars Nursery Feeding and Educating the Outcast Tala Leper Colony, Philippines Project 0261 Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me. Mark 9:37 www.crosscatholic.org
Project Synopsis Description Provide daily meals for over 150 children at a Catholic nursery school that serves the families of poor lepers (Hansen s Disease). Purpose Nutritious meals, in combination with doctor visits and medication, help poor children grow up healthy and strong while building resistance to tuberculosis, to which many are prone. Location The Tala Leper Colony, near the capital city of Manila in the Philippines. Cost $16,500, or $110 per student, goes toward daily breakfast, lunch, and a snack and helps keep the ministry running for a full year. Highlights Unable to shake off its history as a leper colony, the community of Tala continues to be shunned by Filipino businesses and neighbors because of the stigma of the disease. As a result, even family members are forced into a lifetime of poverty. Abandoned by society, the families of lepers suffer from poor nutrition and susceptibility to tuberculosis, while earning a meager wage as day laborers. The Franciscan Missionaries of Mary founded a free Catholic nursery school, Our Lady of the Stars, that welcomes the children and grandchildren of lepers with love and acceptance. At the nursery school, the children get a Catholic education in a safe environment while their parents and grandparents are working. They also receive nutritious meals and crucial medications and are examined by volunteer doctors and dentists once a month. Cross International Catholic Outreach helps provide breakfast, lunch, and a snack. 1
Shunned by Neighbors To be born in Tala is to be marked as an outcast. Many years have passed since the village was established as a leper colony in an isolated area of the Philippines, 1.5 hours north of the country s capital city. The name Tala means stars, a reference to the remoteness of the location, where there was nothing to see but stars before the colony was built. Medical advances have made leprosy (now called Hansen s disease ) treatable, and there is a hospital in Tala that specializes in care for leprosy patients. But Tala s history as a leper colony continues to drive away businesses and impede economic development, as negative attitudes against lepers still linger among the general public. Misconceptions about the danger and mechanism of infection lead outsiders to shun not only the diseased individual, but the person s whole family even after the leprosy has been cured. Any feelings of compassion are drowned out by a deep-rooted fear of contracting the withering illness, which causes skin lesions, muscle weakness, numbness, and is commonly believed to make limbs fall off (in truth, the hand and foot deformities come from accidental injuries due to the numbness). As a result of the old stigma, the children and even grandchildren of lepers are isolated from their peers, deprived of educational opportunities, and discriminated against in the workforce. Lepers often try to keep their disease hidden from neighbors, so their family won t be discriminated against, but the progression of the symptoms makes it impossible to hide forever. For these families, Tala represents both hope and despair hope, because they have access to antibiotics that will cure them; despair, because the colony separates them from the rest of society and marks them as outcasts. They know that even if they recover, they and their children will always be labeled unclean, forced into poverty by no fault of their own and unable to live the normal lives they desperately pray for. 2
Food, Meds, and Education Compassion for the outcast is what inspired the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary to open a nursery school for the children and grandchildren of lepers. The school, which operates ten months out of the year, offers love, acceptance, and a good start in life for Tala children bearing the stigma of a disease that isn t even theirs. Many of these children are frail from malnourishment and susceptible to tuberculosis a deadly infectious disease that, like leprosy, is caused by mycobacteria. Most TB carriers never exhibit symptoms; but among those who do, medical treatment is necessary to prevent death. At the nursery school, the children receive monthly visits from volunteer doctors and dentists, are given the medications they need, and are fed daily nutritious meals. A healthy diet is essential to the process of building immunity to TB. The Franciscan Missionaries of Mary provide all these services free of charge to poor local families, who typically must survive on a meager wage as day laborers or bicycle taxi drivers. Parents are, however, strongly encouraged to volunteer some of their time to prepare meals, clean, or do other chores at the school. Their service is not required, as it takes away from time the parents could be spending at their jobs. Also, since the parents spend most of the day working in the fields, the teachers are providing another important benefit: adult supervision the children might not otherwise receive. The school has three levels, each with its own teacher, and meets for two sessions daily between 8:30 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., at a time when the children would normally be home alone. Thus, in addition to an education, the children at the nursery school are also getting food, medical attention, and adult supervision To keep these services free, the school relies on Cross International Catholic Outreach to provide funds for food (breakfast, lunch, and a snack) and help with other costs to keep the ministry running. 3
Ubb1130 Our Lady of the Stars nursery Project 0261 Touch the Unclean Ever since Christ shared meals with sinners and tax collectors, the Church has borne a responsibility to reach out to the untouchable. Today, the spirit of Christ s command to cleanse the leper is realized in the important work of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary at the Tala Leper Colony. The nursery school provides a way for stigmatized children to experience God s unconditional love while getting the nutrition, medical care, and education they need. And while leprosy, and even tuberculosis, may not be the nightmare today that they were in previous centuries, the need for neighborly love never changes. All this free education and care are made possible through the generous gifts of compassionate Catholics. By giving to this important ministry, you can change a child s life, and you can experience what it truly means to walk in Christ s footsteps. These children have been unfairly stigmatized and condemned to lives of poverty, and they are depending on people like you to give them a chance at a normal life. Cross International Catholic Outreach needs your help to feed and educate society s outcasts. Won t you reach out to them today? Our Promise to You! 100 percent of the proceeds of this appeal will be used for this project. In the rare event that we receive more than needed to fund this project, additional gifts will be used for other urgent needs for the poor. 4 2700 N. Military Trail, Suite 240 PO Box 273908 Boca Raton, Florida 33427-3908 1-800-391-8545