A Catholic NGO that has built five large homes for the disabled in Kenya is calling on the Maltese to help it build its first one in the “continuous Calvary” that is Ethiopia.
“The most neglected are the ones we care for the most. We prepare disabled children to face their challenges and lead an independent life when they grow older,” Dun George Grima says.
As he leafs through pictures taken recently in Kenya and Ethiopia, Fr Grima speaks of people who were taken in by the movement when they were still children.
Eric, a 21-year-old who was born with one leg, was fitted with a prosthetic limb and trained to become a pilot. Mary Grace, also from Kenya, was born without arms. The 28-year-old writes with her toes and teaches other children within her locality, he says.
Fr Grima founded the missionary movement Jesus in Thy Neighbour 28 years ago to “listen to and love the ignored” in Brazil, Kenya and Ethiopia. Since then the NGO has built homes for the disabled, constructed schools and orphanages, an operating and plastic surgery theatre and dug several boreholes.
Over the past three years, since Fr Grima last spoke to this newspaper, the project of the Sacred Family Home in Bondo, Kenya, has been completed and is housing 300 blind, deaf, albinos and children with Aids.
The NGO is now turning its gaze on another “big” project, which is in Bonga, Ethiopia.
This ongoing, €1.2 million project will feature the building of the first home for disabled children where they can learn to live an independent life.
The work by the NGO, funded by the Maltese, has been acknowledged by the head of the Ethiopian Catholic Church, who has just been elevated to the cardinalate. In a letter sent to Fr Grima, and addressed to the Maltese, he commends the island’s help, without which many children would be deprived of nutrition and education for a better future in their own country.
Most disabled are ignored, so even a hug makes them feel good
Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel expressed his gratitude for the “generous and continuous assistance to more than 200 homes for needy children and disabled people” in different Ethiopian dioceses.
But apart from building houses and schools for these children, the movement is trying to raise awareness about the need for an inclusive community that does not neglect the disabled.
“Most disabled are ignored, so even a hug makes them feel good,” Fr Grima says, adding that when he went to Ethiopia with Mother Teresa, she told him that Ethiopia was a “continuous Calvary”.
There are some seven million disabled people in Ethiopia and the Catholic NGO works with all religions and denominations.
Fr Grima in Bonga, Ethiopia, where a €1.2 million home is being built for disabled children, who will learn how to live an independent life.“No matter their tribe or religion, human beings are just that, human beings. Everyone is the same in God’s eyes and everyone deserves to be cared for,” he says.
The movement in fact builds houses for people suffering from leprosy in Ethiopia, most of whom are Muslim. Some live on the street and even at the cemetery, so the movement contracts local people to build houses. At a cost of €1,000 to build, and then decorated and finished by Maltese volunteers, each house hosts about 10 people.
Children who have not contracted the disease are cared for in a home where they are given basic skills and a primary school education in the same village, while their relatives are given medicine to overcome the disease.
The next group of volunteers will leave for Ethiopia in September and Fr Grima is urging people, no matter how poor or rich, to join the team.
More information on how to lend a helping hand on www.gesufilproxxmu.com, e-mail gfpmta@gmail.com. Updates on the Facebook page Missionary Movement “Jesus in thy Neighbour”.