I received a very nice note from the sister who is the co-founder of Vietnam Dream for Success, one of the charities we mentioned in our "Almsgiving" post last month. One of you sent a donation and mentioned that you’d seen the group mentioned here. From the note:
Since we are a new non-profit organization, we are in great need of financial assistance to provide for our college students at the Lavang Boarding House in Saigon with the hope that our efforts will end the cycle of poverty in Vietnam. I invite you to visit our website to learn more our our mission and goals. Thank you again, and may God bless you and your good works for God’s Greater Glory.
I am planning to return to Vietnam between April and July to interview more applicants for the Lavang Boarding House and to teach English to a group of college students in Saigon. Ms. Darrah Hollenbach, a 21 year old college student, would like to accompany me and volunteer as an English teacher. We are both in need of sponsors to defray the cost of our roundtrip airline tickets and visas ($1,500 each), and Vietnam Dream for Success will provide for our room/board and meals.
Go to the website and the contact info, if you can help.
Related:
At Intentional Disciples, Sherry has an important post on parish life in Nairobi:
This is a glimpse of life in St. John parish in Korogcho, an illegal squatter’s community in Nairobi, Kenya. Korogcho houses 120,000 people crammed with a single square kilometer. Korogcho is one of the 200 slums of Nairobi in which 2.5 million people live – 63% of the city’s population. St. John’s is part of a network of 13 parishes that attempt to serve the slum dwellers of Nairobi.
70% of the population of Korogcho is under 30. There are no public services. Huge numbers of street children hide in Korogcho to escape police round-ups. The most relevant problems are: prostitution, unemployment, drug addiction, alcoholism, rapes, criminality, domestic violence.
St. John’s parish cares for 3,000 practicing Catholics distributed in 26 small Christian communities about Korogcho. Two of the communities are made up of scavengers and Tanzanian lepers.
There are two priests, two women lay missioners and two pre-noviate Jesuit aspirants. An informal school serving 1000 children is beside the chapel. 16 lay run service groups focus on ministry in specific areas such as Justice and Peace, Liturgy, Catechists, the Poor, the Sick, Alcoholic Anonymous and Widows.
…and notes the irony in a recent NYTimes piece on a tourist’s guide to the city…
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