Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Cairo (Fides Service) - A Centre opened by Italian Comboni missionary Fr. Luciano Verdoscia, who has worked for years among abandoned children in the garbage collectors village in Cairo’s Mansheyit Nasser district continues to operate (see Fides 24 October 2005). “After lengthy negotiations with various school authorities our five week Summer school programme was at last launched in August involving 270 children two hours a day five days a week” said a report from the Centre.
Due to problems which emerged in the Spring the lessons could not be held at Al Sadat school as planned and were moved to Tariq Ibn Ziyyad school in Duwe’a. Duwe’a another part of Mansheyit Nasser, not in such a bad state as the garbage collectors’ village but still extremely poor.
“School authorities wanted us to employ school teachers although two or our tutors could have been present to oversee and control the distribution of a light meal for the children. But for several reasons this proposal is not practicable” said the staff at the Centre. “The solution to this apparent impasse was to use young graduate teachers registered with the local school authorities but not yet assigned to a school. From our point of view this solution is a good one. First of all because attitude these young teachers is different, they are enthusiastic about the project and want it to succeed. And secondly presumably the school authorities were happier providing their own personnel rather than people from outside”.
Another initiative which the Centre thought of was a second hand cloths stall where families could choose things they needed and ‘buy’ them with a system of points” the staff said.
“However it never materialised Understandably the headmaster did not agree. He feared it might lead to disorder and that anyone would have tried to take advantage of the offer”.
So what we did was to give each child a bag with clothes of different sizes and some food provisions. On 29 October we gave each of the 270 children enrolled for the course a bag to take home. The bags were prepared with the generous help of women, mostly Italians, co-ordinated by Maria Teresa Cingolani.
In this regard Father Luciano has always said the work of volunteers is indispensable: “we have the good fortune to rely on people who are very active and capable, who work behind the scenes but provide significant and continual help to support this important project for children” the religious said. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 22/11/2005 righe 45 parole 550)
