Sitting in the hot Ugandan sun is a girl. She is just outside the Nkokonjeru hospital, a small cluster of buildings inside a compound, broken shards of glass cemented atop the walls like barbed wire to keep unwanted visitors from scaling the walls to get inside when denied entry at the gates. People cluster in the waiting room and the guard sits idly at the gate post. The girl has a sign pinned to her back. It reads: “Enough is enough.”

Hard to believe but is has been over two months since I arrived in Poland. The time has flown! It has been an amazing internship for me. So many new friends and experiences, not only working with the children here, but also having a chance to travel a bit around Poland, spending time in Warsaw – so much to see there, as well as other cities such as Krakow.

The rusted tin panels of the merry-go-round, painted in bright red, blue, and yellow, heat up beneath the blistering Ugandan sun. But whether we are sweating in the heat, or doused with a cool rain sweeping through the hills with a passing thunderstorm, the children are undeterred. They dart out from the classroom with its rickety wooden chairs and tables, rotting makeshift blackboard, and paint chipping off the walls, hidden by student artwork, to play on their rickety merry-go-round, slide, and teeter-totter that Sr. Lucy scraped up the money to commission from a local metal worker. I don’t think the children see the rust, ragged edges, and chipping paint.

by Sr. Carolyne, CARITAS For Children Program Coordinator

At the beginning of March, volunteer photographer, Tina Erdmann, and I went to visit our ministry partners in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

While in Haiti, our plan was to visit 4 of the 6 school locations in our Haiti child sponsorship program. Since my last visit to Haiti two years ago, I hoped to see changes for the better but it seemed as though the people were more disheartened and frustrated than ever. We were unable to visit any of the schools in our Haiti program due to the fact that the religious sisters are being targeted by unscrupulous robbers and thieves who think the sisters have money coming out of their ears. Particularly when the sisters are visited by foreigners, the thieves assume their visitors are leaving behind donations and loads of money. These vandals keep an eye on the sisters and if they have visitors, they come armed and demand money or any valuables. Some of our sisters have been struck or slapped when they resisted.

by Madeleine Richey, CARITAS For Children Staff Writer

A little more than a month away from her one-year anniversary of being named Program Coordinator-Uganda for CARITAS For Children’s child sponsorship program, I caught up with Sr. Carolyne Balikuddembe, Little Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi (LSOSF).

I visit the Catholic Diocese of Nsukka, Nigeria, twice annually as the director of a special partnership between the Diocese of Nsukka and the Archdiocese of Chicago based on the professional and personal friendships that are rooted in the global mission of Catholic education. Cardinal Francis George, O.M.I. and Bishop Francis Okobo exchanged letters of agreement to establish this unique partnership of promoting Catholic education in September 2006.

In recent years Northern Uganda has been devastated by a brutal civil war. Perhaps you remember news reports of Joseph Kony and his army of stolen children inflicting a reign of terror; children from outlying villages making a long and perilous trek every night to sleep on the streets of Gulu, preferring to face crime and other unsafe conditions rather than risk abduction. Now that a relative peace has settled over the region, the future is hopeful but still uncertain. For many youth in the region, their childhood has been disrupted by brutal violence. Their education is affected not only by financial need but by the trauma of their past.

As I prepare for my upcoming mission trip to Haiti I find myself thinking back to just over a year ago when I volunteered with CARITAS For Children for the first time in Uganda.