The Railaco Mission

Humanitarian good works in East Timor

 

his humanitarian endeavor is a sustainable program that provides medical and nutritional care to impoverished people in remote mountainous areas of East Timor, who could otherwise not access other services.

 

Food for Kids . . .

Today, in Railaco East Timor, a small team of women, already mothers themselves, grow, buy and prepare nutritious food, before setting out in a 4WD, bumping over pot-holed roads in the mountains, to serve a nutritious meal to thirty grateful pre-school kids in three remote communities.

These poor kids have nothing and they rely on this meal for sustenance three times a week. A boiled egg and a glass of milk is only part of the nutritional meal they receive.

How the children eat on other days is something to think about.

 

 

Medicines for Mums . . .

Also in East Timor, Fr Bong, a Filipino doctor and Jesuit priest, runs mobile medical clinics in eleven remote communities serving poor people who live in the mountains outside the reach of local government services. They walk for miles to see the doctor. Two trained local assistants accompany ‘Bong’ in his battered old 4WD to receive the patients, and dispense medications.

 

 

Making a difference through quality Education . . .

There are more than three hundred students enrolled in the Railaco Secondary School in 2017. Twenty of the sixty-seven students who graduated in 2016 obtained entry to the National University of East Timor in 2017!

This academic achievement talks to the sustainability of the education programs that assist the poorest of the poor to do something not only for their own and their families futures, but for the nation in this still struggling, emerging neighbour country.

 

 

 

Who is behind all this?

At the heart of all this is the Jesuit Mission in Railaco. These ‘men and women of the Mission’ live the ideal that we hear of ever more frequently these days in the exhortations of Pope Francis.

“. . . it is unfathomable that there are so many hungry children, that there are so many children without an education, so many poor persons. Poverty today is a cry.” (Pope Francis)

 

Daily, unselfishly, these trusted men and women in Railaco carry out humanitarian works caring for the poorest of the poor, on our behalf.

 

I’ll deposit whatever amount you wish to send me into the Jesuit Mission Overseas Development Aid Fund ABN 47 915 006 050, and arrange for a tax-deductible receipt to be sent to you.

Bank: NAB Potts Point   BSB 082 048   Account # 85 902 6967 Name: L M Musgrave